Review: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
A sloppy, callous, uninteresting mess of a movie
Update: alright, I watched it again and did not feel the same burning rage as I did the first time. But it’s still a cynical mess of a movie that does a disservice to pretty much every one of its characters. So, yeah, the review stands. I’m not mad anymore, but I am very, very disappointed.
Look, there’s no way to sugarcoat this: this review is going to be, in part, a therapeutic exercise for myself and, as such, pretty sweary, because of the simple fact that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is, in my fanboy opinion, the worst entry in the MCU up until this point, bar none. It is worse than The Dark World, worse than The Incredible Hulk. I hadn’t expected that from director Sam Raimi’s first (and only?) MCU project; I mean, the dude did the first Spider-Man! But this movie oozes cynicism, which wouldn’t be a problem if it managed something even remotely consistent, but it has no idea what it wants. The whole thing feels as if it’s made by a teenager wearing a ‘Fuck the system’ t-shirt who has to write an essay that’s due tomorrow and while they disagree with the very concept of homework, they still want at least a C. Buy into the project, or GTFO, Raimi.
It’s not fun, it’s not funny, it’s not scary, it’s definitely not smart, it’s barely coherent.
Spoilers, but I only say that out of respect for you, the reader. The movie can’t get any worse anyway, and has none of my respect.
Ok, for real, I am going to spoil the entire movie in the next paragraph and randomly throughout the text, because I care about the plot just as much as the movie did. It revolves around America Chavez (a decent but little used Xochitl Gomez) who has the power to open portals between universes. She can only jump wildly from universe to universe when in great danger, however, and is unable to control her powers. While being hunted by a monster, she runs into Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), who doesn’t really have anything better to do and is moody about it. He goes to ask Wanda Maximoff (Elisabeth Olson) for help, the Scarlet Witch who had recently come into her own after being overcome by grief for her lost lover and holding a town hostage with decades spanning sitcom shenanigans (see WandaVision on Disney+). That ended with newfound power for her, and even more trauma as she lost her lover again and her children turned out to be imaginary. Good stuff. And now? Oh, she was overcome with grief again and turned to an evil book, the Darkhold, and has gone full supervillain. Yeah, a corrupted Wanda is the main villain of Multiverse of Madness. And there isn’t even a real attempt at redemption; in the end she repents when her children (who are apparently real in some universes, hence why she’s hunting for America’s multiverse hopping power) see her doing supervillain stuff, and she destroys the Darkhold and herself. The end. The whole of WandaVision be damned, apparently.
Strange learns some stuff along the way, but mostly about how the other versions of him are real arrogant dicks and that that’s great, because that way he can be a bit of dick, but still not be the absolute worst. We’ll get back to him being a dick. People also ask him whether he’s happy, several times. He isn’t, mostly, until the end of the film. Then he is, apparently, ’cause he fixes the broken watch at the end of the movie; the broken watch he got from his True Love and has been carrying through several world ending threats and, oh, yeah, his True Love married someone else and he should really move on, but I think he learned the wrong lessons from his multiversal adventure.
America Chavez doesn’t really get to do much, except be in mortal peril and then unwittingly open a portal. At the end of the movie, Strange simply tells her she has to believe in herself and, I am not even kidding here, from that point onwards she can accurately jump from universe to universe at will. Guess she didn’t think of that before. Her powers look pretty neat, though.
When the violins of the Marvel logo kicked in, I let out a little ‘Whoop!’. I was ready for it. That didn’t last long. The first moment that made me wince was already in the third scene, when Strange attends the wedding of Christine Palmer, his love interest from the first movie, and with whom it didn’t work out, obviously, in part because he had been blipped for five years (see both Infinity War and Endgame, I guess?). Strange encounters Doctor West, another former colleague, an adult man and in the first movie an accomplished surgeon, if not as great as Strange. But he has turned into a sad and envious little man. It was no doubt meant to be funny, but he is bitter and unpleasant and I’m sorry, what functioning adult tells a colleague at the wedding of another colleague that ‘he didn’t even get the girl…’. Even for teenagers that’d be pushing it. But I swallowed and smiled. I still had faith.
The second moment was a bit later, when Strange and Chavez end up in another universe and Chavez, experienced universe hopper, fixes them some food. “Food’s free in most universes,” she adds, “it’s weird that you have to pay for it.” Not a tiny anti-capitalist jab, no, just a setup for the street vendor she got it from to ask for payment. Not a completely unreasonable request in our own universe, I would think, but what does Strange do? He physically abuses him. And not a little bit, no, he has the man punch and slap himself repeatedly, even quipping that it would last for two weeks. Ex-fucking-cuse me, you grade A bully?! Because he deigned to ask for payment for the food he had already given? I hate the capitalist system as much as the next person, but a powerful man physically abusing a street vendor is barely funny, especially as it has no bearing on anything else in the movie. Or does it matter less? Is that the takeaway? People from another universe matter less than people from your own? It actually might.
