Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: Full Review

No doubt, the hottest topic in the world of pop culture right now is none other than the latest entry to Marvel Cinematic Universe's Phase 4 Franchise, Dr Strange in The Multiverse of Madness. Having seen it this past weekend, I'm here to give a very detailed review of it.

The story is set after the events of Spiderman: No Way Home, and follows Dr Strange's encounter with America Chavez, a girl from another universe being chased down by demons for her powers of Multiversal travel, and the struggle of the forces of good to protect her from the antagonist, which is none other than The Scarlett Witch.

Getting into the review, we start of course with it's good aspects.

As to expect of a power-fantasy cinematic adaptation from the MCU, the production values were extraordinarily great. We're talking top quality visual flexes like never seen before in a comic book standalone hero film. Mind-bending colouful shades of luminescent visual effects dominate the scenery in it's portrayal of the distinct world structures of the different universes, also prominent during the innovative magic and sorcery displays, adding to the elegant cinematography, spectacular costume and set designs, Danny Elfman's soothingly haunting score and great acting from the entire cast to create an experience that's literally out of this world.

Sam Raimi, a director known for his masterful touch in the horror genre through unforgettable hits like the Evil Dead Trilogy and Drag Me to Hell, makes great use of the full creative control he was given, turning an expected magical fantasy film, into something that can be described as not exactly a horror film per se, but the most horror-inspired MCU film to ever be released till date.

For the most part his story was coherent, tense and filled with lots of excitement. The eccentric plot twists, dramatic tone shifts, jump scares and not to mention the brutality of the battles, pushes the bounds of a PG 13 to create a truly unique MCU film.

While this is a Dr Strange movie, I think it's pretty clear who stole the show in this film.

Wanda Maximoff was simply the perfect antagonist, and undoubtedly one of the best villains (if not the best) amongst all the villains so far on the MCU roster.

The Disney+ Tvshow Wandavision served as great foreshadowing to her drift to the dark side after siding with the heroes in Marvel's previous phase of the MCU, facing intense grief and misery and getting the revelation of her true identity through her acquisition of the "Darkhold" and evolving into a magical being of absolute power known as The Scarlett Witch.

Elizabeth Olsen brings a breathtakingly good performance in portraying such a diabolical and overpowered antagonist. 

Wanda's overwhelming display of power and supremacy through her insane spells makes it perfectly clear how high the stakes are for our heroes, and brings forth that horrific tension that truly elevates this film.

Wanda was truly the highlight of this film.

Also acknowledging the performance of the rest of the cast, Benedict Cumberbatch once again displayed his proficiency in portraying the Master of the Dark Arts, Xochiti Gomez brings an energetic performance as 'America Chavez', and the rest of the supporting cast also did their jobs really well.

All that being said, the movie wasn't perfect. Not even close actually, as it did have more than a few shortcomings in terms of the way the story and events actually played out.

It's at this point I'll advise anyone who hasn't seen the film to leave until they're done to avoid spoilers, as I'm about to go indepth into naming the scenes and developments that just didn't hit the spot in this film.

I've read a bunch of reviews on this film, and some of the negative ones seem to describe the plot as an "absolute mess" and call it "one of the worst Marvel projects so far".

But these reviews are really wrong. Dr Strange in The Multiverse of Madness isn't one of the worst in the Marvel franchise, it's certainly far better than high grade trash like Eternals and Thor: Dark World, but it was hindered from being truly peak due to Sam Raimi's over-ambitousness in creating something unique, ending up being a double edged sword and ruining a few important factors.

The plot isn't an absolute mess, like I said previously, for the most part it's coherent and great, but there are a few moments where the tone shifts were just too abrupt.

This is probably evident of the abundance of reshoots this project had to endure. But this is only a minor gripe I had with this film, given that it is a horrific take on comic fiction, so I get how hard it is to nail the mood and buildup at every point perfectly.

One of the major problems I had with the film was the lacklustre character development of America Chavez.

Even though she was given the typical MCU introduction and characterization of being fun and playful, for someone that vital to the story, she was given almost no development. In fact, I could even say that throughout this film I wasn't scared for her life at all. Even in the intense scenes where she nearly died, I was more concerned about Wanda gaining that power and the calamities that would follow for the heroes afterwards and not even a second worried that such an important character could die. 

This is because the movie didn't let me care about her at all. Characterization is about more than just making characters fun and powerful, it's about making us find worth in them as elements of the narrative, and given the fact that she's part of Phase 4 now and this is about as close we're ever gonna get to seeing an origin story of her, this movie didn't do that at all.

She was basically no different from a magic item the antagonist sought for absolute power, almost about as much worth as an infinity stone.

The scene were Strange after a motivational speech makes her suddenly able to master her powers was a stinger to me. Steven uses the words "Everywhere you've taken us this far is where we've needed to be" to convince her she's already mastered her ability.

Well, except Chavez has some sort of multidimensional foresight, there's no possible way she'd have known they'd survive any of the world's they visited and emerged successful.

In fact, none of the worlds they visited made things any easy. In Earth 616 they got arrested, faced the scorn of The Illuminati and almost got killed facing The Scarlett Witch, not to mention losing the 'Book of Vishanti' they came seeking.

In the second world they visited they faced a darker Dr Strange corrupted by the Darkhold.

If she really had subconscious control over her ability to that sense, wouldn't it have made more sense to take them to a world where Strange was still alive an in full control to help them in the first place?.

How would someone who holds no knowledge about the mythical world or the new universes she visits know any of this anyways?.

That Pep talk made no sense and Chavez getting immediate control of her ability afterwards was one of the few scenes of make believe that got me mad in this film.

Actually, there were a bunch of basic wish-fulfillment scenes in this film that broke the horrific tension for hollow fan service moments.

