Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Review: Sam Raimi & Marvel Nail The Multiverse

Synopsis: Dr. Stephen Strange casts a forbidden spell that opens the doorway to the multiverse, including alternate versions of himself, whose threat to humanity is too great for the combined forces of Strange, Wong, and Wanda Maximoff.

Spoiler-free zone

Overview

We always knew prior to the film being released that it was seriously going to be bat-shit crazy and oh boy, it was. The movie opened up many different pathways for the Marvel Cinematic Universe to explore now with the multiverse opening all kinds of possibilities.

The movie is fantastic. It shows the lengths that Doctor Strange is willing to go to in order to protect his world and also protect innocent people. We know America Chavez debuts in the movie and it’s in the very first few scenes we see Doctor Strange take a liking to her which is something I enjoyed with the film.

As much as I did enjoy the movie, I did walk away from it feeling a bit meh. The reviews have fluctuated across the board and I understand it to an extent. It’s one of those movies that only you as a viewer can truly decide how you feel. It’s not a film I’m desperate to see again the way I was with No Way Home but that’s not to say after a couple of days I’ll be dying to see it again.

One thing I will say is don’t go into this movie expecting an over-abundance of surprise cameos. There are some there (I don’t believe this is a spoiler) but the actual list of rumors was massive so don’t be too disappointed when a lot of those turn out to be false but there are some cameos in there to truly dig your teeth into. If you want to know further about who’s in the film, we will include the list further down in the article in the spoiler zone.

Back to the multiverse though, it just shows that Marvel now has the ability to be unpredictable with the way they move forward. They have this ability to include anybody they want and I believe this is how they will introduce X-Men and Fantastic Four properly. It feels good knowing now we’re not just set with Earth 616 but many different versions out there.

Overall, it’s a very solid movie. It’s something as a Marvel fan you should definitely see. I do also want to praise the VFX team as well, the effects in this movie were absolutely brilliant. The quality surrounding everything is astounding.

Spoiler zone

Read on at your own risk

Story

The story centers around America Chavez’s ability to jump between multiverses with Wanda chasing her down so she can take over another Wanda who has the kids, Billy and Tommy, that we saw in WandaVision. Obviously Doctor Strange isn’t a fan of this idea and then they clash. With America Chavez’s abilities, they’re uncontrollable sending her and Doctor Strange through different multiverses until they land on Earth 838.

The story was good and had a lot of great moments, especially for the story aspect. We got to see some of the earth’s that exist within the MCU even down to the animated world. It’s interesting. I mean, the entire premise of the multiverse is super interesting and Sam Raimi did a fantastic job in bringing that to life, ensuring that each world had something different about it, even if it was subtle.

As mentioned in the overview, I did walk away feeling meh in the end but the story delivered on what it was set out to do and that’s absolutely fine by me. Now, by all means, the story and structure weren’t perfect. It did feel a bit flat at certain points but these weren’t often or even lasted long but it did sometimes feel a bit rushed, case in point is in the characters section about how quickly the deaths happen.

The movie has a runtime of 2 hours and 6 minutes including credits and there is 2 post-credits scene. The second one was an absolute waste of my time but the first after-credits scene did introduce us to Clea who just shows up after Doctor Strange receives the third eye and they seem to venture back into the dark dimension. It’s exciting to see what’s next for Doctor Strange as we did receive the common text; “Doctor Strange will return.”

Characters

I’m not going into the “movie was starred by…” because we all know who the cast is. Doctor Strange is the main protagonist and the Scarlet Witch is the villain with America Chavez serving as a hero alongside Strange with Wong obviously still the Sorcerer’s Supreme. Every character within the movie served the purpose of the story and it was all done very well. Especially Wanda.

I really do need to discuss just how amazing of an actress Elizabeth Olsen is. She’s always absolutely nailed the role of Wanda Maximoff but man, she was on an entirely different level in this film. She’s proved that it doesn’t matter if she’s the hero, the villain, or even just somewhere in between, you will be entertained. My only gripe with how they did the character in the movie was how WandaVision ended.

