Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Review (SPOILERS)

Rumor has it a Marvel movie came out this past weekend. Evidence seems to show that a lot of people went out to see it. About 20 million people, in fact. Domestically, that is. Even more worldwide. It managed to open to $187.4 million domestically and $450 million worldwide. That’s a tad bit lower than I was expecting, if you read my May movie preview. But that’s still nothing to scoff at, of course. It’s the 11th highest opening weekend ever and 7th highest opening weekend for an MCU film out of the now 28 in their library, below only the four Avengers films, “Black Panther,” and the most recent “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” However, despite such a massive turnout, social media suggests that there was a lot of divisiveness surrounding this movie, some not even realizing what genre they were going into. And that’s caused a lot of discussion points to be swirling around in my head over the weekend. Not every Marvel movie requires a spoiler discussion, but this one definitely does. So if you haven’t yet seen the movie, but you want to, then this might not be the blog post that you want to be reading. You’ve been warning. Come back to this when you’ve seen it.

I’ll say right off the bat that this also wasn’t quite the movie I was expecting, either. For some reason, I was under the impression that this was going to be more of an event film in terms of the content in it. I concluded this based on the multiverse setup that “WandaVision,” “Loki” and “Now Way Home” all seemed to be setting up. It seemed like this was going to be the culmination of all of that and this multiverse story arc for Phase 4 would really get kicked into full gear. And based on the title of the movie including “Multiverse of Madness,” it didn’t seem like that was too crazy of an assumption to be made.

On top of that, the multiverse story arc in the comics is one that I’m quite familiar with. Marvel and DC have both been toying with this idea for ages. My specific point of reference that I had in mind was the major “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover even in the Arrowverse in 2019. All of their shows connected together for this massive event, which not only led to a really fun plot line with lots of action that was the best of the Arrowverse, but the cameos and Easter eggs came fast and furious, bringing pure joy to us comic book fans. The Arrowverse has since kinda fallen apart, but that crossover event will still be forever remembered. And I was excited to finally see Marvel’s version of this madness. And I assume that many others were excited for this as well, which is why I think the hype was so high.

In hindsight, it thus makes sense that this didn’t hit the rather bullish heights that many had for it. Had I known that this wasn’t the massive, crowd-pleasing multiverse event that many expected it to be, maybe I would’ve tempered my expectations a bit in terms of my May preview. And had I looked at the actual reviews prior to going in, maybe I would’ve been clued in. But I thought there was going to be massive spoilers on the docket, so ain’t no way I was going to accidentally subject myself to that. So yeah, it makes sense that reaction was mixed and thus word of mouth hurt the movie a bit over the course of the weekend, leading to what almost seems like a disappointing $187 million, which is a weird thought.

But is Marvel really to blame here? Was there any level of false advertising that tricked us all? And if so, is it even fair to judge a movie based on it not being what we expected or should we be judging the movie based on what we actually saw?

And this is a recent set of conundrums that Marvel is very familiar with at this point. I know a lot of people who were disappointed with the “WandaVision” finale because it didn’t deliver what many fans were wanting. Yet if you look at everything in hindsight, Marvel never promised any of that. The fan theories just spiraled out of control to the point that there was almost no way to satisfy everyone, especially since the show itself was already written and filmed. But after that debacle, Marvel actually did manage to deliver what people were expecting with “Loki” and “No Way Home,” so there was definitely a certain expectation leading to this movie that people assume was going to be delivered.

And yes, I was initially among the dumbfounded crowd, at least while watching this movie. Why would they spend so much time setting up a giant multiverse arc in these previous mentioned movies and shows and not deliver in a movie that had multiverse in the title?

Then the realization hit me. COVID messed this whole timeline up. So instead of complaining at Marvel for aimlessly wandering during this Phase 4 and not really building to anything, I think it’s more important to realize how this was supposed to go. The initial schedule of movies was supposed to be “Black Widow” in May 2020, “Eternals” in November 2020, “Shang-Chi” in February 2021, “Doctor Strange 2” in May 2021, then “No Way Home” in July 2021. As far as the Disney+ shows, I’m pretty sure those came out on time, given that theaters were not required. So that would mean “WandaVision” would come out right before “Shang-Chi,” “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” right after “Shang-Chi,” then “Loki” and “What If?” all after “Doctor Strange 2.” But instead the Disney+ shows started things off while the movies kept getting pushed back. Which also explains the fact that the post credits scene from “Black Widow” was supposed to tease a certain appearance in “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” instead of awkwardly having the tease come after the show.