Another one that comes to mind was yet another pep talk scene where Earth 838's Christine Palmer tells Dr Strange who was using the power of the Darkhold to 'dreamwalk' through a dead doppelganger while being troubled by the 'souls of the damned', in her words "You are the master of the dark arts, use them". Strange immediately gains control of the souls and uses them in a display of magic. The thing to note here is that Strange may have been a master sorcerer but he had never done any magic spell even close to Necromancy of that nature. One could say he gained that ability using the Darkhold but it was plainly stupid and impossible for Christine, a scientist with no mystical knowledge whatsover to be the one to enlighten him of his ability to do so.

There were more intuitive ways of handling such a scene, and Christine's unnatural confidence and Steven's sudden outburst of new ability in compliance to it that makes that scene truly a low point of this film.

The entire section of the film in the post-apocalyptic world took the movie to a low point for me. Particularly how Christine was being pushed to being a valid character.

I'm not here to criticize the tropes, so I won't even mention Christine's close shave where she picks up a magic item she's never seen before and uses it to kill(?) the souls of the damned that almost killed her, but the all-powerful and heroic Dr Strange asking an unarmed, powerless scientist and someone he cares about that's literally in a world she doesn't know to protect his body from the souls of the damned while he dreamwalks is not only out of place for a hero, but completely out of character for him. How did he even expect her to defend herself and him from supernatural beings?. This is just another one of the unreasonable scenes that could've been better handled but we tend to overlook it to move to the more tense parts of the plot.

The scene where Strange, even with the Eye of Agamoto struggled to open the lock his Earth-838 variant constructed for the book of Vishanti and the mystery unexpectedly gets solved when the almighty Christine figures it out and hands him the watch that opens the door was another huge blow to cinematic logic.

It's not unreasonable for such complexity to be solved by a side character, but a simple dialogue afterwards as to how she knew the watch would open it, or how she knew to bring the watch or perhaps Strange being the one to figure out what he would use as a lock and ask for it would've helped that scene make actual sense, but again was just rushed through to further the plot.

From then on, with the other scenes I listed, it felt like a desperate attempt to push a passive character (Christine) into relevance in the story.

The Love Confession in the end added to this but I can give it a pass as a showing of Steven facing his unresolved romantic feelings for the Christine he knows.

Another major problem I had with it was the dialogue between Dr Strange and his darker self, or at least the start of it.

Strange trying to use a traumatic event from his past to convince a variant of himself from another world of his identity.

If there's anything we know about the multiverse, not only the one introduced via Spider-Man No Way Home, but in general, it's that the lives of variants of oneself can take any shape and form, even their past and upbringings. How unorthodox is it for the two variants to be so relatable and for Earth 616 Strange to know they both share the same trauma of their sister's death?. It makes the MCU's Multiverse seem like a very unilateral one in terms of storytelling.

Other scenes that I'm not gonna even elaborate how problematic they are include, Captain Marvel being killed by a Statue and Earth 818's Wanda after being shown to be locked away in her own mind during possession by The Scarlett Witch, immediately using magic and getting herself back home after re-gaining consciousness in an unknown dimension.

Now we move on to my final and most surprising problem with the film; How it ended. 

This issue is really shocking to me because until now, I couldn't even imagine a great ending being sabotaged by the end credits scene.

Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness had it's flaws, but I was still willing to leave the theatre happy after witnessing it's perfect cliffhanger ending.

Strange after using the Darkhold, known to corrupt whomever uses it gets the naive idea that he was gonna be okay after all that, but suddenly gets shocked when his head starts spiralling out of control leading to a third eye appearing on his forehead in the same fashion as his dead darker self from post-apocalypse world.

Such a chaotic and shocking ending was perfect because it'll leave fans stunned as to what calamities to expect from this new development in Strange's life and how he'd be able to manage it in a future movie.

However, in the end credits scene, Charlize Theron finally makes her debut in the MCU as the comical love Interest of Dr Strange 'Clea' who summons Strange to the Dark Dimension, and he switches to his magic attire and seems to be completely normal while having the third eye.

This ruined and undid any form of tension or long-standing effect the previous cliffhanger ending brought upon me. 

It basically made any form of chaotic expectations towards that particular plotline invalid and established a huge gap between Strange gaining that third eye and gaining full control of it. The final end credits scene that could've made things better was completely useless, so I feel leaving the cinema angry was a bit justified on my part.

With all the flawed scenes I mentioned existing, I'm sure Ryan George is gonna have a great time making a 'Pitch Meeting' video for this film on ScreenRant (YouTube Page).

Anyways, even with everything I've said, I will admit that this movie has more positive aspects than negative.

For the most part it was actually pretty amazing. 

This film is top tier in terms of entertainment value. The montage of Strange and Chavez collapsing into several universes of varying structural architypes is pretty much the most visually stunning sequence this year, and Raimi's masterful use of 'Bait and Switch' made this film truly shocking and extraordinary.

I had no major problems with overall plot setting and direction, and even though out of anger for the sabotage of the tense ending I gave it a 6/10, I think it's more deserving of a 7/10.

But hell, my 2nd watch made me appreciate the creative freedom displayed in this film by Raimi a lot more,  I really loved it, and for the love of Wanda, I'm bumping my rating up to a 7.5/10.

I'm using this article as a tribute to the biggest MCU fan I ever knew, one of the biggest supporters of this site and one of my best friends from afar, Julius a.k.a. Tu Jays, who died after an accident on April 27th of this year.

It's a sad thing you didn't live to see your most anticipated film, but I'm sure if you did, you'd absolutely have loved it.

Rest in Peace brother, You'll forever be loved.

It's been a long review and I'm sure you all have a lot to say.

Leave your comments down below, share to your friends and stay tuned for my next pop culture review.

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