Spoiler-space: Let’s talk about DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS
One of the weirdest and messiest of the Marvel movies.
Spoilers for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness!!
Does it even make sense to review Marvel movies anymore?
Nearly 30 films into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I can’t imagine anyone is on the fence about the mega franchise. Many people — including myself — have been onboard since 2008’s Iron Man, and while we can (hopefully) differentiate between the good and bad movies and are aware of the franchise’s flaws, we still show up for every entry (well, almost; I still have not gotten around to The Eternals).
There are many others who either were never interested in what Marvel Studios was putting out or who have tired of all the interconnected stories, get-the-thingy chases and light fights. By this point, I can’t imagine any newcomers will decide to check in to a 30-film/six-series (and counting) saga, and Marvel hasn’t switched their formula up to the point where those who left have much incentive to return. So, instead of doing a typical “should you see this” review, I’m going to offer a few brief thoughts on the movie up front and then we’ll dive into spoilers about what does and doesn’t work about this latest MCU entry.
My spoiler-free thoughts on Doctor Strange 2
I’ll be completely honest: While I like Benedict Cumberbatch in the role, a Doctor Strange sequel wasn't among my most anticipated MCU movies. Scott Derrickson’s 2016 film is perfectly fine but, like many of the Marvel origin stories, it’s hampered by sticking too closely to the formula set by Iron Man. In fact, that film is basically just the Iron Man story in a more mystical skin. I enjoyed Cumberbatch in Infinity War and Spider-Man: No Way Home, and I’d happily see more, but I’m more interested in another Guardians of the Galaxy or Thor adventure (both of which, of course, are on the docket).
But I am highly interested in a new Sam Raimi movie, both as a fellow Detroiter and a fan of Raimi’s filmography. It’s been almost a decade since Oz the Great and Powerful, his last film, and 13 years since Drag Me to Hell, his last good film…which is way too long. After jumpstarting the modern superhero movie with 2002’s Spider-Man and its sequels, it seemed like a fitting honor to bring the director back into the comic book movie fold.
The greatest pleasure of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness comes about an hour in, when the film kicks into a higher gear and you realize that Disney didn’t hire Raimi for his Spidey credentials, but rather for his experience with schlock horror comedies like Evil Dead 2. The film’s final hour is one of the weirdest and most unhinged in the MCU, with Raimi tossing in demons, jump scares, zombies and smash zooms to create one of his patented ‘Spook-a-blasts.’ It seems to be a repudiation to those who claim that Marvel brings in accomplished directors only to squelch their style.
But while Marvel may have given Raimi full aesthetic control, he’s still handcuffed to a script that feels misshapen and overstuffed because of its obligation to the Marvel machine. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has to function not only as a sequel to the 2016 film, but as another post-Endgame adventure, as well as an epilogue to WandaVision. In the end, Doctor Strange sometimes feels like a bit player in his own movie, as the threads left hanging in the first film are ignored or discarded in favor of pushing the bigger saga along.
In short, there are sequences here that are some of the most inventive and thrilling in the MCU, but it’s shackled to a script that showcases the universe’s biggest detriments (and it’s worth stating that as bonkers as the movie gets, it still feels quaint next to the insane energy and unbridled creativity of this year’s better multiverse movie, Everything Everywhere All at Once). It’s a classic mid-tier Marvel project. It’s not original and thrilling enough to be mentioned alongside Black Panther, Avengers: Endgame or even last-year’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. But it is also a reliably entertaining ride that should be an engaging enough diversion for MCU’s fans, who will likely forget any complaints once Thor: Love and Thunder, hits in July.
Now, let’s talk some spoilers.
SPOILERS FOLLOW!!!
A maddening multiversal mess
Aside from a few rough patches in its first films, the MCU has overall done an admirable job telling an overarching story while keeping stand-alone installments focused on individual characters and their arcs. Sure, the Iron Man, Thor and Captain America movies had to move the entire Infinity Saga forward, but there was still a spine to the individual franchises, with ongoing tensions, character development and story arcs to explore.