The Illuminati was introduced for the very first time in live-action which is where our surprise cameos come into play;

1. John Krasinski as Mr. Fantastic
2. Sir Patrick Stewart as Professor X
3. Anson Mount as Black Bolt
4. Hayley Atwell as Captain Britain
5. Lashana Lynch as Captain Marvel

Mordo was also part of the Illuminati as was the Ultron AI to some extent as it wasn’t Tony Stark’s bots that we were all lead to believe initially. The Illuminati played quite an important role in the story but it was obvious it was there for a lot of nostalgia or shock factor. They all kind of died pretty quickly which was annoying but I get it. John Krasinski as Mr. Fantastic is something that I really hope isn’t just a one-time thing. I hope the contract between him and Marvel is more than just a one-time deal.

For the full cast list, you can visit IMDB by clicking here.

Hype

The multiverse of Madness is easily the most hyped movie of 2022 as of yet and I don’t think there will be another film that will have as much hype as this did for the remainder of the year, even Thor: Love and Thunder. Did it live up to it? I think so. I do believe that people will be disappointed thinking there were going to be cameos everywhere but if you look past that, it’s definitely brilliant. The only hyped cameo I would have loved to see is Tom Cruise as Iron Man.

I mean, the fact of writing this review, the film has already grossed $450m at the box office according to Box Office Mojo is so damn impressive!

Favorite Moments

1. The Illuminati finally made their way onto our scenes in the MCU. Captain carter did amazing as a version of Captain America, and I appreciated the throwback of “I could do this all day.” Another huge one for The Illuminati was Black Bolt. Black Bolt has been to our screens before in Inhumans but unfortunately, the show was canceled, so it’s nice to see him back. What gave this an even better touch was that it was the original actor from Inhumans who has returned to his role. We had other members such as Maria Rambo taking the mantle of Captain Marvel and the return of Charles Xavier. Finally, John Krasinski taking on the role of Mr. Fantastic, absolutely nailed this role and I really hope we see more of him on our screens in the future. There were of course other members of the Illuminati but these were certainly the ones who stood out the most to me.

2. A big part of this movie revolves around Wanda, accessing other universes through Dream Walking, basically taking over her other self’s body so she is able to carry out acts from afar. She of course isn’t the only one with the kind of magic that can carry out this act, which we come to see towards the end of the movie as Strange has to use the DarkHold to stop her as he’s trapped in another universe. But of course, he needed another version of himself in order to do so, but the only other version of himself currently on our earth is dead, which leads to us getting Zombie Strange. This was an amazing scene in itself not to mention how well they pulled off that look, I will expect to see him in my nightmares tonight. Fantastically done.

3. Doctor Strange and Darkhold Strange end up in such an exceptional fight which is so impressive. It begins with Doctor Strange taking the notes from the piano and just firing them at Darkhold Strange resulting in a back and forth with these music notes. It was so damn good. In the end, Doctor Strange does win the fight after using the notes from a harp. I just absolutely loved this scene.

Dislikes

I’d say the main thing about this movie that I disliked was the fact that the entire concept of Wanda has totally changed. Although she was an absolutely outstanding villain, it’s a shame they took away her redemption from the end of WandaVision so soon. Something I’m really struggling with right now is that I’m not sure after this she can be redeemed, that’s if she’s still alive but I can’t see them killing her off that way. But she killed an awful lot of people throughout this movie and unfortunately getting rid of the DarkHold just doesn’t quite change the fact she’s just spent the entire movie killing people to try and kill a child just so she could have her power. Unfortunately, I don’t think she can call herself an Avenger anymore which is pretty sad.

Something else I feel worth mentioning is that we didn’t get Heartless Dr. Strange, not only was this speculated by fans but it was also teased in the trailer but it was actually DarkHold strange that we got, which just wasn’t quite the same. I understand not every speculation is going to work out, but I feel they shouldn’t have led viewers to believe this from the Trailer if this wasn’t their intention.

Recommend?

This movie is certainly a one I’d recommend, I’m not going to sit and say it was the perfect movie because it wasn’t, there were mistakes, there were things that could have been done a bit differently but it was still a great watch. Wanda made an absolutely brilliant villain, and Dr. Strange an even better hero.

Verdict

Marvel continues with another fantastic movie with a couple of slight issues but the overall view of the film is that it’s setting up something special moving forward. It’s a movie you should definitely go and see as soon as you possibly can.

Rating 9.1/10

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is available in cinemas worldwide. You can visit here for more information on the movie.