Movie Review--Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness

"Stephen, I'm glad I fell into your universe."

--America Chavez, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Switching out Scott Derrickson for a director like Sam Raimi was a terrible mistake on the part of Marvel for the sequel to Doctor Strange.  The first was deeply philosophical, serious while still having its moments of comedy, and very focused.  Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is, unlike its predecessor, very tonally and narratively incoherent.  I do not mean that its humor is as forced and intrusive as that of No Way Home.  Actually, though there is still plenty of gratuitous comedy, this is toned down from some other recent MCU installments other than Eternals for once.  Other aspects like the elements of horror and the respective screen reveal of or name references to major characters needed a story that was far more focused, as well as dialogue that is far less forced.  Its introduction of horror to the MCU would have been immensely superior if the director or, even if his hands were tied, the other creatives involved had let the horror take more of the spotlight and streamlined the plot to avoid pointless, jumbled parts of the story.

Production Values

There are some positives to Multiverse of Madness.  From Gargantos, the tentacled beast shown in the trailer, to the now-villainous Wanda and her powers that manifest with the color red, the effects are at least competent enough to not be subpar, and sometimes they are excellent, what a studio like Disney is truly capable of producing.  Benedict Cumberbatch can of course be an excellent actor and Elizabeth Olsen an excellent actress.  There are many characters in this movie that are acted well.  Despite Doctor Strange and Scarlet Witch being the most central characters, MCU newcomers like America Chavez, played by Xochitil Gomez, and Patrick Stewart's Professor X (he was already revealed in a trailer, so I am not spoiling anything completely hidden here) are still realized well by their respective performers.  The problems almost exclusively reside in the storytelling, minimal exploration of deeper themes, and the lines.

The dialogue sounds very out of place in a modern film, and not in the clever, historically detailed way that this is true of something like The VVitch.  Rarely or never does it actually sound natural.  The point of many movies when it comes to dialogue, unless there is some form of satire or inversion of cinematic norms handled with substance, is to make the conversations or monologues sound as if characters are talking as they would if they were actual people.  Multiverse of Madness does not succeed here.  The lines are not at home in a 2020s movie not because they belong in some other era where poor quality of dialogue or unnatural lines would be good, as writing is never good or bad because of the era it was written in or released, but because they are lackluster.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

A multiverse variant of Doctor Strange traveling through an area between universes with the young America Chavez is chased by a creature hunting Chavez for her ability to open portals between universes.  Chavez opens a portal to the MCU's primary universe, with the Doctor Strange of Infinity War and Endgame saving her from another monstrous creature.  Strange quickly discovers that Wanda Maximoff is behind the attacks on America Chavez, seeking the power to enter and exit other universes to find alternate versions of the children she created in WandaVision.  Partly influenced by a book called the Darkhold, written by the ancient demonic entity called Chthon, Wanda engages in "dreamwalking" to interfere with another universe in her desperate quest to have her children again.

Intellectual Content

Like the general story details, the inherent philosophical foundation of developing Doctor Strange as a character and of exploring the multiverse, Multiverse of Madness does not exactly do much with its setup compared to its potential.  Not every multiverse story needs to directly have a character acknowledge that the necessary truths of logic are inherently true regardless of how many universes there, that it is actually these axioms and their ramifications that make a universe possible or impossible in the first place, or that even a multiverse would still be necessity be created by an uncaused cause in order to both have a unified plot and not have the characters deny logical truths (characters can only deny logically necessary truths, as nothing logically impossible can be shown precisely because it is impossible).  It is just that the metaphysical and epistemological issues naturally involved in a film like Multiverse of Madness are never relied on except to move from one plot point to another, whereas the first Doctor Strange film did far more with the premise and tackled actual philosophical truths or possibilities with seriousness, which, of course, benefitted the story precisely because the story was not random and contrived apart from philosophical substance.

Conclusion

For almost every promising decision and fitting concept that contributed to this sequel, something is underutilized, crammed in despite the movie already being full, or paired with another aspect as stupid or unecessary as the better aspects are well-executed.  Multiverse of Madness at least offers somewhat more philosophically charged examination of the franchise's multiverse than No Way Home, not that going higher than that bar is significant on its own.  There is still a massive wasted opportunity on a narrative and more overtly philosophical level to make a horror MCU film dealing with the multiverse, so-called demons, and further character development for the titular character.  Only some of these things are addressed with any thoroughness, and none of them are handled well in a holistic sense.  The greatest use of a movie like this is to serve as a stepping stone to something with natural dialogue, a more focused story, and deeper exploration of its characters and the metaphysical and epistemological issues it only brushes up against as a means to the end of making an overstuffed story.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  There are some mild impalings or other physical attacks shown.  A few feature blood.

 2.  Profanity:  Occasionally, words like "damn" get used.