Where the movie completely lost me, what left me whiteknuckling my seat, was a dumb joke halfway the second act, when alternate universe Baron Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor) tells Strange he’ll be taken to the Illuminati. It’s already a dumb moment, with Mordo being needlessly self serious, and of course it had to be countered with a joke. Lots of options there. Maybe something with Lizard people. Or that it would no doubt be illuminating. Or “I’m a Freemason myself”. Perhaps followed by dead stares from the others and an added “That would have killed in my universe”. Really, anything, but ‘Illumiwhati?!’. What, you’re telling me that Dr. Strange, MD and PhD, Master of the Mystic Arts and all around smart and well read person, has never heard the term Illuminati? Fucking really? How the fuck does that make it to the screen? FUCK!
The added downside was that I was still fuming a few moments later when we actually got to meet the Illuminati. Cameo’s galore, with actors from other franchises, actor-swapped characters from our MCU, and even a fancasting favorite for an upcoming role. But it didn’t mean a thing. Even seeing Captain Carter on screen, while great, was greatly diminished by the (admittedly, excellently portrayed) deaths of the Illuminati, which nobody really reacts to. Even that universe’s Christine Palmer barely emotes anything when six of the most powerful beings on her earth, possibly friends, definitely people she personally knows, are destroyed in moments. They were just fodder, that is very clear. So it turns out that, yes, the people of other universes are less than us. Good to know.
New elements keep getting introduced late in the movie with little rhyme or reason, and with even less explanation. When Strange inhabits the dead body of one of his alternate versions, he is suddenly attacked by the vengeful spirits of the dead, or something. OK, sure. They fight a bit, but then, while he is losing, Christine Palmer reminds him that he’s a Master of the Mystic Arts and that the spirits bend to his will, or something. And he’s like ‘Oh, right, totally forgot about that’ and next thing you know he has — again, not kidding — fashioned the spirits into an undead version of his trusty cloak. O-ok, then, I guess? This is never brought up before or since.
There is also a secondary villain near the end, an alternate Strange who holds the Darkhold in his universe and has begun hunting Stranges because … none of them can ever be happy? I think? There’s a rough sketch of that happiness plotline in the movie somewhere, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the bad Strange has an extra eye in his forehead. It opens the moment he reveals he is, in fact, evil. OK, sure, third eye bad, apparently. A bit ablist, but I’ll take it. Until, at the very end of the movie, during the after credits sequence, Strange is stopped on the street by a woman in purple who opens up a portal and accuses him of … ugh, you know what? It doesn’t matter, except that Strange drops in a bit of a fighting stance and, and an eye opens on his forehead? Is he a villain? Is everyone a villain!? Is this the start of the MCU’s ‘gas leak year’?
Oh, and there was sound, and music, and visuals which were mostly fine, occasionally a bit wonky. The only reason people will probably remember this movie is because it has very memeable lines when people talk to America Chavez. “America, you have to believe in yourself.” Yeah, that’s going to get memed.
Look, if I had to summarize this movie succinctly, I’d use the following immortal words by Ramona Flowers:
He’s a creep, you’re a bitch, and you all deserve each other.
And I wouldn’t mind that Strange was a dick, if the movie had adressed it even remotely. And I wouldn’t mind (quite as much) that they turned Wanda, one of the best things the MCU has going for it in the new constellation, into a brainwashed ultra baddy, if it hadn’t turned WandaVision into her origin story. They could have talked about it a little bit more than two lines about it.
But it doesn’t matter, nothing matters. I feel like that’s the takeaway here. As I saw the nameless character who was clearly someone as the camera lingered, and who might have been Wong’s lover, or maybe just a friend, as I saw them sacrifice themselves in what I am now going to call a nameless ex machina, I had three thoughts: ‘They should have at least gotten a name’, ‘At least I’m pretty sure they weren’t a villain’ and ‘I bet this doesn’t matter either’. And you know what? It didn’t.
So, yeah, Multiverse of Madness, it’s terrible. Don’t watch it. Watch literally anything else. I’m going again soon because I planned a hot date already, assuming that even a mediocre entry in the MCU could use a second viewing. W(r)ong!
Don’t make the same mistake I did, kids. Watch Everything Everywhere All at Once, probably! It is metaphysically impossible for it to be worse.
