Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

With great power comes great responsibility and with almost unlimited power comes ... MADNESS! The new Doctor Strange could have been made in pretty much any way given the storylines in the recent MCU films and the central character's abilities, and I was curious to see how Sam Raimi, creator of Spider-Man as well as cult horror films, would handle it. The film is not lacking in some decent scares, imaginative scenes (a "musical fight" like in Scott Pilgrim) and creepy characters, yet Raimi could have easily pushed the envelope further, as some of the characters were dispatched out of frame in a grimly manner. The multiverse also certainly had more potential, on the other hand, the film fortunately didn't become an outright mess. The newcomer America was more rather bland, but I enjoyed more than one cameo, which the film was brimming with. The first end-credit scene brought another Oscar-winning actress into the MCU, though I wonder if it wasn’t a "one-off". It's not a pure four stars, but I was entertained in the cinema for the full two hours, and that's what counts. (08/05/2022)

A playful, but rather oversimplified sequel to the story about an arrogant surgeon who turned his hand to magic takes us to other worlds, but also into his subversive inner self. During the opening of the movie, Raimi came up with a surprise parallel on the west Russian conflict, and also with an ending involving a demonic resurrection and all-in-all inconsistent storytelling. The second Strange would have benefitted from about a half hour extra to give Raimi the chance to give the multiverse a good long cuddle and also give the sub-stories the chance to take off a bit. I don’t believe that Waldron’s screenplay was to blame; this is more like studio intervention to bring the running time down to a more sensible length. The guest appearances are fine as a whole, but I’m not at all thrilled about one choice by casting department, so that means minus one point. The horror make-up is awesome (eyeballs dropping out of sockets!), but rotting cadavers, impressive deaths and pieces of body dropping off indicate that Disney is willing to turn a blind eye occasionally and please orthodox fans with a bit of gore. But will it be enough? Are you happy? (05/05/2022)

The cup of patience has run over. In fact, I actually hesitate even to call this a film. I don't understand why no one else complains about how horribly the characters are keyed to those fake backgrounds, that no one minds that the framerate makes, say, the lab scene look like something out of Code Blue. I haven't seen something where everyone cares so much about everything in a long time. It has no beginning, no end, the actors aren't entertaining, the fictional worlds have no stakes of their own, and it's bathed in cliché. And the script's a real doozy, too. Sam Raimi is in a great position in Hollywood where whatever crap he makes, all he has to do is put a skeleton in it and a zoom shot to get people to cheer at how he references himself. I think The Last Children of Aporver would have been a better movie as a result. (03/08/2022)

I'd say the new Doctor Strange film is extremely big-headed, in every way. Ever since the announcement, they've been trying to promote how groundbreaking it will be by making it the first "Marvel horror movie", but holy crap, I have no idea why they would even want to say that. Overall, I have mixed feelings because the bad wasn't outright bad, but the negatives probably outweigh the positives, and I simply can't be fully satisfied. A lot of things don't make sense, and they break the rules as they see fit (one minute the main villain has a problem with several apprentices, and then the next minute she's crushing the most powerful five heroes // nonsensical use of abilities // in one scene she's flying and in another she's limping slowly, but she just won't use flying - and these are just a few of the many glaring things). There's no time for dialogue, and no time for emotion, so there's a rushed jumping from scene to scene with only terse sentences that just come across as awful, and in a field of only two hours, the film is just insanely rushed and would have been better suited to a slower series. Motivations and character development are leaps and bounds transformations that don't feel consistent and the multiverse itself is also without rules, allowing the filmmakers to do and make up whatever they want, from all sorts of new variations on old characters to bizarre worlds to comically laugh-inducing scenes in the cinema. In the end, it's just a terribly weird-looking affair that still has its quality, but when I ask myself "Where have we come since The Avengers?", I find that I've grown very uncomfortable with the MCU's development, and it looks like it's heading into a very big mess that's going to be very hard to climb out of. (08/05/2022)

Of all the Marvel superheroes, Doctor Strange has the most potential for visually wild and appealing films. Filmmakers can get awfully crazy, and especially now that Strange is supposed to travel to other worlds and universes and where everything was once again based on magic, so the boundaries of normalcy were pushed a lot further than, say, in Black Widow. In that respect, there's nothing to fault in the Multiverse of Madness. Sam Raimi enjoyed his return to blockbusters and, unexpectedly, Kevin Feige allowed him to be his typical self. There are a few horror and scary moments, references to the visual style of the first Spider-Man and even Evil Dead, and it's nice to watch. The trouble is that there's not much interesting stuff going on. The story this time around is fairly banal, the characters uninteresting, and the whole time I felt like there was a missing minute here or there where it could slow down and go a bit more in-depth. I didn't get the sense that the universe was at stake or that Strange himself had to undergo some major transformation. It's simply a nice attraction, but it wraps up a not very interesting plot. It should have been better. (04/05/2022)