Picking up right where Far From Home left off, Peter and his friends deal with the world knowing Spider-Man's true identity. With him being looked at by the public as both a celebrity and a menace, he turns to Dr. Strange to cast a spell to make everyone forget his secret identity. As Strange composes the spell, Peter keeps chiming in with exceptions he wants added to the spell, causing Strange to abandon the now corrupted spell. However, a ripple effect causes people from other parallel earths who know Spider-Man's true identity in their own timelines, to end up on the main MCU earth. Showing up are villains Dr. Octopus, Green Goblin, Electro, Sandman, and the Lizard to cause chaos as they try to destroy this earth's Spider-Man. Peter and Strange hatch a plan to send them back to their own earths, but Peter has second thoughts when he learns he may be sending them to their deaths. To stall for time, he traps Strange in a mirror dimension, and works to figure out a way to spare the villains' lives. The rogues betray Peter, and Aunt May dies as a consequence. Meanwhile, Ned Leeds discovers he can open portals, and uses that to try to find the grief stricken Peter, only to end up finding the two Parkers from the alternate timelines. Ultimately the three Peter Parkers bond like brothers, and unite to cure the villains of their powers which would, in theory, spare them from death when the spell casts them back to their own worlds. But this brings up all kind of other questions, like the events from the previous franchises are now changed? Also, a complication caused by Green Goblin causes the multiverse to start to tear, and the only way to stop it is for Strange to add a spell that wipes Peter Parker out of everyone's memory. Now totally forgotten by everyone who ever knew him, with his whole history seemingly erased from the main MCU timeline, Parker starts his life over, no longer with a Stark Industries tech-suit, but a home made costume.
The first half of the movie plays like a Marvel Team Up of Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, but the second half, when Strange is mostly absent due to being in the mirror dimension, is when the movie does a great job of incorporating the previous Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield franchises, folding them (and presumably all pre-MCU Marvel movies, like The Fantastic Four and X-Men franchises) into it's multiverse. It's the villains from the older movies, all played by the original actors, who really get the most screen time, while Maguire and Garfield join in only for the last act. But once they are there, the brotherly bond between the 3 Spider-Men is handled very well. Maguire, who has physically aged the most, comes off as the elder statesman (even a gag referring to him having a bad back, slyly referencing not only his age, but the controversy that almost had him prematurely leave the Spider-Man role). Garfield plays like the middle brother with self-esteem issues (again slyly referencing that his movies were the least liked by fans), and ironically plays the role better here than he did in his own two Amazing Spider-Man movies. I dare say he almost outshines Maguire. I wonder if there were efforts to do a scene with Nicholas Hammond.
One
complaint I have, is that if you read my reviews of the previous two
MCU Spider-Man movies, Betty Brant, played by Angourie Rice, is my
favorite character, but she only has a small cameo in this one. As with
Far From Home, there was a little too much Zendaya, but at least
this one didn't have that Disney Channel sit-com tone. There is a
cameo by Matt Murdoch (Daredevil) as Peter's lawyer, and as established
in the previous movie's last scene, J.K. Simmons returns as the MCU J.
Jonah Jameson, who is more of a Keith Olbermann/Don Lemon type.
However, he does not reprise the version from the Maguire films.
All in all, this movie is a notch above Far From Home,
and really excels in the nostalgia factor for the previous franchises,
but as a DC guy, it is kind of frustrating to see the MCU again pull the
rug from under DC. And don't even get me started on how DC squandered its Crisis on Infinite Earths IP as a poorly made, Greg Berlanti produced TV project.
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