C-Directed by Sam Raimi Starring Elizabeth Olsen and Benedict Cumberbatch Review by Jon Kissel |  |
Sam Raimi created his own superhero universe in the early 2000’s and he returns to a totally different landscape with Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, a title that wildly oversells itself. Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy ultimately collapsed under studio notes, but the best chunks of it belonged to his idiosyncratic sensibilities and resulted in some of the best superhero movies of the 21st century. Now, Raimi is one of a dozen auteur directors that Marvel has tried to incorporate into its corporate vision, and whatever he wants to do with a Doctor Strange sequel has to gel with a prequel miniseries. When Raimi is able to assert himself, the film tentatively explores new genre frontiers in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the space for directors to take control within this huge multimedia cash cow is shrinking.
The film begins with the death of its titular character, but not the one that’s made half a dozen appearances in other MCU entries. This Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) died trying to save a young woman, America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), with the ability to travel between universes, but she’s able to save herself by creating a portal to the default Dr. Strange. Intrigued by America’s portal abilities, Strange consults with Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), a powerful witch still reeling from the loss of her robot lover and the two sons she conjured out of thin air with him (it was a whole TV show). Wanda is less interested in helping Strange as she is in using America to find a universe where her robot/imaginary family really exist. As this will apparently kill America and there’s no other way for everyone to get what they want, Wanda goes to war with Strange and his fellow wizards.
Marvel’s been pushing out TV content since early 2021. A convergence with their films was inevitable and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is the first, but not the last, to be heavily informed by events on Disney+. Nothing that motivates the film’s antagonist makes sense without watching the series Wandavision, and even after all that homework, it seems like everything between the show and the movie was what really mattered. Wanda doesn’t leave her TV show a murderous villain, but she enters the film as one, all over missing the mugging child actors who were badly miscast as her tween sons. If this is how the MCU is going to use the extra character development time that TV affords, it’s a bad omen. This is the kind of lengthy but insubstantial storytelling that is going to irrevocably break my desire to watch any future MCU films, especially when there’s a new series every quarter and I haven’t watched the last several.
Not having a grasp of every tertiary character or the nuances of already-flimsy character arcs wouldn’t be a dealbreaker if the film itself is entertaining or well-made. When it isn’t, those flaws become more and more difficult to ignore. Written by Michael Waldron, whose past work on the series Loki and Rick and Morty recommends him to this area of the franchise, Doctor Strange has limits that something like Rick and Morty doesn’t. The endless sandbox that is a multiverse provides the creator with whatever they can put in front of the camera, but with Disney involved, the sandbox has been strained of animal turds and bleached. When America inevitably takes Strange through the multiverse, brief glimpses are caught of universes where humans are made of paint or bees run the world. The one they spend the most time in, other than their own, is one where the stoplights are flipped and love interest Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams) has a mole. It’s like a person was given a first-class plane ticket to anywhere in the world and they flew to Des Moines. The multiverse affords the franchise the chance to throw in some cameos from characters who aren’t reappearing and can therefore be dispatched in ways that none of the main MCU characters ever are, but that’s as mad as the Multiverse of Madness gets. One can imagine Waldron, fresh off his refreshingly expansive work on Loki, chafing against the limits put on him. Why would the MCU powers that be bother risking anything when audiences lap up their bland gray goop?
Raimi was behind the camera for what remain some of the most iconic images to come out of the superhero genre. There’s nothing like the upside-down kiss from Spider-Man in Doctor Strange, but that doesn’t mean Raimi is just a name-brand gun for hire. The film’s lack of imagination isn’t total, though it comes down to small fights between characters instead of the world-bending magic that the characters have at their fingertips. Strange and Wanda both have very few limits on what they can do, and Raimi finds ways to give them more to do than waving their arms around in anticipation of the energy beams and CGI gloops that will be added in post. Wanda practically becomes one of Raimi’s Evil Dead deadites at the midpoint, stalking through steam-filled hallways with a blood-smeared face and an erratic gait. Strange gets involved in a fight utilizing musical instruments, and discovers that there is indeed a hell in this world that he can pull demons from. Neither sequence makes much sense and the rules are poorly conveyed, but Raimi can still craft unique frames.
Whatever Raimi can do, there’s simply too much that he’s beholden to in Doctor Strange. The franchise cares the most about this entry as a sequel to a TV show, not as a sequel to 2016’s Doctor Strange. The film is strained over how much more interested it is in the former, but is nevertheless compelled to pay lip service to the latter. Hence the completely wasted McAdams role, and an even more unjustly served Chiwetel Ejiofor as Strange rival Baron Mordo. Over and over again in MCU films, the superheroes amass too much power, lose control of it, and then spend the rest of the film trying to return things to the status quo. Mordo left the first Doctor Strange recognizing that maybe the problem is that one individual can screw up so massively, and then put himself on a mission to rid the world of magic. Here, Mordo only makes an appearance as an alternate version of himself and has not come to this conclusion at all. It’s as much of an afterthought as the mole on alternate universe Christine’s face. The franchise asks the viewer to pay attention to these characters and follow them through multiple movies, and then it treats them like trash.
