I was on the early roller coaster hype train for the Multiverse of Madness. Word on the street was that this movie was gonna be Marvel’s attempt to make a horror movie. However, the roller coaster went down with behind the scenes turmoil on set. Never fear, Kevin Feige brought that roller coaster soaring back up again bringing Sam Raimi, the original Spiderman director, onboard officially in the MCU like some sort of lovely bookend on the story he started. The new Doctor Strange operates on a similar roller coaster: at times it’s incredible, at times it lulls, but by the end you’ll probably be pretty satisfied with what you saw, especially thanks to the superhero originator: Sam Raimi!
We open with a Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) with a girl, America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) running through some sort of interdimensional plane from a horrifying demon creature. The pair end up in the MCU’s universe, where our Dr. Strange helps out America after attending the wedding of his lost love Claire (Rachel McAdams). America opens up Strange’s mind again to the perils of the multiverse. After talking with Wong (Benedict Wong), Strange enlists guidance from Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), the Scarlet Witch, who has a knack for bending reality to her will to help figure out what the hell is going on.
Similar to Ant Man, the behind the scenes creative fights can be seen onscreen in The Multiverse of Madness. This fight is more about what type of movie Doctor Strange 2 wants to be. Half of the movie has that generic MCU feel…sunny, chipper, a little snarky but playful. With the loss of Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, there’s a bit of a leader gap in the MCU, and Marvel seems intent on elevating Dr. Strange’s status to leading man. So props to Benedict Cumberbatch, who really has to play it straight with all the chaos around him, letting others cook so he can move the story dutifully along, getting all the MCU storytelling pieces into place. Cumberbatch is really dragged around here: he’s got a sidekick he’s got to groom to be a big player later, he’s gotta sell character reintroductions, then re reintroductions as he jumps across other universes, he’s gotta play 2nd fiddle to the big shock and awe sequences the audience pay for, and he has to do all of this while splling out plot jargon and giving us a semblance of character evolution. Not all of it works, but the failings are not from Cumberbatch, who holds his movie together through sheer force of will.
The 2nd, FAR more interesting movie is the Sam Raimi’s take on Marvel’s version of a horror movie. For those who don’t know, before Spiderman, Raimi became a legend because of his Evil Dead movies, the first films ever to mix comedy and horror elements in a potent, electric combination. It takes about 30-45 minutes for that to happen, right about when Elizabeth Olsen wanda’s onscreen. Olsen and Raimi prove to be the straw that stirs this Dr. Strange cocktail. Marvel takes a bold swing with The Scarlet Witch (this is the first time I would say watching Wandavision, the Marvel TV show is necessary to understand what is happening to movie Wanda), and that bold swing pays off with high quality Raimi storytelling: scary, funny, and sometimes deliciously weird. That means we get the scariest scenes in the MCU’s history, and some of the scarier scenes in any movie the past few years, sometimes punctuated with a dark, twisted joke. One in the tunnels and one in a kitchen sent shivers down my spine, a testament to Raimi’s eye for a good scare and Elizabeth Olsen’s commitment to the character arc of Wanda Maximoff in this movie. Some of the character choices might be a bit questionable, but the results speak for themselves, and Olsen does a great job grounding this movie emotionally while everyone else is plot dumping. I would argue this movie should be called The Scarlet Witch in the Multiverse of Madness, as the movie reanimates every time Elizabeth Olsen in front and center.
At the end of the day, Doctor Strange is passable, ultimately solid entertainment. I don’t think there’s any overarching lesson to learn here, other than maybe Sam Raimi still rocks and Elizabeth Olsen was woefully underutilized in the MCU. If you want to see a better multiverse movie, see Everything Everywhere All At Once, or either of the 2 great Spiderman related ones!