Director: Raimi himself. Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olson, Chivetel Eggiofor, Socitl Gomez, Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, Michael Stulbarg. 12A, 126 minutes.
I have always believed that the appeal of the multiverse lies in its endless possibilities. Imagine that the only limit to existence is the breadth of our own imagination – that everything we could call out could be somewhere, born into existence in an alternate universe. Well, thank you, Marvel, for showing me how wrong I was. It turns out that the goal of the multiverse and of Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is not in its creative potential. These are her cameos. There can be a million universes, and they will all contain surprising performances of people and things that fans can shout and shout about before being bought as toys on the way out of the cinema.
Dr. Strange in the multiverse of madness is essentially Spider-Man: No Way Home minus all the pink nostalgia and charismatic machine for one man who is Andrew Garfield. Plus, there’s not a gram of fun with his central arrogance that made Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 2018, except for a single sequence in which the magically gifted Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) turns out to be rolling through portal after portal, universe after universe. There is one that is still ruled by dinosaurs. One where people are made up of splashes of paint. Another that is entirely two-dimensional. The audience may wave to them as they pass before Strange returns to the same street in New York with a little extra CGI in the background.
Any opportunity to really put “madness” into this multiverse is marred by the crowded, intersecting desires of its three main characters. Strange, who has already smashed the multiverse once in No Way Home, is still dealing with the same struggles he has been fighting since his 2016 solo film – weighing personal responsibility and personal risk. Meanwhile, Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olson) has completely become the deliberate and tragic figure of “Scarlet Witch”, which she found in last year’s limited series WandaVision, which aired on Disney + (yes, if you haven’t kept up with the TV shows, this movie does not to give you no mercy). She will stop at nothing to reunite with the two sons she created with the power of her mind.
A brand new character, America Chavez (the likeable Xochitl Gomez), also randomly dropped out of the portal. As we soon discover, it tends to traverse universes when subjected to coercion.
The film begins with heavy exposure, but then begins to warp more and more under the weight of his vast knowledge and magical MacGuffins. There are two very important spell books – one good, one bad – and a comprehensive series of weapons, names, legends and committees. But it’s hard to find much joy in this level of building the world when Multiverse of Madness is dominated by two hectic, chaotic feelings: watching MCU head Kevin Feigi try to lay the groundwork for the next phase in his plans for the big franchise and at the same time trying to tie the loose ends of what came before.
But these are structural freedoms, not emotional ones. While screenwriter Michael Waldron uses the delicate work of the characters in his recent MCU TV series Loki – starring Tom Hiddleston – here he is actually a construction worker who mechanically invents how this person can connect with this person instead of allowing individual fears and desires to lead the main roles of the film. Strange, for example, still longs for Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams), although her character has virtually left the face of the planet after his solo film. And not in the literal way, snapped by Thanos.
With Jane Foster’s rerun of Natalie Portman in the upcoming Thor: Love and Thunder, it really seems to be part of Marvel’s apologetic tour “I’m sorry we forgot about all women’s love interests.” But it’s hard to build on a relationship that wasn’t ultimately central to Strange. After all, he is a man who is still struggling with the fact that he helped temporarily destroy half of his life in order to ultimately save the universe.
Rachel McAdams, Benedict Cumberbatch and Xochitl Gomez in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”
(Marvel Studios)
Yet the biggest victim of the machinations of Multiverse of Madness is Wanda of Olson. A side character who spends most of her time on screen, not only unhappily, but finally given depth and emotional richness in WandaVision, only for Multiverse to reduce it to the only character trait of WandaVision. “Desperate mother”.
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It embodies the strange assumption that the MCU was repeatedly guilty of creation – that if we were given a single opportunity to connect with a hero, only this built-in attachment would be enough to transport us through every future contractual appearance. And this is a special shame for Olsen herself. Remarkably, she still presents the harshest and most honest performance possible while floating in front of a green screen, repeating the same variation of “I’m not a monster, I’m a mother” to the point of nausea.
With all this in mind, hiring Sam Raimi seems almost like a distraction – clever, but still a distraction. Multiverse of Madness gives us what many MCU fans demand: first, a little real blood, blood and violence, even if it’s delivered in the most family-friendly way possible. Second, a little more brightness and color. Raimi is the perfect director to perform both. Raimi, who we know from the Evil Dead and Drag Me to Hell trilogy, brings us cut-out eyeballs, resurrected spirits, and shaky, demonic camera angles. Raimi, who directed the original Spider-Man trilogy, offers us a handful of series that look like they’ve been ripped from the pages of a comic book. They enjoy the genuinely crazy heroism of pure-hearted superheroes.
But The Multiverse of Madness is inevitably Reimi’s only aesthetic film – a bit like if you pampered a sewer rat, threw a pink bow at his head and sold him as a chihuahua.
“Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” has been in theaters in the UK since May 5
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