[Rating: Minor Rock Fist Down]
Only in theatres
The greatest threat to the MCU could be the MCU itself. Since Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was announced in 2019, the long-awaited sequel has seen a change of directors, script rewrites, COVID-19 delays, a booming popularity for the Scarlet Witch character, more script rewrites, more delays, and ultimately some late-in-the-game reshoots. Unfortunately, the film feels every bit of push and pull of those creative strings as the underwhelming plot slogs through a fun but spectacularly visual experience.
Following the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home and WandaVision (hope you watched on Disney+ because it’s “kinda” required viewing), Doctor Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is having nightmares about another version of himself, traveling the multiverse in distress with America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), a teenager capable of traveling between realities, even if she can’t quite control it. Needless to say, villains are in pursuit and madness (pun intended) ensues. Strange seeks out Wanda Maximoff, aka The Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), who is still searching for her multiverse kids after her adventures in WandaVision. That’s all you get for plot details. Best you know as little as possible going in. Let’s just say, there are villains, demons, monsters, and surprises around every turn.
First the good stuff. God bless Benedict Cumberbatch. It’s always fun when you can tell an actor enjoys the role they’re playing. Doctor Strange is not the typical superhero. He doesn’t consider himself an Avenger. Yeah, he’s a good guy, wants peace on Earth and all that, but he follows a bit of different moral code, which allows for some fun exploration of the darker sides of the character. Cumberbatch owns this role and you can tell he’s having fun playing and encountering different versions of himself. But there is a lot going on, and it doesn’t allow us as the audience to linger long enough to really appreciate each variant. He and Elizabeth Olsen share and compete for screen time, but this is Cumberbatch’s movie, no doubt.
Speaking of Olsen, she is amazing in this movie. Fans of The Scarlet Witch and WandaVision will love the continued development of their new favorite superhero. She is the source for a lot of the really fun horror-ific, creepy scenes in the movie. She is a witch after all, different from being a sorcerer, which is something Strange has to account for as they spiral through the multiverse in search of the movie’s macguffin. She isn’t given as much freedom to explore Wanda variants—again, because she is secondary, a lot of her development also feels rushed and glossed over in favor of getting to the next twist, making WandaVision that required viewing we discussed earlier.
And then, there is Wong (Benedict Wong). Dude, Wong is the man. He’s a lot more involved here than he has been in his last few appearances in the MCU. There’s not many actors who can steal a scene from Benedict Cumberbatch, but Wong … he’s the man.
Sam Raimi seems to be the fitting director to take over for Scott Derrickson—who sidestepped the project after creative differences to tackle his own script in The Black Phone. Raimi previously helmed the OG Spider-Man trilogy (which if you remember, had a name drop reference to Doctor Strange—the more you know!!). His take on the material is a hell of a lot of fun, the visuals are amazing and Raimi definitely brings the horror to the MCU (finally) but for all the scary imagery and gore the director brings to the table, you’re not getting a fully unhinged Raimi. The film gets slowed down by the screenplay written by Michael Waldron, who was responsible for (so far) the best of the Marvel/Disney+ shows, Loki, which set the MCU multiversal exploration in motion. The film is in such a rush to introduce America, Wanda, and Strange and send them on their adventure and there are some abrupt twists that come very early that feel sudden and rushed and not entirely earned, even if we kinda knew that’s where some of this was heading.
If it is possible for a movie to feel like its dragging and at the same time feel like its rushing all of its major plot reveals and character development, then Multiverse of Madness is a prime example of how a movie can be both fun to watch and disappointing at the same time. Take the exploration of the multiverse, mentioned in Loki and then visualized in No Way Home with the reunion of all of the big screen Spider-Men. Outside of a couple of trippy sequences, where Strange and America are sliding through portals, Waldron and Raimi don’t really get into how much different these multiverses can be. We get a couple versions of New York, a couple variations of some mountainous regions, but the film never really dips into the “madness” of the multiverse or allows itself to be as creative and imaginative as you’d expect or hope.
I wonder if, and I hope this isn’t true, but I may showing my first signs of superhero movie fatigue, which sucks because — all cards on the table, I was stoked for this one, man. When Marvel announced this movie 3 years ago (it’s been 6 since the first movie was released in 2016)…just the conceptual thought of a MCU horror movie called In the Multiverse of Madness was enough to send my imagination into overdrive. But, at least for me, it never quite delivered on the excitement and expectations of that moment, which was long before Elizabeth Olsen was added, or before Raimi took over, or before He Who Remains (Johnathan Majors), a variant of Kang, the looming big bad multiversal threat in Phase 4, delivered that awesome and threatening monologue tease of how dangerous and insane the multiverse could be during the season finale of Loki.
It kind of reminds me of another MCU sequel that suffered from an unbearable weight of pressure to be a good sequel, while also juggling individual character storylines, while also setting up future endeavors and that movie is Avengers: Age of Ultron. This is, first and foremost, a Doctor Strange sequel, but it also at times feels like a Scarlet Witch movie, and then we’re getting to know this new portal traveler, America, who is charmingly played by Gomez, but again her story is thrust in there with everything else going on.
On top of that we’re trying to understand how this whole multiverse thing is going to work in the MCU. Now, you’re not going to hear me say this often, but this flick clocks in at 2 hours and 6 minutes, and you guys…it could have used a little more time to flesh some of this stuff out. It’s like going to Disneyland and being told you can’t ride anything because the lines are too long so you just have to look at all the eye candy and wish you could stop and enjoy the madness. Then you have the Disney+ shows, which may starting to water down the movies a bit.
Another disappointment for me came in the score. It doesn’t really matter who you are, but if you are taking over for Michael Giacchino, you’d better bring your A-game with you but, no disrespect to the great Danny Elfman, the Madness score is ultimately forgettable.
Hate to say it, but Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is another victim of the cursed delays of the damn pandemic. It’s both overwritten and underwritten—a movie full of potential that never fully develops. Sure, it’s interesting. It’s fun. It’s visually immersive and MCU fans will love the little surprises and cameos. But man, it just never feels like it’s leaning into its own madness and insanity as it should.
Yes. Stick around for the after credits, a Marvel staple at this point. There is a mid-credit scene and a post-credits. One is plot related, the other not so much.
Lover of movies and tacos. Ad man. Author. Member of the Kansas City Film Critics Circle and the Broadcast Film Critics Association. Founder of the Terror on the Plains Horror Festival. Creator and voice of the Reel Hooligans podcast.
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