Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: An Article of Lunacy By Brett Wall
Here is a list of everything I’ve talked about in this article. Feel free to bounce around!
Paragraph 1: Non-Spoiler Review:
Paragraph 2-4: Pros and Cons
Paragraph 5: Disappointing?
Paragraph 6-10: Things That I Would Have Done differently
Paragraph 11- 12: What’s to Come?
Non-Spoiler Review:
Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is Marvel’s newest released film. It is chalked full of adventure, surprises, and heart. This film is about an ancient evil entity trying to harness the powers of a young girl so that it can travel the multiverse. If you are expecting a fun, family-friendly MCU film, you will be disappointed. Be ready for anything in this movie, but not everything. For those comic book nerds, like me, who heard all the rumors and were excited to see all of your old favorites, try and quell your excitement. This movie does have a few things that you were wanting, but it does little more than whet your appetite. The movie is a bit too short and feels like a good portion of it had been scraped. On the bright side, a majority of the cast knocks it out of the park, Benedict Cumberbatch in particular. While this is not a bad movie, it was not the exploration into the Multiverse that we were all expecting. Be ready to watch a 2hr long teaser of the things that could come in the future, but won’t happen in this movie. All in all, if you level out your expectations, you will have a good time. Two end credits. 6/10.
Spoiler-Free Zone
SPOILERS BEGIN HERE
Pros and Cons:
I hate to say that I am the type of person who always has a problem with a movie. If I made a list of Pros and Cons just for myself, I’d probably have more Cons, but that isn’t really fair. Knowing who I am and knowing how I treat movies, I’m going to try and go one for one (Pro for Con) so that I can play both sides. I don’t need the fans or the haters to send me messages on Facebook.
Pro #1) Benedict Cumberbatch killed it!
Con #1) Too many evil Doctor Stranges
I think this one is sort of self-explanatory. Benedict Cumberbatch is a fantastic Doctor Strange. I will admit that he doesn’t feel like the comic book Doctor Strange, but he is good in his own way. That being said, I sort of put a sneaky 2-con special into my con. There were too many evil Doctor Stranges, yes, but my main issue is that the same thing kept happening. Change universe, find Doctor Strange, Oh no! He’s evil. I’ll go into it more soon, but this was a big issue for me.
Pro #2): Sam Rami Rocks!
Con#2): Too Short!
I think that everyone can say that Sam Rami holds a special place in our hearts. As a director, he’s brilliant. His shots, his scenes, and his angles were all perfect. That being said, what talent Rami has in directing, he lacks it in writing (That may not be fair, I don’t know who wrote the script, how much involvement Rami had in the script, or if things were cut. So just blame whoever did that if it wasn’t Sam Rami). This movie was supposed to be so many things and it fell short on all of them. I think the main reason for that is it wasn’t long enough. This movie could have easily gone for three hours. This felt less like a Multiverse of Madness and more so like the Multiverse of Dipping your toe in the shallow end. I don’t know why Marvel didn’t want to go all out in this movie, because they easily could have. The potential that this movie had is haunting.
Pro #3): Krasinski is in!
Con#3): Krasinski is out!
It was so good to see a fan-casting come to life and he looked so good as Reed Richards. However, with his untimely death, I am worried that this may be a one-and-done for Jim Halpert.
So I have to admit, I didn’t think about how long this would be if I listed and wrote about every like and dislike I have. I’ll tell you what, how about I group it all together into one paragraph. That’d probably be more professional anyways.
Disappointing?
Yeah, it was disappointing. When Marvel released that long slate of movies, this was at the top of my list. If you remember, this movie was supposed to feature the villain Nightmare and had Loki in it. It changed once the previous director left and Rami came in. That’s when I really started to get hyped up for it. We started to hear things like Tobey Maguire, Hugh Jackman, and even Nic Cage. It was going to be an EVENT. Then it wasn’t. As much as I love this MCU, this phase has felt very unstable to me. It feels like they don’t know what they want to do yet and I suppose I kind of understand. If you keep going bigger and bigger, you’re going to reach the top. The thing is, they should. WandaVison, Loki, Spider-man, and Doctor Strange have all dealt with the multiverse and what do we have to show for it? What’s changed? The goal should be to get so big that the next thing couldn’t top it, instead of staying stagnant in this one place in time. I’m concerned that Marvel has gotten comfortable. The violence and mature themes were refreshing, but we can’t pretend like they would do something like that in a movie set in the regular MCU. The 616, if you will. All that has been happening with the Multiverse for the past 2 years has been maintaining it. Making sure it doesn’t break. Break it! Stop going back to the statuesque and show us the dangers instead of just talking about them. My only hope is that they’re building to something big. Oh, and I suppose I will admit that I was disappointed in the cameos. I liked seeing Reed Richards and that’s about it. It felt like the Illuminati were wasted and I think it was a mistake to only have those be your cameos. I hope that wasn’t too intense, I don’t wanna be the guy who cares about cameos more than the plot. I liked watching Black Bolt die though, that was pretty cool.
