The ‘Verse’ not taken
Sam Raimi injects a little of his signature gore and horror into the MCU, but this is still Kevin Feige’s playground: It’s Marvel product all over.
doctor strange in the multiverse of madness
Director: Sam Raimi • Writer: Michael Waldron, based on Marvel comics by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Elizabeth Olsen, Benedict Wong, Xochitl Gomez, with Michael Stühlbarg, Rachel McAdams
USA • 2hrs 6mins
Opens Hong Kong May 4 • IIB
Grade: C+
In many ways, Sam Raimi is the director that kicked off the superhero movie juggernaut we’re living with right now when he made Spider-Man in 2002 and followed it with what many consider the GOAT superhero movie, Spider-Man 2 in 2004. So when the OG superhero director – one with a distinct style going all the way back to his low-budget, guerrilla horror days – is tasked with steering an entry down the assembly line that is Marvel Studios and the MCU, well, hopes get high. But you what happens after a high? A crash. We went through this with Chloé Zhao on Eternals, where her hallmark lyrical, quiet observation was drowned out by people hovering in mid-air and hurling laser eyes at each other. We went through it with Destin Daniel Cretton with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, who brought a little wuxia magic to that film before it was drowned out by people hovering in mid-air and hurling laser eyes at each other. Ryan Coogler was allowed to say a few things about race in America in Black Panther before the message was drowned out by people hovering…You get the picture.
So far, only Taika Waititi has made a Taika Waititi MCU movie (Thor: Ragnarok) – at least until Raimi’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. This is, for the most part, a Raimi film, and he totally messes with the formula by starting the movie with people hovering in mid-air and hurling laser eyes at each other. Ha! Take that Feige.
It’s Marvel’s world, Raimi’s just playing in it
Which is not to say this is 100% Raimi, but it does bear enough of his tics to shake up the safe, numbing MCU process just a bit; it helps that Doctor Strange as a property has a weird, ’70s alternative lifestyle lava lamp vibe. Multiverse of Madness has plenty of opportunities for Raimi to unleash his inner horror maestro, but anything truly inspired has been jettisoned for down-the-middle Disney+ appropriateness.
Which is where the film stumbles. That rating up there probably jumps to a B, B- if you’ve consumed 1) Marvel Comics, and are aware of America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) as a young woman able to hop multiverses, 2) Disney+ streaming series WandaVision and the animated What If… and 3) MCU adjacent series like Sony’s Tom Holland Spider-Man trilogy in addition to the mainline films. Anyone else, say fans of the Benedicts, may well be absolutely baffled at why a grown-ass woman is still whining about her boyfriend (who never gets mentioned) and pretend children, and won’t be nearly as enthralled by Marvel’s latest IP flex.
So in the wake of casting a spell and opening the door to the Multiverse in Spider-Man: No Way Home, Stephen/Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) isn’t shocked when he stumbles on a plot by a mysterious entity chasing America around multiverses in order to steal her power. He and Wong (Benedict Wong) pledge to protect her and get a magic spell book (not the Necronomicon). Strange figures the best person to fight mysterious magic with is a powerful magician, so he goes to Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen, abandoning her “accent”) for help but wouldn’t you know it? Wanda’s the entity seeking America’s power. She wants to find the ’verse where she’s happy with her children (again, no mention of Vision) and everyone who dies along the way… Meh. I think this is the “madness” part.
This poor girl is so dull we don’t even have a caption
The Multiverse of Madness ends up as a jumble of set pieces and ideas that never really gel, with some bonus Marvel cameos that advertise upcoming Marvel product more than they propel the narrative forward. There are no real stakes involved because these are alternate realities – increasingly a handy crutch – so no character/actor is truly in danger of elimination, and though the concept of happiness and other worlds comes up again and again, it’s never truly interrogated with any depth. And yes, it’s a Doctor Strange movie but Michael Waldron’s (Loki) script gives a crucial character, America, very little to do and even less personality. The most we know about her comes from the news: the film’s been banned in Saudi Arabia because she has mothers and in the comics identifies LGBTQ+. Sorry, this is not character development. I don’t know a lesbian whose entire personality rests on them being a lesbian. Oh, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Rachel McAdams are in this too. I almost forgot.
Raimi fans will be relatively pleased with John Mathieson’s Raimi-esque photographic flourishes, and this is easily the goriest and ghouliest MCU movie to date. The third act is uncharacteristically the film’s strongest, and teases what might have been, even it if remained about nothing. But hey, at least it’s only two hours long. DEK
Yup. Wanda is still pissed about Vision and her imaginary kids