Movie Review: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness [2022]

Been a while since this movie came out and... mostly, I was just planning to let it stew for a bit before reviewing it.

And... Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is such an interesting beast. It's got so many things that make it a good movie. Benedict Cumberbatch and Elizabeth Olsen are on fire as Dr. Strange and Scarlet Witch respectively, going through storylines that are pretty sensible for their characters after the events of Infinity War, Endgame and for Wanda, WandaVision. There's some great continuity between the movies and the Disney+ TV shows, probably the first MCU movie project that does so. Dr. Strange is finally thrust into the light after a decade of just showing up as a secondary character in other movies. Scarlet Witch is finally cast in an antagonistic role after Marvel has been too happy in toning down any aspect of their heroes that make the morally ambiguous. 

We even get the whole 'multiverse' storyline that Phase Four has been building up to, including a lot of amazingly-played guest stars. Patrick Stewart's Professor X is the main course, of course, showing that finally, the ever-popular mutants and even actors from the Fox movies, are able to appear in the MCU. In addition to that, we get even more ways for the MCU to basically give us a sneak-peek of other iconic Marvel superheroes that has been 'out of reach' thanks to rights issues. Mr. Fantastic (played by a new actor) and Black Bolt (played by Anson Mount with far better direction than that entire flop of a season) make their formal debut in the MCU, while a version of What If's Captain Peggy Carter (Captain Britain?) and Maria Rambeau Captain Marvel (Lashana Lynch reprising her role after her offscreen death in WandaVision) round out the Illuminati. 

What else do we get? Wong! Baron Mordo! Gargantos Shuma-Gorath! America Chavez! The Darkhold! And that's not even counting the little cameos of characters like Chthon, that minotaur guy, the Richards family, the Living Tribunal... Sam Raimi of the Spider-Man trilogy returns to bring the franchise some delicious horror shots!

And honestly, I'm not even one that expects this to tie in together all the plot threads from the Disney+ shows like Loki, What If? and WandaVision. Oh, and Vision himself doesn't appear either. And out of those three, only WandaVision gets covered here... the multiversal threat is independent from the Kang stuff in Loki, and the 'Sinister Strange' that shows up in the trailers is a completely different evil Dr. Strange than the evil Dr. Strange that we saw in What If?, despite the two of them causing the destruction of their home universes and trapping them in a perpetually-destroyed bubble...

But yeah. I think this movie just... didn't go far enough. It's good for what it is, and I most certainly enjoyed it more than Eternals or Love and Thunder... but it just didn't really sell the idea that it's a "Multiverse of Madness". "Journey to a Little Bit of the Multiverse", perhaps, but just like Thor: Ragnarok's titular Ragnarok was more of an afterthought, Multiverse of Madness's Multiverse felt more like an introduction to the concept, and while I understand that all these characters are alternate-universe variants and are therefore disposable, it is kind of disappointing that we didn't really do too much with them. 

But the movie does embrace its insanity and goes on and on from scene to scene to scene, and with the exception of the oft-maligned third eye, Multiverse of Madness does deliver in terms of visual effects. Mostly it's the horror parts where director Sam Raimi's influence is felt most intently, like the jumpscares when Scarlet Witch goes absolutely crazy and starts to hunt down people while blinking the lights in and out, or the little musical notes fight between our Dr. Strange and Evil Dr. Strange, or the final 'zombie-demon-hand wings' super mode that Dr. Strange engages in the final battle. Those are all cool. But all these cameos and cool scenes does make the movie teetering on being a bit too incoherent at times. Dr. Strange and Scarlet Witch get the bulk of the characterization, but the rest of the cast? America Chavez gets a lot of screentime, but her character boils down to being a precious tagalong kid. She's charming enough for me to not want her to die, but ask me what her character is at the end of the movie and I shrug. Wong and the two Christina Palmers that show up in the movie, likewise, felt more like they were obligatory.

...and let's not get to the fact that 'Shuma-Gorath/Gargantos' isn't even a real person and just a conjured being, and that the Illuminati get killed like bitches in... well, an admittedly very terrifying and cool rampage by evil Scarlet Witch. I love Scarlet Witch, but I also love these other characters and I really don't know what to feel seeing her murder Professor X after literally getting so excited to see him on screen in an MCU movie. 

