Like you, I've never loved the Spider Man character. I thought the first two Tobey Maquire movies and the Andrew Garfield movies were OK. I thought Homecoming and Far From Home were sub-par, but still decent enough. I loathed the third Tobey Maguire movie.

Whatever they did in No Way Home worked wonderfully for me. I am not able to crystalize why it worked for me as well as you did, but I was very pleasantly surprised. The returning villains were done better than I thought possible. I'm not sure what exactly I expected, but I didn't expect them to work so well. I thought the use of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield was fantastic (I'm just going to refer to each Spiderman by their actor's names from here). They helped push Tom Holland's character to grow in a meaningful way, while also pushing Andrew Garfield's character through something of a character arc.

I left the theater with a smile on face and for the first time in quite a while I think I'll see the same movie twice in the theater.

I thought they missed a chance to complete the rule of 3 on Scooby Doo jokes. After Dr. Strange twice told Tom Holland to "Scooby Doo that !#@@", it would have landed well if upon seeing the ghostly electric guy in the spooky forest Tom Holland had whispered with awe "Scooby Doo" or some reference to it feeling like an episode of Scooby Doo.

I initially found myself super annoyed with Holland and MJ for not listening to the wiser Dr. Strange in sending the villains back to where they came from. The risk to the lives of people in Tom Holland's world (and maybe to some greater cosmic space-time continuum) by having these guys stick around definitely outweighed the chance of possibly being able to save them. Both Octavius and the Green Goblin wrought massive havoc (and quite probably at least some loss of life) immediately upon appearing. To me the calculus was clear and Tom Holland was exceedingly irresponsible in resisting Dr. Strange's effort to send them back. I guess Tom Holland did pay a very personal price for his decisions in the loss of his Aunt. Yet by the end of the movie, my better judgement had taken the back seat as I enjoyed seeing the Spidermen do what they do. Still, Dr. Strange was right, though he also never should have agreed to initially performing the forgetting spell merely for the betterment of Holland and friends' lives.