Review: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SMALL SPOILERS. I’LL DO MY BEST TO KEEP SOME OF THE BIG REVEALS HIDDEN BUT IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE FILM READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, directed by Sam Rami, tells the tale of Dr Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), the former Sorcerer Supreme who lost his job after being snapped out of existence for five years. Strange adjusts to his new life as being second best to his colleague Wong (Benedict Wong), the new Sorcerer Supreme, and being the supportive friend for his ex-fiancé Dr. Palmer’s (Rachel McAdams) wedding. But things get SUPER STRANGE when the gang run into a mysterious girl named America Chavez (Xochitl Gómez) who holds the power to jump through the multiverse. Chavez is on the run from the “Scarlet Witch” herself Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) looking to use her powers to regain what she’s lost. It’s up to Strange to journey through the ever expanding multiverse to get this girl to safety.

This is the latest Marvel superhero film and one that’s brought to us by Sam Raimi of all people. Raimi is best known for making both the Evil Dead Trilogy and the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man Trilogy, so his signature manic style is a surprising but welcome change to the usual stale palette that Marvel Studios instills on all their films in order to maintain continuity. Marvel has recruited distinct auteurs in the past before like Taika Waititi, James Gunn, and Ryan Coogler to an extent, but none of them are as easily recognizable behind the camera as Sam Raimi is.

Simply put, Sam Raimi’s Multiverse of Madness is a fun ride, a messy one for sure, but still fun nonetheless.

This film is being marketed as the first “horror” movie in the MCU, and while it doesn’t really commit itself to be full blown horror some of the key elements are there. Raimi brings a lot of Evil Dead energy into this film as characters get stalked and assaulted by the camera, long drawn out jump scares are added to subvert your expectations, even Bruce Campbell gets his hand possessed again. Danny Elfman, a frequent collaborator with Raimi, delivers a great score, the multiverse sequences were colorful and creative, and the violence, while nowhere near the levels of Netflix’s Daredevil or Punisher, was still satisfyingly visceral for a Marvel film.

One thing Raimi has mentioned while making this film was the fact that apparently he was making this film with an incomplete script. That would probably explain why the film’s plot and characters were all over the place. There were a lot of subplots in the film that felt incomplete or added at the last moment, and I’m not sure if they were added because Raimi wanted it or the studio heads wanted it. Incidentally, the worst scene for me in my opinion is, go figure, the barrage of cameos the film suddenly introduces during the middle of the film. Their presence is at least justified from a character point-of-view, and thankfully they exit the film as quick as they entered (which I can see as a detriment to those particularly attached to these cameos), but they do drag the pacing down quite a bit.

There are two characters this film puts a lot of focus on, and both of them could’ve been a lot better in execution. First off we got the new superhero America Chavez, introduced in the comics not too long ago as part of Marvel’s initiative to “diversify” the Marvel canon. Xochitl Gómez gives a serviceable performance, but the character she plays feels a lot like a plot device in the film; she doesn’t go through a character arc outside of, “I need to learn how to control my powers,” and a good chunk of her scenes are spent explaining how the multiverse works in the MCU for those that didn’t care enough to watch Spider-Man: No Way Home or Marvel’s What If…? (For the record, even though the film makes callbacks to the events that happened in the Marvel TV shows like Loki and What If…? they aren’t required viewings for this film.)

And then there’s Wanda Maximoff, who is straight up the main villain of the film. This film, in addition to being another Doctor Strange movie also serves as a direct sequel to the TV show WandaVision, which I put off watching up until recently when I found out it’s required viewing for this film (the show’s a decent 6/10 in case you were wondering.) As in the show Elizabeth Olsen gives a great performance here, but the character she plays makes quite the jump in the film from dealing with remorse for enslaving an entire town just to relive a life with her lost soulmate to being A-OK with committing mass murder so she can literally suck the life out of a girl and “Rick Sanchez” her way through the multiverse.

And speaking of lost soulmates, with all the cameos in this film Vision is strangely not one of them; you’d think a film that serves as a direct continuation of WandaVision would feature Wanda’s other half in some manner considering we’re in the multiverse now which has literally INFINITE possibilities. Yeah Wanda’s character arc here is kind of inconsistent, which honestly makes sense when you realize Sam Raimi didn’t actually watch all of WandaVision when making this film.

Overall I still recommend this film; there were quite a few issues I had with the plot and characters, but everything else in the film is creatively insane enough to warrant a re-watch for me. Marvel’s playing a dangerous game incorporating the multiverse in its stories now for a general audience that has no idea how confusing the comic books can really get, but they seem smart about how they approach this new chapter so far and I’m confident Kevin Feige will manage everything smoothly in the foreseeable future. I for one am just happy to get another Raimi film finally ending the Raimi drought in cinemas (his last film was Oz: The Great and Powerful back in 2013 WTF!?) and I thoroughly had a blast with this film, imperfections and all.

Final Verdict: 7/10