Anyway, let's go through the movie's plot in as abridged a fashion as I can. "Defender Strange" and America Chavez, two people from different dimensions, are attacked by some sort of smoke demon while trying to get to the Book of Vishanti, this movie's plot device. Chavez was nearly sacrificed by Defender Strange before being killed, and Chavez creates a star-shaped portal that causes the two of them to be dropped in the primary MCU universe, Earth-616 (or 'Earth-19999' if we're using comics canon, but 616 for now). 

Meanwhile, 616's Dr. Strange has to witness his ex-girlfriend Christina Palmer get married, and there's some great acting from Cumberbatch of him basically... well, saving the universe but feeling absolutely shitty about it. He didn't get the girl, he lost some friends, and while it's not directly mentioned there's probably a fair amount of guilt in him essentially 'letting' Tony Stark die. And then epic action sequences appear, and he teams up with Wong to kill "Gargantos" and rescue America Chavez. (Oh, and bury Defender Strange in a neat case of Chekov's Gun disguised as morbid comedy)

There's a bit of America Chavez not trusting Dr. Strange after the betrayal from Defender Strange, but it really doesn't come up that quickly. Dr. Strange goes off to meet the Scarlet Witch to ask her for help, but in a pretty impressive visual effect -- and the fact that the movie actually has this as one of the earliest scenes -- Wanda reveals that she's apparently 'mastered' the Darkhold, and plans to use America Chavez to cross the Multiverse and reunite with Billy and Tommy, her children from the events of WandaVision.

And... and for most of the movie, 616-Wanda's motivation is pretty much consistent... albeit there's a bit of a leap from her stability at the end of WandaVision and the beginning of this movie. I don't really have too much of a problem with that, since it could be chalked up with her being corrupted by the Darkhold and just listening to too many whispers of her dead, retconned children. It's just that... I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not that we basically speed through this motivation just to make Wanda a card-carrying villain. She might be one of my favourite MCU villains at this point, but it's not exactly fair to the others since she's got multiple movies and a full TV show focusing on her. Plus, her now-memetic line of "it doesn't seem fair" is kind of... fair? I mean, what she's doing isn't really all that different from using the Infinity Gauntlet or the memory-reality-warping spell for our other heroes' benefit. It's just that when she goes full-on murder witch mode that we draw the line. 

It's just that... well, the honestly rather random exposition train about how America Chavez is the only character that can move through dimensions through vaguely-explained star-portal powers, and the concept of 'dreamwalking', i.e. dreaming and walking through the bodies of your multiversal counterparts, all kind of... it's basically only briefly foreshadowed by Dr. Strange was dreaming "Defender" Strange's death. In a movie that has the daunting task of introducing multiverses to us, this movie doesn't do it anywhere as elegantly as Doctor Strange did when it introduced magic. And I don't mean that the audience needs to be treated like morons exactly, but some buildup, I felt, is appreciated.

Anyway, we get the spectacular assault on Kamar-Taj, which in addition to your typical big budget MCU movie explosions in large shows, we also get some genuinely awesome horror shots like Scarlet Witch appearing next to a sorcerer and whispering in his ear as the music gets muted, causing the Kamar-Taj formation to break. Or the moment when she drags some of the other masters into mirror-worlds from reflections. Very cool stuff!

Also cool is when Chavez and Strange basically get themselves transported through the multiverse, going through some pretty wacky scenery (which tragically only lasts this scene) including a pretty cool one where they're just splashes of colour. 

They end up in Earth-838, which... basically is the only real 'alternate universe' we go to, since all the others are either empty or only have a single inhabitant. Dr. Strange and Chavez go through this world and realize that it's pretty similar to Earth-616, but with drastically different history, with Dr. Strange having died fighting Thanos (apparently) and Baron Mordo being a good guy and the new Sorcerer Supreme. Except he's not really a good guy, and he's a slimy-yet-charismatic dude who drugs their tea and serves them up to the Illuminati. 

While all of this is going on, we keep cutting back to the stuff on 'our' Kamar-Taj, where Scarlet Witch tries to do the dreamwalking ritual to hunt down Dr. Strange. One of the sorcerers, Sara, kills herself to destroy the Darkhold, leading Scarlet Witch to torture Wong's friends and force him to lead her to Mt. Wundagore, the source of the Darkhold's power, so that Wanda can recreate the dreamwalking. There's a brief bit where Wanda re-emphasizes that she rejects the Darkhold's creator, the Elder God Chthon, who wants her to rule the world. It's neat, I guess, that we don't completely devolve her into a generic doomsday villain.

