Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

Oh man, it has been quite a while since I wrote a review.

Like…almost year.

It’s been a long (almost) year too. I held three different positions at work (lateral moves; I wasn’t fired), moved across the country, Megan got pregnant, and I’ve watched a whole lot of movies.

And not a single one of them felt like they were worth writing about.

But then we saw “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” (2022) and I knew that I needed to write about it. Spoilers again for the MCU at large.

***

As with every other Marvel movie since “Avengers: Endgame” (2019), this took place after the Blip, and while it was mentioned once or twice in dialog, it had much less of a story impact than in any other Marvel movie between then and now.

Following Doctor Steven Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), this movie was the cinematic end to the “WandaVision” (2021) limited series that Disney+ ran last year, wherein Wanda Romanov (Elizabeth Olson) failed to handle her loss of Vision (Paul Bettany). The very last scene of that show is a critical detail to this movie making sense, so make sure you watch that first.

We were introduced to new-comer America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), who wore an Ol’ Glory-themed denim jacket and could blast holes between universes in the shape of a giant star.
Because she was young and new to her powers, America constantly needed saving, which caused most characters to say things like “We’ve got to help America!” which both sounded like Nada’s lines from “They Live” (1988) and also statement to the audience based on current events.

Wanda, who was grief stricken from the loss of Vision, and further distressed by the loss of her psuedo-imaginary children Billy and Tommy, went on a rampage to find ways to breach the delineation between universes, to find a place where she could be with “her” kids; that grief turned her towards the cursed tome The Darkhold, which promised the unattainable for an untenable cost. Of course, because America had popped into existence from another existence, she became the target of Wanda’s loss-rage.

“Multiverse” (2022) was absolutely not a kids’ movie. Most of Disney’s MCU has been themed as family-friendly entertainment, with bright colors and generally child-friendly music and words and themes, but this one was much darker. Previously it was humanoid monsters/aliens/robots that exploded in weirdly colored gooes to make it very clear it wasn’t a person that just died. In “Multiverse” there were numerous scenes of people explicitly dying, from impalement to getting sliced in half, to someone being literally unraveled while screaming. There was even a scene of a someone’s skull imploding that could have come right out of Amazon Prime’s “The Boys” (2019+).

A huge component of the much more mature themes of “Madness” came from director Sam Raimi, who directed the first “Spiderman” trilogy (2002-2007), but more famously directed the “Evil Dead” universe, with two movies and a tv show. And, internal to that series was protagonist Bruce Campbell, who got a very minor speaking role as a pizza kiosk salesman in this.

Which leads me to my next point: this movie was absolutely jam-packed with references to other media, specifically things from the horror genre, including shots reminiscent of various screen-rendered Doctor Frankensteins, zombies, nightmares (the kind where you run but can never escape your assailant), and the Illuminati.

In “Spiderman: No Way Home” (2021), the MCU revealed the existence of multiverses, but only went so far as to add extra villains and iterations of Spiderman to “our” universe, #616.
In “Madness,” because Doctor Strange and America kept popping through universes, we were introduced to a myriad of other iterations of Marvel heroes, both that we’ve seen as part of the main MCU property and as acknowledgement from Disney that now they own everything that Fox-Marvel used to own.

That reveal meant something massive: that every single Marvel-related movie is now cannon to the MCU. Every X-Men, Fantastic Four, Blade, Hulk, whatever. It’s all part of this MCU. Disney wrote in the perfect rationale for all of those movies existing without having to worry about trying to explain why there were two completely different Fantastic Four teams, or how The Hulk has been three different Bruce Banners since 2003.

And, in a much-needed divergence from the norm, the climax of “Madness” ended with a much-needed whisper, not a bang.
No brightly-colored sky laser in the climactic battle.
No CGI-gorefest monster-on-monster shenanigans.
No threat to the universe resolved with a snap.

***

The special effects for this were outstanding, but sometimes weirdly lacking. There was one brief scene of someone standing behind a window then walking away that was so poorly rendered that they might as well have used a marionette and shown the strings. However, most scenes were so magnificently designed that even though they showed truly impossible events – like Doctor Strange’s face coming apart in puzzle pieces – it looked unsettlingly real. Definite kudos to Industrial Light and Magic and WETA for their work here.

The audio mixing was stellar. It was perfect for the movie, as a multitude of scenes had audio cues that lined up with what was happening on-screen, reminiscent of “Baby Driver” (2017). Unfortunately, the soundtrack was mediocre. Disney-Marvel has not done a good job of creating character-specific themes for any of its heroes, and the closest they’ve gotten was for “The Avengers” (2012), specifically the main theme for that movie. “Madness” was no exception to the trend, despite being scored by Danny Elfman.

***

This was a gorgeous film with outstanding visuals and a much different tone than many other MCU flicks.
Every now and then, Disney lets a gem slip through the cracks, giving us a superhero movie that’s a cold-war thriller (“Captain America: The Winter Solider,” 2014), pure comedic relief (“Thor: Ragnarok,” 2017), or a solid heist movie (“Ant Man,” 2015). This was another one of those genre-melding flicks, and it was outstanding.

Considering the aggressively unexceptional stumbles Disney-Marvel made in 2021 – “Black Widow,” “Shaing-Chi and the Ten Rings,” and “The Eternals” (which was great sci-fi, bad Marvel) – it was a much-needed change to see them catch their footing again.

Go see it on the biggest screen you can find.