Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) May 8th, 2022

I don’t know exactly how this happened, but somewhere in the hustle and bustle of moving last year I lost track of myself and never wrote a review for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Luckily for you (just me?) I discovered the anomaly and have sent my mind back in time to the long distant year of 2022 to rectify my past oversights. FINE, you got me, that is also not entirely true. Around the time I discovered the gap in my movie review history I also discovered the only physically available 3D home video release of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is in the Japanese 4k Blu-Ray bundle which I promptly purchased online. Having sufficiently product tested the 3D version of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness I can now provide a refreshed albeit belated review.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness finds Stephen Strange stuck as the middle man in everyone else’s problems yet again (see Spider-Man: No Way Home). Between his old girlfriend getting married and Wong always flaunting his title as Sorcerer Supreme, Stephen can’t seem to find time to work on himself. Enter America Chavez an inter-dimensional teenage refugee who finds herself lost in our universe after narrowly escaping death at the hands of a 40 foot tall tentacular cyclops (soapbox time: this creature’s name is actually Shuma-Gorath, a classic Dr. Strange antagonist from the comic books, and anyone who knows anything knows that. But the same people who know that also know Disney doesn’t have the rights to put Shuma-Gorath in a movie because… survey says… the name is actually the creation of Robert E. Howard the creator of Conan the Barbarian. Presuming Disney prefers to keep their licensing costs at a minimum, the studio must’ve decided to include a monster in Shuma-Gorath’s design but renamed Gargantos; a different tentacular cyclops from the comics but avoiding any and all legal legal entanglements) with the help of another dimensions Doctor Strange who died aiding her escape. Now together with the Doctor Strange we know and love, America must master her dimension traversing powers and escape the clutches of the Scarlet Witch. Oh, I should’ve mentioned, Wanda’s gone full Harry-Lime-in-a-Ferris-wheel and wants America’s powers for her own selfish uses. After the events of the Disney+ show Wandavision, the Scarlet Witch is intent on moving to a new dimension where she can live out her days with real versions of the imaginary children she conjured in her fantasy world, and she’s willing to kill America to do it. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is an exciting chase movie where Doctor Strange and America feel like they’re barely escaping the Wanda’s clutches at any given moment, even while traveling in entirely new dimensions.

These new dimensions are populated by variants of familiar characters like Captain Marvel, Baron Mordo, Captain Carter, Black Bolt (personal favorite), but the two biggest cameos were John Krasinski as Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four and Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier of the X-Men (and Bruce Campbell, you knew he’d be there). The meta context of Disney successfully folding in the FOX properties is finally in full effect. This is all well and good (except that Reed designates the MCU as universe 616 which anyone who knows anything knows that’s lazy bullshit and can fuck right off), but the real star of the show is director Sam Rami who finally gets to stretch his deadite chops in a movie unbound by physics and conventional rationale. With Sam at the helm Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness goes to dark places I never expected a Disney/Marvel film to go. Our hero’s ego tempts him to murder a child in order to save the world, Wanda murders with gloriously graphic violence (which looks best in 3D), and the coup de gras is the final battle where our Doctor Strange possesses the rotting corpse of his alternate universe counterpart to defeat the Scarlet Witch (look, the movie’s been out for a year and if this spoils it for you I am not to blame). Later in the film our Doctor Strange battles another evil Doctor Strange with musical notes in the closest the MCU’s going to get to blending Fantasia‘s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Night on Bald Mountain. Its a refreshingly creative twist on the stale superhero fight sequence and I want more of it. Please give Rami another chance to do more of these movies.

I find Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to be one of the most rewatchable post-Avengers: Endgame MCU films (As much as I loved Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 3 I don’t think I could handle seeing it again). It’s perfectly paced, packed with surprise (sorry) cameos, and pushes many characters to places we couldn’t have expected them to go. If I could indulge in a little criticism, the sequence where Wanda’s revealed as the big bad evil guy early in the picture is hamfisted hackery with all the subtlety of an 3rd grade reading level twist. Additionally requiring your audience to consume a complete TV miniseries to understand the villain’s plans in your stand-alone movie is weak storytelling at best and soulless vertical integration marketing at worse. Character motivation’s shouldn’t be relegated to editors notes and cross-selling. Be better Disney.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ends with the promise of more strange adventures to come and I for one couldn’t be happier about it. If you waited over a year to see Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness get your shit together and make it happen, preferably in 3D. Ya know, just come over to my house, I have a spare pair of glasses.