11 May 2022

Review: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

From At The Movies, 7:30 pm on 11 May 2022

Director Sam Raimi kicked off Marvel movies as we know them when he made Spiderman in 2002. There had been other films based on Marvel Comics titles, but Spiderman was the first one to take it seriously, to cast it properly and to make sure there was enough character meat on the special effects bones.

And that was the blueprint producer Kevin Feige has run with ever since.

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Photo: Marvel

So, when Feige needed someone to pick up the reins of the second official Dr Strange movie, he turned to his old buddy Sam.   

Raimi certainly had the chops and, like Feige himself, he absolutely lived and breathed comics.

But the reason that Marvel movies have done so well for so long is that they’re not just aimed at rabid comic-book fans.

That’s why outsiders are brought in regularly to direct the films - people like Kenneth Brannagh, Taika Waititi, Cate Shortland and Ryan Coogler; people who ask questions.

The second Strange movie comes at the end of a string of MCU projects exploring parallel universes, including The Avengers Endgame, Spiderman No Way Home, the TV series WandaVision…. 

Wait, are we expected to have seen all of these?

Speaking as someone who has actually seen most of them, for professional reasons, but promptly forgot each one shortly afterwards because I’m an adult, I found myself regularly stubbing my toe on bits of arcane Marvel lore.

So now the one thing preventing the Multiverse descending into Madness is the hard-working and able cast - Benedicts Cumberbatch and Wong, both excellent, the always professional Chiwetel Ejiafor and Rachel McAdams, and the talented Olsen sibling Elizabeth as Wanda Maximoff.

The story, as far as I could grasp it, is that to counter the Big Bad in the Avengers movies, Sorceror Supreme, Dr Steven Strange opened up the Multiverse, which apparently you mustn’t do.

Often what sets you on the road to other universes is when this one lets you down. 

In the case of Dr Strange, it was finding himself at the wedding of his ex, Rachel McAdams.  Or for Wanda – aka the Scarlet Witch – when the love of her life dies, along with their possibly imaginary children. 

So now the fabric of time and space is ruptured, or ripped, or laddered, or whatever that sort of fabric does. 

And unless Dr Strange is very careful, he’ll not only go tripping through the ordinary Multiverse, but he may find himself up against the Multiverse of Madness.

That version of the Multiverse is the result of a phone-call from producer Feige to the digital effects department, in which he tells them to essentially go nuts. Throw in everything, including the kitchen sink, united by Big Bangs and mad 3D gimmicks. It’s like being repeatedly hit over the head by every prog rock album cover ever made.

Needless to say, this isn’t a film for the casual passer-by. 

It’s one for the comic-book obsessive - ones who geek out with their buddies at events like Comic Con, wondering if the Illuminati in this film are superior to the 1978 comic, and which of the several Dr Stranges end up in the mid-credits scene opposite an unexpected guest star.

But while this film may aim - possibly successfully - at the fans of earlier Marvel Comics movies, it doesn’t include nearly enough of what made those films work.

If you’re a signed-up Marvel fan or are attracted by a title like In the Multiverse of Madness, this may very well be for you. But for the rest of us, this film – like so many recent comics films – is both too much and not really enough.

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