Things I Would Have Done Differently
Not use Wanda as a Villain. I like the idea but isn’t time yet. This should not be here big House of M exile moment. It should come later and at a worse cost. If you had her start to turn over a movie or two and then had her be the villain, it’d be great! Instead of killing everyone in that temple, maybe she could’ve taken out a whole town? A whole city. I would have either chosen Nightmare or a Dormammu influence Baron Mordo.
A Coalition of Strange. Instead of using the power of love to defeat The Scarlet Witch, this movie should have been about Doctor Strange going through the multiverse to find other Doctor Stranges to defeat Wanda. You could’ve even had the Illuminati give him the idea or help him find candidates. I want to see an Illuminati that feels powerful. This illuminate felt like the HOA
A different Illuminati. Going into this movie, I was under the impression that The Illuminati were each going to be someone from a different universe. They were not. Which now I’m sort of glad of since they all died. The thing is though, they shouldn’t have all died. That never should have happened. In ten minutes this movie wasted The Illuminati. Sure it could come back in the 616, but a Multiversal council would have been top tier. That being said, I do understand why you would want it to be smaller than that. One per universe is probably enough. I think my main concern is that we won’t see them again. Which brings me to my next point.
A new post-credit scene. Yes, the Bruce Campbell one was funny, but the one with Clea? I would absolutely take that out. It felt so very out of place. Instead of that scene, I would have replaced it with Doctor Strange sitting in a waiting room. A receptionist comes out and says “He’s ready for you now”. Strange walks into the room and says “Reed Richards,”. Reed turns around and says “Do I know you?” then Strange smirks and says “Sometimes,”. Sorry, that was probably a terrible way to read dialogue, but I’ve gotta stick to the format that I created. Those are the rules. Which I also created.
Last one, because five feels like enough and I’m getting hungry. If they were to have done the Multiversal Illuminati I would have liked to see these characters. Reed Richards, Charles Xavier, Captain Carter, Iron Man (Cruise or Downey), Medusa, and T’challa (Michael B. Jordan). I am starting to prefer the one universe Illuminati though, but I would like to see Michael B. Jordan become Black Panther.
What’s to Come?
This article is a bit longer than I had intended so we’re going to speed run this next section. I won’t lie though, it's because my fingers are starting to hurt. Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to go through the characters in this movie and tell you how I felt about them and what they’re going to do next. I’m going to try and do them all with one sentence.
Disclaimer: Obviously if they died, I will be discussing the 616 version.
Doctor Strange
Always enjoy watching him, best performance in the movie.
Will go on to create a 616 Illuminati
America Chavez
Great debut, not annoying, and a lot of fun.
Will eventually join the Young Avengers and befriend Kate Bishop or Ms. Marvel
Wong
Not the best actor, but still enjoy it when he’s on-screen.
I hate to say it, but will probably die the next time we see him.
Scarlet Witch
Elizabeth Olsen loves playing this character and it shows, and I never wanna see that gong scene again.
Not dead, put herself in exile.
Professor X
Nice to see him again, but hate that he came back just to die. Probably should have stopped at Logan.
Will be recast.
Monica Rombeau
She was fine. I like the one from WandaVison better. This version didn’t bring anything special.
I like the detail of going back to get the actress from Captain Marvel. I didn’t know that they did that at first
Baron Mordo
Wasted.
Hopefully, we get to see the wizard hunting next time.
Black Bolt
Good enough for someone who doesn’t talk.
What a death! I don’t really understand why he screamed though.
Captain Carter
It was fun to see!
I hope we eventually get to see another version of this character. I also hope this wasn’t the same one from What if…?
Reed Richards
Stole the show
This better not be a one-off.
That’s probably as in-depth as I can go without wanting to die, so I’m going to stop here. If you’ve made it this far, thanks! I appreciate you reading this. If you want, go check out my podcast. This Wednesday (5/11/22) my father and I will be discussing this at length along with Moon Knight. See you there!