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Film: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Year: 2022
Director: Sam Raimi
Writer: Michael Waldron
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen and Chiwetel Ejiofor
Review:
This is a movie that I wanted to catch in the theater, especially since I heard this was considered horror. I couldn’t make it work though and I was behind at the time on watching the Marvel properties. Jaime was interested in jumping into this one since she liked the original Doctor Strange movie. We watched this together. I should also say I was stoked to see director Sam Raimi come back to the genre as well.
Synopsis: Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) teams up with a mysterious teenage girl from his dreams who can travel across the multiverse to battle multiple threats. They seek out the aid of Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), Wong (Benedict Wong) and others.
We start this by seeing Doctor Stephen Strange helping America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) get away from a monster. She has an interesting power that the monster is after. Things don’t end well for this Dr. Strange, but America gets away through a star shaped portal.
Dr. Strange then wakes up. He thinks it is a nightmare. He soon finds out that isn’t the case. What he was seeing was another version of himself in the multiverse. He helps America fight off another monster and Wong shows up to help. They know that someone is using witchcraft. This causes Dr. Strange to seek out the aid of Wanda aka The Scarlet Witch.
Things don’t go as planned there. Dr. Strange and America jump through different multiverses and even end up in a different one where Dr. Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams) works for a secret group. Things played out differently here. There is a great power that if The Scarlet Witch can obtain this power that America has. Wanda wants something that she had during the events of WandaVision.
That is where I’m going to leave my recap of the story and the characters. There is more that I’m leaving out, but I don’t want to spoil this one. Where I want to start is that I’m glad Jaime and I watched Spider-Man: No Way Home before this. That introduces more of the multiverse ideas that were introduced through Ant-Man and the Wasp and even Avengers: Endgame. I’m a sucker for multiverse stuff as it makes more sense to me than religion. This one builds on what No Way Home did where the characters from there came to that version of Earth where we are seeing other variations here. That was good.
I think this idea is a big part of how this continues into other Marvel Cinematic Universe stuff going forward. I’ve been questioning what they were going to do with the main villain defeated. We need to have something greater to contend with. There have been a few things that I’ve seen from the television shows, but I’m still a couple movies back. It has me intrigued for sure. As an update, I’m just one movie that is out back and I’m still curious as to what they’ll do.
Where I’ll then go would be the horror elements and our villain. There is a character from WandaVision that was introduced. That drew me to where it would go. I do believe that character is getting their own show or movie, something along those lines. What it did though is set up that The Scarlet Witch has the capacity to be evil. She lost Vision to Thanos. Sorry if this is a spoiler. There are also children that she loves but aren’t hers. I like seeing this power character who switched to being good could become a great adversary again as she realizes more powers. Bringing up the horror elements, we have Raimi directing. This was his bread and butter. The elements are light as this is a mainstream movie. We do get a zombie in theory. This also goes dark with the number of characters killed. It does step into the genre.
Now I’m not sure if there is more to go into here so let me shift over to the acting. We have a great cast. Cumberbatch is great as Dr. Strange. He brings an arrogance to the role that works. Olsen is also wonderful as this character. I’ll leave it there. Gomez is solid as this younger character trying to navigate things much larger than her. I liked to see Chiwetel Ejiofor come back as Baron Mordo. Wong is solid along with McAdams, Hayley Atwell, John Krasinski, Patrick Stewart and even Charlize Theron. The implications for some of these characters has me excited for the future. The multiverse does a lot there. We also got a Bruce Campbell cameo that I loved.
All that is left to go into would be filmmaking. This has good cinematography. It doesn’t necessarily have that Raimi feel that I grew up and love. I think he still does an excellent job though to capture that we are in different variations of something that is familiar. I give credit to that. The effects are good. This is CGI heavy, but I expect that. It does look good thanks to the Disney money. Other than that, I’d say that the soundtrack fit for what was needed.
In conclusion, I liked what this movie was doing. I’m glad to see Raimi come back to the genre, even though it is light on those elements. What really works here though are the multiverse aspects and the implications that come from there. It uses things that I saw in the What If…? MCU show, we have potential for this universe to keep getting better. The acting is good. This is a well-made movie. I’m probably giving this a bit higher score due to it flirting with the genre more. I enjoyed my time with this one for sure.
My Rating: 7 out of 10