Movie Review: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

_{[All the images in this post are from this website.]}

Sam Raimi – one of the well known producers of strange things and more or less fantastic settings, ranging from the classic of the horror genre The Evil Dead to adventures in Hercules series, to sci-fi action flick Timecop to strong female lead in action in Xena: The Warrior Princess. The past, the dead, the supernatural. Superheroes too. The latter however not being my element when it comes to cinema. But exceptions are bound to occur, and when I saw the news about the new Doctor Strange movie being directed by Sam Raimi, I knew I’m going to be watching that one.

I myself have little interest in blockbusters that deal with Marvel universe, Doctor Strange being an exception. Benedict Cumberbatch is, in my opinion, an exceptionally good fit for the character. The duo of him and Tilda Swinton in the original Doctor Strange movie was a pleasure to watch; from an introduction to astral projection to discussing some dark secrets, one could not only connect to both characters, but also love the connection that was there between them throughout the film. Magic all around.

_{Photo credits: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Marvel Studios/Courtesy Everett Collection}

I was delighted to see that all things magic are back with full force in the sequel. At the same time, it became clear soon enough that, unlike the original film, this one is going to feature more cgi. That was already one reason why I knew this is not going to be better than the original. I loved the cgi that played with Cartesian geometry of shapes in the original film. Here however most of that art had been lost – disregarding occasional spell casting, the only instance that reminds of that geometry is where this film’s antagonist is trapped in a surreal room with reflections. Other than that, everything is lavishly filled with the usual over-the-top animation, well known to Marvel blockbuster audience. A bit off-putting for someone like me, even though I have to admit – I didn’t have any high hopes regarding this sequel anyway.

Now onto the part that was most important to me: the characters, their stories and how those unfolded. First of all, I liked the fact Benedict Wong is back. You know, there has to be Wong to remind Stephen Strange every now and then that our Doctor is not that perfect as he likes to think of himself. And there has to be Wong whom Stephen Strange can at times remind that not everything always happens as Wong thinks it should. Friendships sometimes work like that and it’s fun to watch all that through the fourth wall we are privileged to be aware of, and recognize as such.

_{Xochitl Gomez, Benedict Wong and Benedict Cumberbatch in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Photo credits: Jay Maidment/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Marvel Studios/Courtesy Everett Collection}

But Wong doesn’t make up for the absence of The Ancient One, which, I think, Elizabeth Olsen’s character was, at least partly, supposed to match in this sequel. All would have been well where one could appreciate the fullness and beauty of nature that the experience of being in blooming orchard in Spring can bring while looking forward to the next marvelous scene, and... The next scene is a computer cartoon... :( Apparently, the way of showing a desperate woman’s ardent dream coming true is by using a rich cgi. Not that I was particularly surprised because it’s a Marvel blockbuster after all, but it did feel like a couple of the plot themes chosen for this sequel are a bad match for the relatively superficial glamor of computer animation because it deprives that ardent dream of the darkness in human soul, which the entertaining cgi of consumer culture in blockbusters would never be able to cover.
Regarding all this however I would like to mention something where Elizabeth Olsen on screen surprised me, namely, the scene where our antagonist hears the word “mom!” for the first time. In that blink the actress makes, she has somehow achieved a convergence of animation and motion picture. It’s baffling. In the age of deepfakes one can’t be certain of whether something like that is also a result of the use of cgi, or the actress really has mastered such a skill. One might wonder why does it matter so much, to which I’d say that it doesn’t really; it’s just the fact that I’ve not noticed a convergence like that in a feature film before, thus it’s worth a separate note imo.

Back to the characters and their relationships. There is an interesting bond between our Doctor and the black magick woman in this new movie. Not all that often one comes across a story where the clarity of the line between the protagonist and antagonist constantly gets mind boggling and difficult to discern. This aspect was, in my opinion, the best part about the multiverse of madness. It’s about how things can’t be just black or white all the time. And dreams... Why do we sometimes have dreams that have us believe that us striving to manifest them into reality is worth people’s lives? This was one of the questions I was left with after watching Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

In that same multiverse apparently protagonists and antagonists can sometimes meet each other and find out that sadness is what they have in common. Sadness typically isn’t a sign of being content with the state of how things are. That’s where dreams come into play – they tend to remind us what is that we want. You only can run that far from yourself. So what does one do? The question, which, seen in this context, is something countless books deal with, written throughout the history of the written word. Doctor Strange and Wanda Maximoff in the multiverse of madness still being human beings are no exceptions to dealing with that eternal problem.

The cause of Stephen Strange’s sadness is far less significant than that of Wanda’s. The significance is proportional to the extreme lengths she is prepared to go to make her dream manifest into reality. Thus we get a character named America Chavez (played by Xochitl Gomez) finding itself in the midst of all the turmoil that comes with people wanting to control all that reality, including all the multiverse their consciousness is aware of.

America, much like The Keymaker in The Matrix Reloaded, is there and can do things without knowing how and why, and people like that sometimes tend to be drawn into tumultuous goings-on because obviously they are useful. Moreover, there is a sadness in America’s story too. Thus in this movie sadness attracts other sadness. Sadness in general doesn’t feel very fair most of time, and makes people do unfair things to others, which is one of the main topics this film deals with. It is only all too regrettable that it’s all set in the Marvel universe, where superheroes have to be brought in to try and make it all more commercially successful; and all that, I’d dare to say, at the expense of the quality of the plot. After watching the movie one could only entertain oneself by pondering how much better it would have been if the movie had settled for the same limits and conditions as the original Doctor Strange film, forgetting that it’s supposed to be set in Marvel universe, and remembering that there actually was a thing called astral projection Dr. Stephen Strange was able to master.

Peer Ynt

_{Photo credits: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Marvel Studios/Courtesy Everett Collection}