Cinema Sunday: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

 

Welcome to another edition of Cinema Sunday where I post about movies I've seen.

This week's post takes us out of the Fortress of Ineptitude into an movie theater where me and the fam went to see  Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. 

We all did not go with the same level of enthusiasm. 

As my daughter Randie said as we approached the theater, "Well, let's get this over with." 

There is an almost sense of obligation to see a Marvel movie if you want to catch up on what happens next and be ready for what's going to happen next, it is almost de rigueur to see whatever Marvel has going on this week.

I was slightly more enthusiastic than Randie to see Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness thought the operative word there is "slightly". 

I do get where Randie is coming from.  

It is possible to not watch Marvel stuff. I didn't see Eternals and I'm doing just fine. I missed Moon Knight on Disney+ with no ill effects.  I think I can manage.  

But yeah, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a must see not so much for the movie itself but for all the branching plot lines from various Marvel things that threaten to converge.

The multi-verse shit unleashed at the end of Loki? Yeah, that's a problem. 

Wanda Maximoff's Scarlet Witch persona perusing the Darkhold at the end of WandaVision to get back her two kids? Yeah, that's a problem. 

The other multi-verse shit unleashed during the course of Spider-Man: No Way Home? Yeah, that's a problem. 

All those problems lands on Doctor Strange's doorstep when Starro the Conqueror a big one eyed tentacle monster demon crashes into New York City in pursuit of America Chavez.  

America Chavez has the power to travel across the multi-verse and a big bad is sending big one eyed tentacle monster demons to capture her and take that power from her. 

Dr. Strange agrees to protect America Chavez but figures he could use some help so he pays a visit to Wanda Maximoff. 

Oh shit! She's the big bad! 

After a big epic battle where Wanda makes a bunch of sorcerers in training at Kamar-Taj dead, very dead and deader than dead, America zaps herself and Doctor Strange to Earth 838. 

Dr. Strange meets Earth-838's Sorcerer Supreme, Karl Mordo, , Captain Peggy Carter (Haley Atwell making her live action debut of the character we met in the animated What If..? series), King Blackagar Boltagon (Paul Mounts is back as Black Bolt from the infamously bad Inhumans series on ABC), Captain Maria Rambeau, Doctor Reed Richards (of the Fantastic Four) and Professor Charles Xavier (yep, that voice is real and it is Sir Patrick Stewart his own damn self!). This group serves as the super secret Illuminati of their Earth and they see this interloping Doctor Strange as a threat.

Meanwhile the Scarlet Witch is chewing up scenery and spitting out what's left of her sanity. Wanda makes short and very gruesome work of this Illuminati.  

Doctor Strange has a plan. It involves using the Darkhold himself and putting his soul into the dead body of a Doctor Strange and no, it is not a very good plan but damn it, he has to save America Chavez from the Scarlet Witch. 

No, not a very good plan but it works and America Chavez has an epiphany on how to stop Wanda and that is to give her what she wants.

America punches her way through the multi-verse where Wanda's kids are but they have their own Wanda and are scared as shit of this scarlet hued mad woman claiming to be their mommy. 

Wanda realizes she can never win.  She destroys all copies of the Darkhold and herself apparently in the process.  

All's well that ends well, I guess?

At the movie's end, Doctor Strange is enjoying a nice stroll down a New York City street when suddenly he convulses in pain.

There's a third eye in his forehead. 

That's what he gets for fucking with the Darkhold and walking around in a zombie body.  

OK, that's not nearly everything. There's stuff going down with Wong (who after Strange got dusted by the Thanos snap became Sorcerer Supreme), a big epic throwdown on Mount Wundagore, Doctor Strange's ex Christine and different multi-verse versions of Doctor Strange.

How many different ways can Benedict Cumberbatch make Doctor Strange a total dick? Let's find out.

One might argue this movie is a bit of a mess and yeah there is a lot of chaotic energy as events bounce from one universe to another to another but there is a method in the multiverse of madness. The dead Stephen Strange in act one gives our Stephen Strange a zombie to work with in the final showdown with Wanda.  

Visually, the movie is feast of fantastic imagery, bringing the bizarre designs of Steve Dikto and Frank Brunner from the comics to life on the big screen. 

The violence is a bit much, especially the horror show of Wanda decimating the Illuminati in various gruesome ways such as unravelling Reed Richards, causing Black Bolt's skull to explode and bisecting Captain Carter with her own shield? Ewww! 

It seems the graphic violence skirts awfully close to an R rating. Well, this is what you get when you let Sam Raimi have the director's chair. This is not the Sam Raimi of the original Spider-Man trilogy but the director who made his rep for trippy horror visuals in the Evil Dead series.  

And speaking of Sam Raimi...

The "It's That Person Who Was In That Thing" Department

Since there must be a law that Bruce Campbell has to at least have a cameo in a Sam Raimi movie, Campbell makes his appearance here as food cart operator who Strange zaps with a spell to make him punch himself over and over. 

To see what happens when the spell finally wears off, sit through the credits. All of the credits. 

Back to the movie...

I suppose I am most bothered by the movie mining a trope that us comic book fans know has been repeatedly mined in the comics: Wanda Maximoff gets TOO powerful and gets TOO crazy and must be stopped at all costs. 

Seeing Wanda's Scarlet Witch persona pouring over the Darkhold at the end of WandaVision, we understood that Wanda was still fractured and damaged by her trauma. I had hoped that her appearance in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness would be as a flawed but still beneficial fellow protagonist to Stephen Strange. It was more than a bit disappointing to see that no, she's going to be the villain.

And she's the villain because her stolen mommyhood made her go crazy. 

I should note we saw this on Mother's Day so....

Happy Mother's Day, Andrea! 

But even if it's new ground to movie goers who don't know the comic back story, it's still a distressing direction for Marvel to once more have a super powerful female character and not know what to do with her but make her a villain.

Case in point: Jean Grey of the X-Men in both the comics and the movies. Jean obtains cosmic levels of power as Phoenix and ultimately goes crazy, destroys shit and kills people.  

Not in the movies but in the comics, Sue Richards of the Fantastic Four got a serious powerup grade and went crazy.  

Marvel does not know what to do with a powerful woman other than make her a villain and not just a villain but a crazy villain.

Makes you wonder what the hell's gonna happen next with Captain Marvel. 

Whatever misgivings I have about the latest direction for Wanda Maximoff, Elizabeth Olsen does get some major scene gnashing as leans hard into her wicked Scarlet Witch persona.  

And Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange is a dick but mostly charming about it. 

So assignment "Go see Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" is complete.  Class, please sign your papers and pass them to the front of class. There will be a test. 

Next up, class, is Thor: Love and Thunder.