We got to see the last movie in the Spider-Man "Home" trilogy: Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). At least I assume it's the last - it had a very end-of-an-era feel.
It starts pretty much right where the last one ended. Spider-Man has killed Mysterio, but the world doesn't know that he's a villain. So Spider-Man is considered a criminal - and ol' J. Jonah's internet video show has outed him as Peter Parker.
This makes Peter a target - Happy Hogan gets him out of the legal problems, but he's still a social outcast. Worse, he and his friends MJ and Ned were going to go to MIT together, but MIT rejects them because "too disruptive". So Peter goes to see his old friend or at least associate, Dr. Strange.
Strange doesn't like the idea of messing with time or memories on a large scale, but Peter did help save the universe, so, just this once. He begins a spell that will make everyone in the world forget Spider-Man is Peter Parker. But what about Aunt May, Peter asks? OK, so he changes the spell. And MJ and Ned? Another change. How about just everyone who knew before Jameson spilled it? Damn it, Peter! At that point, the spell becomes unstable. Strange gets pissed and throws Peter out.
But it was too late. It seems that the spell pulled in people from all over the metaverse who know who Spider-Man is. So we get the Alfred Molina Doc Ock, Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin, and Thomas Hayden Church's Sandman from the Tobey Maguire universe. From the Andrew Garfield universe we get The Lizard and Jamie Foxx's Electro. We're only missing Paul Giamatti's Rhino.
Parker manages to catch Doc Ock, then Strange teleports them to his dungeon. At this point he tells Peter, MJ and Ned that they have to find the others - "Scooby-Doo this shit."
Long story short, they do. Once they've rounded up a few villains, they realize that they were all brought into this universe just before Spider-Man killed them. Peter feels bad about this, and wants to cure them of evil before Strange sends them back. Strange disagrees, and they have a big fight in the psychedelic Mirror Dimension - which Peter wins.
Other than that, the plan isn't really working too well - Doc Ock and the Goblin are trying to be good, but the evil keeps coming out. And Peter's pretty outnumbered. To cut to the chase, two more Spider-Men appear - Maguire and Garfield.
There were big hints about this in the marketing. I tried to ignore spoilers, but I wasn't exactly surprised. But I was delighted. Although they didn't take over the movie, they got to be a solid part of the last third or so. And it was great to see them, almost as great as seeing Alfred Molina and Willem Dafoe.
Now, this wasn't the perfect Spider-Man. SPOILER - they fridged Aunt May, just so she could deliver the "great power/great responsibility" line. It was practically a throw-away. But in general, we loved this. Dr. Strange and Wong were great as lovable curmudgeons, and there's a post-credit sequence for their next movie. Can't wait.
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