So the real takeaway here is that if we put things into proper context of how the timeline was supposed to play out, “Multiverse of Madness” was supposed to come out directly after “WandaVision,” but before “Loki,” “What If” and “No Way Home.” So with that in mind, it makes sense as to why this seemed a bit anticlimactic and didn’t follow up on those because it was supposed to be part of the build-up and not the culmination of everything. In terms of blame, yeah it’s their own fault for debuting the Disney+ shows first, but I don’t know if you can really blame Disney on that one as they wanted to give their fans SOMETHING to hold them over until they can actually release their big movies. And remember with Spider-Man, Sony is the distributor there, so Disney’s hands are tied a bit in that regard. If Sony wanted to release their movie before it made sense to do so in regards to the timeline, then Disney just had to adjust accordingly.

Of course I am just one person with no actual insight into how all of this went down, but to me I think it was important to dive into all of this because understanding context is critical to understanding decisions they made in this movie. Yeah, sure, they wrote things in to adjust. Like a throwaway Spider-Man line that actually doesn’t make much sense because Doctor Strange is supposed to not know who Spider-Man is. And, sure, why not a cameo from Captain Carter as part of the movie’s Illuminati. But for the most part it kinda makes sense as to why this movie doesn’t acknowledge the existence from anything in “Loki” and mostly nothing from “No Way Home.” It wasn’t supposed to be the follow-up to those movies. It was supposed to be the direct follow-up to “WandaVision” that perhaps sets up the idea of the multiverse rather than being the movie that resolves the conflict of the multiverse going out of whack.

In judging it based on the context of what this is supposed to be, I think this movie does a really good job of accomplishing those goals. I personally think it’s a fantastic follow-up to “WandaVision,” providing a devastating and horrifying tale.

The idea here is that Doctor Strange runs into a teen girl named America Chavez, who has the powers of multiverse travel that she has the inability to control. America is being chased down by some evil witch or sorcerer who wants to take her powers to perhaps wreak havoc on the multiverse. So to potentially solve this conundrum, Doctor Strange says that, “Hey I know a girl that can help us” and pays Wanda Maximoff a visit. And… whoops. He learns that Wanda is not the friend that can help him, but rather is the witch that is hunting America down to take her powers. The Scarlet Witch. The most powerful being in the multiverse. And she’s become corrupted by the Darkhold and is using it to try to reunite herself with her two kids, whom she invented in the events of “WandaVision,” but whom actually exist in other universes in the multiverse. If she can take America’s powers and take control of one of the other Wandas, she can have that happy ending that she so desires.

As she says, “I’m not a monster. I’m a mother.”

Outside the movie not being the giant event film that many expected, this is perhaps the other point of controversy of the film. Wanda is the villain of this movie. And she’s an absolutely terrifying villain, one of the best in all of the MCU.

And yet there’s a lot of people who fell in love with Wanda following “WandaVision” that don’t like the idea that she’s now become a villain. And that’s a valid argument as to why maybe some don’t like the direction that this movie went. Others think that perhaps this movie just regurgitates her arc from “WandaVision,” which is also a valid critique, although one that I don’t really fall in line with.

I don’t remember the exact timeline of my thoughts, but at some point during “WandaVision” or perhaps shortly after, I thought that this series was leading us to Wanda being the next major Marvel villain. And I think that she could’ve become the Thanos of Phase 4, so to speak. A villain that would require more than just one Avenger to stop her. And thus while maybe she’s not that big of a villain, her villainous turn is not one that surprised or disappointed me. And no, I don’t think that it’s a regurgitation of her arc. “WandaVision” was all about her becoming the Scarlet Witch. Her intense levels of grief is what created her ficitionalized universe in “WandaVision.” And she kinda did all of that by accident. The series’ culmination was her finally becoming the Scarlet Witch and learning to control her powers. And yeah, sure, she finally freed that town that she had essentially enslaved, but was her grief actually resolved? And were her actions ever justified? Maybe she was trying to do better, but she still got a lot of angry looks and she walked out of that town. It wouldn’t make sense for her to be totally redeemed at the end and be this good, positive Avenger.

In fact, while Agatha Harkness was the antagonist of “WandaVision,” I think there’s a solid argument that Wanda wasn’t ever the hero. She may have been a main character, but the heroes of the story were the likes of Monica Rambeau and Vision. Those were the two that were trying to stop Wanda. And sure, Wanda wasn’t this crazy, evil character, but the best villains are the ones that you can sympathize with to a degree. You can understand where they are coming from and you can see the motivation behind what they are doing, even if you don’t agree with how the react and what they do, like enslaving a whole town just so they can live a fantasy with a husband and kids that don’t actually exist.

And lest we forget the final post credits scene of the entire series, Wanda was off in her isolated cabin reading that evil book figuring out how she can be reunited with her kids. Sure, she realized that the current plan of enslaving the whole town was not the answer, but not once did she ever drop the idea of somehow being reunited with her kids. She started the series being emotionally fragile, but she wasn’t ever fully composed by the end. As one knows, grief is not something that easily goes away. Instead, she was still a fragile human who now had access to a whole bunch of powers that she learned how to finally use. Even if she experienced a slight relapse, to me that makes perfect sense and is not a betrayal of what we saw at the end of the series, especially since she found that Darkhold, which the movie explains does a great job of corrupting your mind if you get to invested in it. And if it can do some serious damage to a mind that is decently strong, it makes sense to me that it can take Wanda down an even darker path when her mind was very unstable to begin with.