And we get Earth-838's Illuminati (and Christina Palmer) who tell Dr. Strange of the events of this universe. The group, consisting of Professor X, Black Bolt, Mr. Fantastic, Captain Britain, Captain Marvel and Baron Mordo told our Strange that their Strange succumbed to using the Darkhold to defeat Thanos in their version of Infinity War, and it was Black Bolt that was forced to execute 838-Strange to prevent him from going off the rails. Meanwhile, 616-Wanda possesses 838-Wanda and while I'm going through things pretty quickly, there are some amazing acting moments from Elizabeth Olsen when she realizes that she's so close to alternate-universe variants of her children...

...and instead of figuring out a way to maybe stay there, she ends up going and assaulting the Illuminati base (it's so cool that she does this in blood-soaked civilian outfits). She wipes out Ultron robots, removes Black Bolt's mouth and causes his sonic scream to blow his brains out in the most brutal death in the MCU, turns Mr. Fantastic into silly putty, decapitates Captain Britain with her own shield, and drops a statue on Captain Marvel. Professor X probably has the longest mental fight with her, basically trying to 'reach' the wounded soul within, but Wanda snaps his neck and moves on. 

Dr. Strange has a fight against Mordo without magic, and... you know what? It's nowhere as interesting as the movie wants us to think it is. The actors are great, of course, but it's not our Mordo, and while they sure hate their respective rivals, there's just a sense of hollowness to this fight.

Strange, Chavez and 838-Christina escape and manage to work their way to a portal that leads to the realm where the Book of Vishanti is kept, but Scarlet Witch blows up the Book of the Vishanti, kidnaps Chavez and drops Dr. Strange and 838-Christina in a destroyed universe, the aforementioned bubble universe where an Evil Dr. Strange resides. 

"Sinister Supreme" Strange fights against 616-Strange in a pretty cool action scene with flying musical notes and shit, and gets tossed out of the window and impaled on some railings for his trouble, and then Dr. Strange... dreamwalks into the zombie of "Defender" Strange that they buried in some dude's flower garden. But Dr. Strange uses the Darkhold of Sinister Strange for it, causing a whole lot of... demons or something, I don't know, to corrupt his magic. This does result in a very cool shadowy-wings-made-out-of-demon-arms visual, but where the first half of the movie has a bit too much exposition crammed to very little time, this part really could've used maybe a bit more explanation. 

Zombie Darkhold Strange and Wong arrive in Mount Wundagore to stop Scarlet Witch from doing the ritual to grab America Chavez's abilities, and... and the confrontation is kind of... neat, I guess. Strange does the mentor thing and manages to get Chavez to embrace her power (which, in a rather contrived plot point, always sends her to where she can get help) and open a portal and show 616-Wanda the 838-Wanda and her family, causing her to realize just how fucked up she's became in her search for power. It's... an interesting way to do "talk-no-jutsu" a villain, to borrow a term from the anime fandom, but... it works? Again, the writing is a bit suspect with how fast-paced everything is, but Elizabeth Olsen's acting is pretty dang good. 

Anyway, Scarlet Witch uses her powers and blows up Mt. Wundagore (though there is a flash of red light, which is their way out in case they want to bring 616-Wanda back). This also causes Wanda to simultaneously destroy all copies of the Darkhold in the Multiverse, something that... doesn't really gets foreshadowed was a possibility. 838-Christina gets returned to her universe, Kamar-Taj gets rebuilt and America trains in magic there to focus her power. 

The post-credits scene tease something from the first movie, with the Dark Dimension being mentioned and Dr. Strange showing that he still has remnants of the Darkhold power. 

And... it's not a bad movie. It does get a bit too comic-book-y for a movie, but I'll never fault a superhero movie for being too comic-book-y, you know? It's just that the movie tries to do a bit too much, and I wonder if the movie was originally conceptualized as two separate "Dr. Strange vs Crazy Scarlet Witch" and "Dr. Strange In the Illuminati World" movies, that gets smooshed together. The acting and the sheer amount of fanservice does prevent this movie from being bad in my book, and I certainly enjoyed the hell out of it, but it's certainly not exactly good, y'know? There's also a bit too much reliance on plot devices that I don't think were built up adequately, and multiversal-travel rules that I felt are perhaps a bit too loose. And... for all of the buildup that Phase Four did for a proper multiversal saga story, I guess the audience were expecting another Infinity War, while this movie is decidedly a lot more small-scale in terms of the characters involved. (Also, the rather inconsistent power-scaling, to borrow another anime term, probably rankles some people).

