The Marvel factory continues its run of popular streaming series and box office giants with the sequel to 2016’s Doctor Strange. While the cast is back along with a few new faces, director Scott Derrickson has been replaced with geek monolith Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead franchise, the Spider-Man trilogy). Essentially, Marvel traded one young horror director for a legacy horror director for what’s promised to be an insane trip through the multiverse.
In this sequel, Doctor Steven Strange is coming to terms with life after his five-year absence. His star-crossed love Christine is getting married and his attitude towards the mystical arts has become rather sloppy as of late. Though, before he has any time to be introspective, he must rush to save a young multiversal traveler named America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez). Strange takes it upon himself to protect not only his universe, but the existence of every universe, by seeking the help of Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen). His pleas for help lead him on a journey through several dimensions.
By several dimensions, I mean specifically three dimensions, including our own. This isn’t the universe-bridging experience that it felt promised to be. Instead, it’s a fairly traditional cape flick with its format, but with some very deep dive lore within.
This needed to be a Doctor Strange movie with some scattered MCU easter eggs tossed in to keep the fans engaged. In that way, it succeeded. This is his movie. Even when the focus is taken off of him, it puts the spotlight on Wanda. Both of these actors are completely capable of carrying this material, even when the script works against them.
The script (not written by Raimi) is a tonal nightmare. Yes, this largely falls on the editing as well. This is possibly the darkest (as far as violence goes) MCU flick. Both canon fodder and comic icons are potentially subject to tragedy and the movie only pulls away so it doesn’t get the R rating. But the violence is felt. Combine that with wisecracks and distracting subplots, and you can see why not one character in this movie takes the threat seriously.
Multiverse of Madness runs at a relatively short two hours. And yes, that is short for a cape flick nowadays, but it could have easily been 20 minutes longer and not been so rushed; possibly even giving subplots some room to breathe. And this is where we get to the biggest issue. As with most of these Marvel Universe projects, there is required reading. You’d have to have seen “Wandavision” and parts of “What If” to makes sense of what’s going on, or have empathy for specific characters. This is all good and fine now when every MCU movie is an event, but in years to come this particular movie will have next to no legacy for itself and its own quality.
Sam Raimi is behind a legitimate top 5 superhero film with 2004’s Spider-Man 2. He knows what he’s doing in terms of managing an emotional story and capturing the perfect tone for a hero. Yet, with this Doctor Strange sequel, he feels muzzled. There are splashes of Raimi’s quick zooms and whip cuts. There’s even some horror elements used to fun effect in the third act. But overall, this feels like an echo of Raimi. He and the overseeing MCU writing committee don’t gel together well. This feels like a paycheck so he can go back to what he truly loves making. The horror isn’t scary, the cartoonish humor falls flat, and the emotional highs are hampered with bad dialogue. I enjoyed the recognizable elements of Raimi within this sequel, but they felt sparse.
What works for this movie brings us back to Cumberbatch and Olsen. Cumberbatch gets to own this character finally and he’s settled in nicely. If he were the new face of whatever the Avengers may be now, it’s a solid choice. Elizabeth Olsen transcends the material given her. Without giving much away, we get to see her devour the scenery. The case could be made for this being her movie just as much as it is for Dr Strange.
Outside of the last half of Spider-Man: No Way Home, phase 4 continues to run on fumes. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness doesn’t do much to redeem that. It’s about as average as you can get for a cape flick, but maybe 30 movies into the franchise, that’s all that’s necessary. It’s got some shocking violence that helps make it memorable, but also may be too much for younger moviegoers. The performances, the actually good villain, and some Raimi elements will make this worth watching on Disney+ in a few short months. C
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