And all of that is even ignoring the fact that this is a comic book accurate story arc for Wanda. Granted, I’m not one that is super attached to the comics in a way that I will get mad at the MCU or any comic book movie for not being a perfect adaptation. The MCU as a whole has always had a very loose interpretation of the comics as the use those as a mere guideline to help them tell their own stories. But this is a particular story arc that I was excited to see play out in the MCU, especially since this is essentially the Dark Phoenix story arc from X-Men, applied to Wanda instead of Jean Grey. After seeing Fox fall flat on their face… twice… when trying to adapt this into film, I was excited to see Marvel do it right with Wanda. And I would’ve been among the disappointed crowd if they DIDN’T do this with Wanda.

Instead, I am among the very satisfied crowd that we got a movie that showcased Wanda at her absolute worst. Because if we’re doing Marvel’s first horror film, having the villain of that horror film be the most powerful being in the multiverse completely off her rocker is perhaps the perfect content for that Marvel horror film.

And speaking of which, I think it’s appropriate to quickly dive into a side rant of me being very satisfied that this movie was as dark and as violent as it was. One of the biggest critiques of Marvel of late is that they’ve become a bit boring and stale. They have their formula down well and their target audience eats that content up, but we’re 28 movies in and sticking so strictly to the formula is only going to last so long. Despite all the struggles DC has had over the last decade, one of their current advantages they have over Marvel is that they’re not bound to a specific formula and they don’t feel the need to have every one of their movies have a four-quadrant appeal. They can do something dark like “Joker.” They can do something insanely comedically violent like “The Suicide Squad.” They can target something directly at young kids like “DC League of Super Pets.” They can do a new adaptation of Batman that is even more dark and gritty than most other Batman movies. And in the midst of all of that, they can also have movies like “Wonder Woman” that do appeal to everyone.

I personally think that’s a healthy way of going about things. Don’t just make the same exact movie for the same exact audience 28 times in a row. Continue to please that audience while also letting other demographics in on the party every once in a while. Go all out on a “Deadpool 3” in the MCU. Let Sam Raimi put his style into a Doctor Strange sequel. Embrace “Daredevil” and put it on Disney+. Don’t be afraid of slightly adult-targeted content in “Eternals.” The best thing that Fox ever did with their X-Men franchise was letting Wolverine loose in the very hard R “Logan.” And more of that is a good thing for fans of the comics who want that. And if you know it’s not going to be a $2 billion earner, give it a smaller budget and let filmmakers have fun. We’re at the point in the MCU where people are really paying attention to Marvel as a brand and that can allow them to dive into some obscure characters and weird stories. If everything is the same exact thing targeted at the same exact audience, there will be a lot of missed opportunities in this stage of Marvel.

I get that there are a lot of parents who might be disappointed that they can’t take their kids to this movie. Or they did and their kids got scarred for life. It might be a fun tradition for many to take their kids to every new Marvel movie and having that tradition get a little bump in the road is disappointing. But not every Marvel movie needs to be or should be catered towards your 8-year-old. Continuing on that path forever will be the death of Marvel because eventually people will stop showing up if their interest continues to wane. So you need to do something that freshen up the market maintain these healthy levels of media consumption.

If we had a watered down version of this story, the impact of the emotion wouldn’t have hit as hard as it did. It would’ve been like what Sony has done recently with an extremely watered down version of the villain Carnage in their Venom sequel or their story of the vampire Michael Morbius that avoided the R-rating so hard that it was painful to watch them purposely aiming for a light PG-13 in a story that lent itself to a hard R. Yeah, sure, the kids can safely go to these movies with their parents. But it was an extreme betrayal of Carnage and Morbius for those who know those characters and have waited their whole life for their big screen portrayal, only to see Sony toss them in the trash because they were too concerned about making a kid-friendly movie that would make them some money.

“Deadpool” and “Logan” have proven that the rating doesn’t matter if you have a good film that people are excited for. “Birds of Prey” and “The Suicide Squad” unfortunately show that that’s not going to work every time and that other factors will play into the financials, but studios shouldn’t be scared to make the movie they want to make even if it isn’t able to connect with every person on the planet. And I’m personally glad that Marvel hired Sam Raimi and clearly let him have the freedom to make the action/horror that he wanted to make. Sure, they probably had a few checklist items for him to meet, but the majority of this second and third act was very much in his wheelhouse. His style is naturally a bit divisive, but the Raimi fans who were watching this movie were mostly very pleased at how much of his style showed up in this film. Having also done the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies, he’s also very well aware of how to make a good comic book movie. And thus he is perhaps the perfect choice for someone to make this film as I’m sure he’s well aware of how effectively implementing horror styles can massively improve the quality of the action in the film.