Doctor Strange ended with several options to continue Stephen Strange’s story, be it the fraught relationship with Rachel McAdams’ Christine, Strange’s rise to Sorcerer Supreme, or the betrayal of Baron Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor). There was also a big mystical universe to explore that would allow the Doctor Strange movies to be their own weird, crazy thing.
But In the Multiverse of Madness seems less interested in giving us a Doctor Strange sequel than it does in giving us another epilogue to the events of Infinity War and Endgame, and serving as a two-hour series finale for WandaVision.
That last portion is perhaps the shakiest and messiest bit of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. For the first time, the MCU expects audiences to follow not only the 27 films that have come before but also an entire streaming series, as Strange seeks the help of Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) in order to help multiverse-hopping teen America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) escape an otherworldly evil. The problem? That evil is Wanda, who wants America’s powers so she can escape to a multiverse where her children exist.
For fans who last saw Wanda avenging Vision’s death in Endgame, it might be a bit of narrative whiplash to see the former hero trying to kidnap and kill a teenager and, in one scene, slaughtering a whole cadre of superheroes. Unless they’ve sat through WandaVision, they don’t know about Wanda creating two sons and resurrecting Vision to have a peaceful life in the suburbs.
And I get it. “In for a penny, in for a pound” is the Marvel mantra. But Multiverse of Madness’s requirement that all Marvel lore be fair game is undercut by its tendency to play fast and loose with that same mythology. While the sequel orients much of its plot and emotional stakes on the events of WandaVision, it also undoes the emotional development done in that series, the search for contentment and healing that Wanda found in its final moments. It turns her into a blood-drenched villain, and by the end of the film it (seemingly) unceremoniously kills her, a send-off that feels cheap and undeserved. And for a saga that has told us “it’s all connected,” the MCU seems a bit coy about which series are truly essential; Disney+’s Loki was focused on the multiverse yet, despite sharing a screenwriter in Michael Waldron, it has no bearing on this adventure. Not that I’m begging for even more plot points to be stuffed in, but it’s hard to tell just what’s important to pay attention to (I’m sure Loki will come into play in the movies soon).
I’m a fan of Marvel. I watch all of the series. So it’s not a huge chore for me to keep track of what’s going on and, in theory, this type of interconnected transmedia storytelling is a feature, not a bug. But for the first time in a while, you can almost hear the screenwriters straining to further one story and bring in the bigger MCU plot points that will prove important down the road. The attempts to bring all these points together while still telling a Doctor Strange adventure are clumsy and inorganic, and the focus on Wanda (even though Olsen is, as always, fantastic in the role) make Strange a supporting character in his own film.
Whose movie is it, anyway?
I don’t think the Doctor Strange/Christine relationship was a particularly engaging element of the first movie. It’s far from the spark that fueled the Tony Stark/Pepper Potts dynamic, and it’s thin even in a franchise where romantic relationships are typically nonexistent. But McAdams is such a talented actress that I really hoped they’d find more for her to do in the sequel. And they do, but it never really works.
The relationship is first brushed off by having Strange attend Christine’s wedding, a fine sequence that would have been a fair way to send off the character. As a reminder of what Strange’s heroism has cost him, it could be effective to write Christine out and leave him lonely, similar to the sacrifices Spider-Man must endure. But then the film brings in a version of Christine from another multiverse, and while McAdams does what she can, the relationship never feels sweet, romantic or powerful. Instead, the two leave a lush New York multiverse and head into a haunted house world and there’s no real relationship built between them; we’re expected to be moved when they realize they can’t be together because it’s “Stephen and Christine,” but Marvel seems to overestimate just how invested audiences are in that relationship.
