Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

I need to say a couple of things before I dive into the review proper. I’m far from a Marvel A/V Universe completist. I haven’t seen anything on Disney+, although I have an idea of broad plot outlines, and I haven’t seen all the movies either. From what I understand, and what I know of WandaVision that might make a huge difference to how you react to this film. I’ve also become increasingly disappointed with core MCU films (that formula is super restrictive in terms of the story structure, changing the character and retelling the same story doesn’t make it more interesting to me) and more and more a fan of those that hard core MCU fans dislike. Not necessarily uncritically, I thought Eternals needed to be a miniseries not a film for example, but overall I enjoyed it, where most MCU fans hated it. But I’m going to review based on my viewing experience. YMMV.

I’m going to start by saying contradictory things. This film, at 126 minutes, felt too long, certainly longer than The Northman which at 137 minutes is actually 11 minutes longer. I’d have been happy if they’d chopped one of the random barriers that occurred to make it 5-10 minutes shorter. At the same time, a number of the clashes felt oddly short. It was almost like they had written and shot a 15-rated version, then got told to pull it back to 12A. (I’m aware in the US they’d use different numbers but that’s the U.K. ratings I think in.) It made those scenes (not all of them, but enough to affect the overall tone) feel oddly flat, building to a climax that didn’t quite arrive. I realise this might have made the film longer, but it would have been more satisfying. But, of course, it restricts the market… can’t get in the way of the almighty bottom line!

While I’m moaning, we have America Chavez, who is the girl we see in the trailer. Sadly, she’s not a character, she’s a plot token. Without real spoilers, this movie is a hyper-glorified “protect the flag” game but Ms. Chavez never develops beyond being the flag into being a person. To divert into Dr. Who a moment, although I disliked what was done to Clara initially, The Impossible Girl was a token too, she became a character eventually (and Moffat had the sense to apologise). Between the script and the filming, that never happened here.

Ok, that’s enough of the bad, on to the good. Between Sam Raimi and his SFX people we have a lot of CGI but I felt happy with it. I don’t necessarily look at every frame for what little thing isn’t right, although I respect those that can, but in this film it felt to me that the CGI followed the plot rather than leading it, which is always good. It added to the story while making for some “Ooh, that’s cool/pretty” moments.

I need to say something about both both Benedicts (Wong and Cumberbatch) and Elizabeth Olsen too. These three, but particularly Cumberbatch and even more Olsen, do all the heavy lifting in this film. Cumberbatch is being lauded as one of the greats of his generation, so it’s no surprise he can do everything that’s asked of him here. Olsen I haven’t seen so much, but she’s not previously struck me as a heavyweight actor. I was impressed with what she did here, there were quite a lot of big action scenes to do, which require physicality over nuance - a skill you can be taught but still impressively handled - but a lot of finely nuanced emotional scenes that really needed to be balanced just so and I think she landed them all perfectly. I get she works with the director and they can retake the shots but the talent to actually do it, show it, still has to be there, and it seemed like a lot to ask of anyone. It makes me wonder how much I’ve seen her cast in films where she’s “the pretty blonde” and not really asked to do much more. Here, away from an ensemble (where the demands are understandably shared around), she really showed her chops. (I’m aware she might have in WandaVision too but, as I said above, I didn’t see that.)

The next big thing I want to talk about is the script. There are two things here, the first might seem trivial but was still nice to see. Almost everyone had a few mic-drop one-liners, as you expect in a Sam Raimi movie, but Elizabeth Olsen had so many it’s not true. It couldn’t possibly the case that the fan bois hate being called on the sexist bullshit that underpins most of their life could it? Because she absolutely does that a number of times and I almost literally had to stop myself cheering. But on a larger scale, they set up both a flawed hero and a “villain” who is operating in shades of grey. Without going into spoilers, they set up a premise that isn’t intrinsically appealing to me but still worked well enough (again YMMV). If presented with the choices given here I probably wouldn’t have made the same choices but I totally sympathise with and understand why they were made. It’s really refreshing, and unusual, in these movies, although we have seen it before in the MCU with the split between Captain America and his supporters and Iron Man and his in whichever movie that was. The script could have done more with the idea of travelling through the multiverse, potentially, but since I said it felt long already I don’t particularly mind this. Some of what they did wasn’t hugely original if you’ve read multiverse fiction (I’ve read some that dates back to the 60’s with very similar ideas, there’s probably older fiction too) but it’s still well woven into a satisfying story.

Finally, we have the cameos. Some are great. None are blink and you’ll miss it but, for me, they’re not particularly impactful. I’m not going to say the ones I did like, but I might write a spoiler review for that, but enough landed and added twists and fun that overall I felt it was a positive. It would have been hard to do a multiverse story without I guess but it could certainly have been worse.

Actually, really finally, we have two end credit scenes. One sets up Dr. Strange 3, the other is a silly call back and not really worth waiting for.

This is not a perfect movie, and as I understand it the fan bois have their knives out. Despite my reservations I did enjoy this. It’s one of those spectacular movies that if you’re going to watch it, you need to see on the big screen.

Bechdel Test: Pass. For a film with a male lead there are an amazing number of scenes that pass in fact. Lots of conversations between a variety of named female characters where they don’t mention men.

Ko Test: Pass. America, for one, is played by a WOC, and she speaks in a lot of scenes. There are a couple of other WOC in somewhat significant minor roles. I think one of them passes and one fails to meet the five scenes mark but they’re both close.

Russo Test: Pass. This is close. There are definitely a gay couple. America has two mums. The rest of the parts of the test are more borderline though. I’m saying it’s a pass because although their appearance is brief, it’s integral to America's origin story so it’s pretty important to the overall plot. I have been, and to a large extent continue to be, critical of super hero movies for not having any clear queer representation. But The Eternals did, this has, and the new Thor movie is meant to. Maybe the MCU is getting better.