The MCU is in a real rut, and they dig deeper with Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. After the loathsome Thor: Love and Thunder and the underwhelming Wakanda Forever, not to mention the glut of TV series that have been largely unimpressive, it’s probably time to wash my hands of this franchise. I’m not going to stick around for the next round of overqualified actors to embarrass themselves with clunky exposition, as this film teases with another impenetrable end credits stinger. It’s good that Raimi got a big paycheck, and that he managed to surprise me in a franchise that is trending towards the banal comfort of a lukewarm bath. It’s better that actors who have long been shackled to this franchise are now free to get back to the great work they were doing before signing a multi-picture contract. Hopefully other actors will figure out that service to this franchise means tremendous opportunity cost, though shrinking markets and monopolization conspire to make Disney the only game in town. Where’s America Chavez to jump me to a more cinematically-adventurous universe when I need her? C
Marvel’s been pushing out TV content since early 2021. A convergence with their films was inevitable and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is the first, but not the last, to be heavily informed by events on Disney+. Nothing that motivates the film’s antagonist makes sense without watching the series Wandavision, and even after all that homework, it seems like everything between the show and the movie was what really mattered. Wanda doesn’t leave her TV show a murderous villain, but she enters the film as one, all over missing the mugging child actors who were badly miscast as her tween sons. If this is how the MCU is going to use the extra character development time that TV affords, it’s a bad omen. This is the kind of lengthy but insubstantial storytelling that is going to irrevocably break my desire to watch any future MCU films, especially when there’s a new series every quarter and I haven’t watched the last several.
Not having a grasp of every tertiary character or the nuances of already-flimsy character arcs wouldn’t be a dealbreaker if the film itself is entertaining or well-made. When it isn’t, those flaws become more and more difficult to ignore. Written by Michael Waldron, whose past work on the series Loki and Rick and Morty recommends him to this area of the franchise, Doctor Strange has limits that something like Rick and Morty doesn’t. The endless sandbox that is a multiverse provides the creator with whatever they can put in front of the camera, but with Disney involved, the sandbox has been strained of animal turds and bleached. When America inevitably takes Strange through the multiverse, brief glimpses are caught of universes where humans are made of paint or bees run the world. The one they spend the most time in, other than their own, is one where the stoplights are flipped and love interest Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams) has a mole. It’s like a person was given a first-class plane ticket to anywhere in the world and they flew to Des Moines. The multiverse affords the franchise the chance to throw in some cameos from characters who aren’t reappearing and can therefore be dispatched in ways that none of the main MCU characters ever are, but that’s as mad as the Multiverse of Madness gets. One can imagine Waldron, fresh off his refreshingly expansive work on Loki, chafing against the limits put on him. Why would the MCU powers that be bother risking anything when audiences lap up their bland gray goop?
Raimi was behind the camera for what remain some of the most iconic images to come out of the superhero genre. There’s nothing like the upside-down kiss from Spider-Man in Doctor Strange, but that doesn’t mean Raimi is just a name-brand gun for hire. The film’s lack of imagination isn’t total, though it comes down to small fights between characters instead of the world-bending magic that the characters have at their fingertips. Strange and Wanda both have very few limits on what they can do, and Raimi finds ways to give them more to do than waving their arms around in anticipation of the energy beams and CGI gloops that will be added in post. Wanda practically becomes one of Raimi’s Evil Dead deadites at the midpoint, stalking through steam-filled hallways with a blood-smeared face and an erratic gait. Strange gets involved in a fight utilizing musical instruments, and discovers that there is indeed a hell in this world that he can pull demons from. Neither sequence makes much sense and the rules are poorly conveyed, but Raimi can still craft unique frames.
Whatever Raimi can do, there’s simply too much that he’s beholden to in Doctor Strange. The franchise cares the most about this entry as a sequel to a TV show, not as a sequel to 2016’s Doctor Strange. The film is strained over how much more interested it is in the former, but is nevertheless compelled to pay lip service to the latter. Hence the completely wasted McAdams role, and an even more unjustly served Chiwetel Ejiofor as Strange rival Baron Mordo. Over and over again in MCU films, the superheroes amass too much power, lose control of it, and then spend the rest of the film trying to return things to the status quo. Mordo left the first Doctor Strange recognizing that maybe the problem is that one individual can screw up so massively, and then put himself on a mission to rid the world of magic. Here, Mordo only makes an appearance as an alternate version of himself and has not come to this conclusion at all. It’s as much of an afterthought as the mole on alternate universe Christine’s face. The franchise asks the viewer to pay attention to these characters and follow them through multiple movies, and then it treats them like trash.
The MCU is in a real rut, and they dig deeper with Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. After the loathsome Thor: Love and Thunder and the underwhelming Wakanda Forever, not to mention the glut of TV series that have been largely unimpressive, it’s probably time to wash my hands of this franchise. I’m not going to stick around for the next round of overqualified actors to embarrass themselves with clunky exposition, as this film teases with another impenetrable end credits stinger. It’s good that Raimi got a big paycheck, and that he managed to surprise me in a franchise that is trending towards the banal comfort of a lukewarm bath. It’s better that actors who have long been shackled to this franchise are now free to get back to the great work they were doing before signing a multi-picture contract. Hopefully other actors will figure out that service to this franchise means tremendous opportunity cost, though shrinking markets and monopolization conspire to make Disney the only game in town. Where’s America Chavez to jump me to a more cinematically-adventurous universe when I need her? C
RSS Feed