The last film’s cliffhanger, which revealed Strange’s old friend Mordo was now an enemy, isn’t even followed up here. Ejiofor shows up briefly as a Mordo in another universe, but it’s all shoe leather to fit in the Illuminati and another obstacle for Strange to overcome. It’s, frankly, a waste of Ejiofor, who was one of the best things about the 2016 film, and it waves away that cliffhanger with a jokey quip by Strange.
The result is a movie where Doctor Strange is present but not particularly engaging. Again, I like Cumberbatch in the role; his clipped nature and hubris are reminiscent of the flavor that Robert Downey Jr. brought to the role of Tony Stark without being an imitation. But there’s no internal story for Strange. The first film hinged on his embrace of humility; there are some throwaway lines tossed in that direction here, but there’s not much of a journey to the character. He keeps being asked “are you happy,” but the film never stops to let him grapple with his emotions, losses or failures (a What If… episode centered on Doctor Strange tackled this with much more power). Strange jumps through time, does some magic spells and puppets a zombie…a lot of external action, sure, but the character is exactly the same at the end as he was at the beginning.
There’s a potentially interesting character introduced in America Chavez, a hero with a long history in the Marvel comics. But as written, the character is just a cosmic MacGuffin, another thingy for Scarlet Witch to chase and Doctor Strange to protect, and without much emotion or depth of her own. It’s also not helped that Gomez’s performance is largely surface-level and unaffecting; I’m not sure whether it’s a fault of hers or just the problems that come when an actor has to bring an underwritten character to life.
I should stress that, in the moment, I didn’t feel these disappointments. I had fun; I laughed at the jokes and mostly enjoyed the experience. But more than perhaps any other Marvel film, Doctor Strange 2 feels like the result of a rushed script colliding with franchise obligations, and the result, while never boring, is a narrative mess.
Raimi unleashed
I know I’ve just taken several hundred words to talk about my disappointments with Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, but the truth is I did have a good time with the film. The majority of its plot woes occur in the first 45 minutes; once America Chavez and Doctor Strange are traipsing through the multiverse, the film becomes a ride, a haunted house attraction that elicits screams and squirms just as often as it earns laughs.*
Once Raimi is allowed to go for broke, you can almost hear him cackling from behind the camera, as he seems energized to wreak havoc across the MCU. I’m sure fans will be debating the fallout of the Illuminati sequence — which brings back Haley Atwell as Captain Carter, Anson Mount as Black Bolt and Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier, and introduces John Krasinski as Reed Richards — but for me the joy is that it introduces a new core of heroes only for Scarlet Witch to tear through them like a metaphysical Jason Voorhees. It’s gruesome, with Mr. Fantastic being unwound like a strand of pasta and Captain Carter being split in two by her shield, but Raimi knows just how much to show and how much to imply to keep it on the fun side of fun-scary.
Working within the MCU doesn’t seem to constrain Raimi’s style; instead, it appears he was encouraged to bring in his smash zooms and wild camera movements, over-the-top line deliveries, and fondness for jump scares. There’s a dash through a hall of mirrors designed to get audiences popping out of their seats, and a sequence where a trio of demons harass Strange has real Army of Darkness energy. There’s a fight using musical notes that allows composer Danny Elfman to really shine, and the film’s climactic zombie fight is great macabre fun. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness might have a mess of a script, but it’s an energetic combination of action and horror, although I wish it had been able to replicate some of the original film’s trippy visuals.
And in the end, despite the film’s flaws, I think this Doctor Strange sequel does something that the best Marvel films do, and that’s serve as a gateway for future film lovers. No, it’s not a challenging piece of cinema and, yes, I can nitpick its faults. But I also love that some viewers are going to see this and get a kick out of its combination of action and horror, and this could be their springboard for Evil Dead 2 or Drag Me to Hell. I hope the idea of multiverses sends people across the hall to enjoy Everything Everywhere All at Once. It doesn’t matter how good they are; everyone’s going to see the latest Marvel movie. Let’s hope the high they leave on sends them seeking an even bigger hit by turning to the cinema that inspired it.