Film Review: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Sam Raimi delivers the goods in the misnomered Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is neither very mad nor very multiversal, but it’s likely the most the Marvel Cinematic Universe has ever allowed a filmmaker to reach out from its steel cage house style. Despite its bloat, inelegance, and sheer refusal to do anything interesting with the multiverse concept, this is as close as the MCU is going to get to pure horror and an auteur’s vision. Sam Raimi’s influence is invigorating and his winking verve is a balm: Multiverse of Madness brings the splatstick terror and a surprising brutality to its unwieldy superhero story. Minor spoilers ahead…
Perhaps the biggest ding against Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is how much of a misnomer its title is. While it’s positioned as the Marvel Cinematic Universe entry to blow the roof off of Phase Four’s multiverse concept, Stephen Strange’s latest adventure is shockingly light on madness, multiverses, or the promise of upending the known superhero continuity. It’s also an inelegant and unwieldy beast, spreading itself thin across a jumble of characters, narratives, and themes. But maybe for the first time in a long time - at the very least since Shane Black’s Iron Man 3 in 2013 - a Marvel movie, with warts and all, swirls around a single authorial vision. Even with the requisite table-setting and mandated cameo quota, Multiverse of Madness feels uncharacteristically accommodating of the whims of one Sam Raimi, complete with genuinely gleeful horror, shockingly brutal violence, and a terrifying surprise villain.
With the barriers between universes degraded through the events of Loki and Spider-Man: No Way Home, Multiverse of Madness drops us in on the action as newcomer America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) - aided by a Doctor Strange variant - flees from some interdimensional beasties. Crash landing in New York after her Strange companion is eviscerated in front of her, she collides with our version of Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), eventually explaining that an unknown entity is after her unique superpower: the ability to travel the multiverse unimpeded. Recognizing the use of runic witchcraft, Strange seeks the help of the self-exiled Scarlet Witch, Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), still reeling from the traumatic events of WandaVision.
“Even with the requisite table-setting and mandated cameo quota, Multiverse of Madness feels uncharacteristically accommodating of the whims of one Sam Raimi…”
“You break the rules and become a hero. I do it and I become the enemy. That doesn’t seem fair.” Multiverse of Madness’s overarching narrative is a potpourri of fetch quests and MacGuffins bound together by some duct tape and twine, but it nevertheless finds a powerful throughline in Wanda’s surprising journey (and Olsen’s terrific performance). A walking font of existential agony shattered by the countless losses she’s endured since her debut in Age of Ultron, Wanda is a wrenching, unpredictable force: an Avenger past her breaking point. Without giving too much away, it’s safe to say that rarely has superhero cinema so deftly obliterated the line between hero and villain, fully utilizing a rich and tragic history to bolster a current arc. The film’s other characters, however? That’s a different story. With an overstuffed script employed by Loki’s Michael Waldron, Multiverse of Madness draws poignant parallels between Wanda and Stephen’s separate pangs of regret and evaporated second chances, but the film’s momentum - frantic with setpieces and largely inelegant exposition - barely allows breathing room, let alone any exploration of its most underserved players: America Chavez and Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams).
It’s not in my nature to pit films against one another, but it’s undeniable that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness - which even has “multiverse” in its title - suffers greatly in the wake of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Everything Everywhere All at Once, the multiversal sci-fi stunner from earlier last month. Where Everything Everywhere All at Once dove head first into the limitless possibilities of its brain-bending concept, Multiverse of Madness can barely be called a multiverse movie. Other than a brief jaunt across a cascade of dimensional portals - admittedly an eye-popping highlight of the film - Marvel’s take on infinite parallel universes leaves much on the table by primarily taking place between only two planes of reality. And when it came time to deploy its cavalcade of cameos, heavily teased by the film’s many trailers, I let out an audible groan. It seemed, yet again, that Marvel would be plumbing the multiverse for its cheap, predictable infusions of nostalgia, reverse engineered to trigger shouts of: “I know that thing!” But then, something - or should I say someone - miraculous happened: Sam Raimi.
“Raimi delivers a bevy of gruesomeness just shy of an R-rating: Brainpans are spectacularly imploded, necks are crunchingly snapped, and fan favorite heroes are bisected with their own weapons.”
Astonishingly, and clearly with Marvel’s blessing, Sam Raimi sidesteps the obligated franchise-building mandate of superhero movie fan service with maniacal, horror-tinged glee. As a result, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is the most violent, brutal film in the entire MCU. Ladling from a cauldron of his greatest hits - The Evil Dead, Drag Me to Hell, Darkman, and the stylistic trappings of his Spider-Man trilogy - Raimi delivers a bevy of gruesomeness: Brainpans are spectacularly imploded, necks are crunchingly snapped, and fan favorite heroes are bisected with their own weapons. Make no mistake, Multiverse of Madness is a horror movie, and Raimi employs every giddy trademark he’s picked up throughout his long career; his infamous projectile cam is back, along with his signature punch-ins, his eyeball closeups, and his tilt-a-whirl dutch angles. And we can’t forget about Raimi’s beloved ghoulish visual motifs either: Skeletal apparitions shimmy to a danse macabre, spectral demons taunt our heroes with the tenor of over-the-top camp, and zombified doppelgängers are unearthed from shallow graves. Raimi’s fingerprints are everywhere, and it’s a blast to behold.
In the film’s third act, Doctor Strange faces off with a corrupted version of himself, and the two wizards fashion musical notes off of sheet music into magical shurikens, exploding into cacophonous blasts of classical crowd-pleasers as they shred the scenery; it’s a corker of an action beat, and a penetrating jolt of personality. And for the first time in a long time in one of these movies, I muttered the words: “That’s freaking cool.” Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness doesn’t fully slip from the coils of Marvel servitude - we’re far too deep into the game now for a truly independent vision to ever coalesce within the MCU - but there are more than a few pints of creative lifeblood still pumping through Hollywood’s sturdiest franchise, and it seems like Sam Raimi is the one to light the path to superhero movie deliverance.