And the best example of this is the best scene of this movie. How are we going to showcase the pure, raw power of the Scarlet Witch and the horror that she can be when she’s completely lost her mind? Not with a generic, bland action scene. But we’ll show her walking into Earth-838’s Illuminati with covered with blood from her previous fight and completely take down this powerful group, blowing up the head of Blackagar Boltgon, savagely killing Captain Carter with her own shield, turning Reed Richards into licorice, snapping the neck of Charles Xavier after mentally overpowering him, and effortlessly overpowering the overpowered Maria Rambeau version of Captain Marvel.

Can you imagine if that scene was instead a generic fight scene with no blood and no gore and no horror involved, because they instead wanted to make a movie to please your 8-year-old? Can you imagine if the most powerful character in the universe wasn’t allowed to showcase her power because the studio was too scared to do so? What a waste that would’ve been of such a great story arc.

As far as the Doctor Strange of it all, I don’t know if this really felt like a truly satisfactory Doctor Strange movie. I’m one of the weird ones who think that 2016 movie is actually one of the best in the MCU. That movie had so much fun messing with rules of reality to create a completely bonkers Inception-like visual treat, while also having a fantastic arc for him. And there was so much more that this movie could’ve done with his abilities that they really didn’t do, especially since they had the whole multiverse to play around with. And if you saw the completely non-Marvel related indie film “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” you know how bonkers they can get with the multiverse while still having the emotional core of the film intact. And this movie kinda shied away from implementing the multiverse into the film. They just went through a bunch of different universes for 20 seconds before balancing between Earth-616 (our main MCU universe) and Earth-838 (this movie’s alternate universe). And that gave them the excuse to kill off the Earth-838 characters, while giving Wanda an alternate family to try to insert herself into. But outside that, there were missed opportunities in this multiverse adventure that I wish we would’ve explored more. But maybe that’s further down the line.

As an isolated Sam Raimi action/horror film that was more of a WandaVision 2 than a Doctor Strange 2, I think this movie was excellent. And as a fan of horror who thinks that horror is often very misunderstood, I was very pleased at how much they leaned into that genre and how much the pushed the line of what could be in a PG-13 movie instead of being line Sony and being terrified of that line. And I think this is a movie that I will appreciate even more on a second watch now that I know what it is. And if we’re saving our actual multiverse madness stuff for a future Marvel movie, then I won’t feel the need to declare this movie as a missed opportunity. And as I said, I can forgive Marvel at the moment for not seeming to have a direction they’re going for in Phase 4 given how COVID scrambled things, but that excuse won’t carry on forever. They’ll eventually need to pull things together to give us a satisfying Phase 4 direction. But I suppose those are bridges we can cross at a later date.

Despite this being a very long spoiler review that I will be surprised if many people actually get through, I’ll mention that this wasn’t meant as a play-by-play of the movie. There are still a lot of elements of this movie that I didn’t get to, nor was I ever really intending to hit everything. I just wanted to get out my main thoughts on a few things that I had been stewing over and I feel like I accomplished that to my personal satisfaction. But I will say real quick that I love how they ended Wanda’s arc in this. They weren’t ever going to beat her in a physical fight, but America outsmarting her and discovering her weakness was genius. That weakness being her kids. Show those Earth-838 kids that she was trying to mother what she had become and have them be terrified of her. Her realization after those events that she actually had become a monster was exactly what she needed to snap out of it and destroy all copies of the Darkhold.

Did she sacrifice herself in the process? I don’t know. That part felt a bit vague. I think she’ll be back. And with the multiverse, of course there are ways to let Elizabeth Olsen back into the party, but we’ll see what Marvel has in store. In theory, if this is the end of this character, what a treat it’s been to have Elizabeth Olsen in the MCU. Marvel doesn’t get acting Oscars or even nominations with their films, but this is probably the best argument they’ve had for someone who deserves one. The Emmys gave her a nomination for “WandaVision” and I think she’s even better in this movie, so it would be nice if there was a world in which the Oscars decided to reward her with at least a nomination. But I guess trophies aren’t everything. But she’d get one in my book. And I just hope she has more opportunities to play this character.

As I said, plenty more to talk about with this movie. And I’ll leave the rest of that up to you. If there’s any discussion I missed that you really want to know my take on or if you have counterarguments to what I’ve said, let me know. Just make sure to be respectful of other people who maybe haven’t had the opportunity to see this yet and don’t want to be spoiled. I’ll decide at a later date exactly where this fits in my MCU rankings, but it definitely gets my personal stamp of approval and should at least be in the upper echelon.

Grade: 9/10