Still, I did enjoy this movie for what it's worth, and it's probably one of the stronger movies in Phase Four that attempted to basically be 'epic'.  

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Post-Credits Scene:
• 
  Clea, regular love interest of Dr. Strange in the comics, show up to meet Dr. Strange and bring him to the Dark Dimension. Dr. Strange reveals that he's still got his third eye. 
• The pizza ball guy's hand stops bullying him in the post-credits scene. 
• Past Movie Continuity: 
• Dr. Strange apparently still remembers, vaguely, the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home, although obviously not Peter Parker's identity. Wong also establishes that he's the new Sorcerer Supreme in that movie.
• The events of WandaVision's first season is recapped, and the Thanos fight in Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame are brought up in both Earth-616 and Earth-838. 
• Apparently, Dr. Strange and our Baron Mordo clashed off-screen between Doctor Strange and Multiverse of Madness. 
• Wanda's fear whispers is her modus operandi in Age of Ultron, which was forgotten for a while until one late episode of WandaVision. 
• Dr. Strange remarks how usually people puke after traveling through dimensions, referencing how he did exactly that after the Ancient One flung him through dimensions in Doctor Strange. 
• Ultron sentries were last seen in Avengers: Age of Ultron in the mainstream MCU continuity, and also in What If?. Maria Rambeau was last seen (not as Captain Marvel) in Captain Marvel and passed away prior to WandaVision. Peggy Carter has shown up everywhere, but specifically shows up as a Captain Britain in What If?. MCU's Black Bolt showed up in the single, now-aborted season of Inhumans. The Darkhold last appeared in WandaVision. 
• In addition to being played by his actor in the majority of the Fox X-Men movies, Professor X quotes a line spoken by him in X-Men: Days of Future's Past: "just because someone stumbles and loses their way, doesn't mean they are forever lost."
• Defender Strange quotes Dr. Strange's line in No Way Home about how her sacrifice is worth more than her life in the grand calculus of the multiverse.
• Mr. Fantastic uses a time platform similar to those used by the TVA in Loki. Kang is very much associated with Reed Richards in the comics. 
• Captain Carter borrows Captain America's catchphrase "I can do this all day". (She can't)
• Movie Superhero Codenames: Dr. Strange, America Chavez and Wong are just using their real names; Scarlet Witch alternate between 'Wanda' and 'Scarlet Witch'; most of the Illuminati are referred to with their superhero names for the short time that they show up on screen. 
• Favourite Action Scene: Scarlet Witch wiping out the Illuminati like it ain't a thing. 
• Funniest Line: Basically every time the movie (and Wong) insists that Wong is the new Sorcerer Supreme because Dr. Strange got blipped for five years. 
• Earth-616 is the designation for the 'main' Marvel Universe in the comics, with all other facets of the multiverse (including cartoons, games, movies, TV shows) having their own designations. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is technically Earth-19999. So technically, Mysterio got the '616' term right in Far From Home from complete and utter bullshittery. 
• Three-sided heads that correspond to the cosmic character the Living Tribunal, guardian of the multiverse in the comics, appear briefly when Strange and America time-jump.
• The 90's X-Men: The Animated Series cartoon jingle plays as Professor X wheels into the room.  
• In addition, Professor X finally gets the hovering yellow wheelchair that he uses iconically in that 90's cartoon, and his telepathic powers also gain the concentric circles effect from the comics and cartoons, which are absent in previous live-action adaptations. 
• While not mentioned by name, Mr. Fantastic does allude to the existence of the rest of the Fantastic Four, and especially his wife Susan "Invisible Woman" Sue, and their children Franklin and Valeria. 
• While it's strange that these specific characters are not the same alternate-universe characters introduced in the show all about alternate-universe characters, Captain Carter and an evil Dr. Strange that destroyed his universe and trapped it in a bubble are both recurring characters in the first season of What If? 
• Two of the Vishanti triumvirate, the gods Hoggoth and Oshtur, appear in one of the posters, although not in the movie itself.
• "Defender" Strange is named thus by the fandom because his outfit matches that of his comic counterpart's tenure among the Defenders team. Meanwhile, the briefly-seen Earth-838 Dr. Strange uses the blue cape that Dr. Strange uses in his first appearance. 
• The combination of Mt. Wundagore (already associated with the Maximoff siblings) and the Elder God Chthon is taken from the Nights of Wundagore storyline in the Avengers comics; while the stone statues that Wanda reanimates are based on one of Chthon's more recent appearances.