Director: Sam Raimi
Writer: Michael Waldron
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen, Rachel McAdams, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Xochitl Gomez
When Doctor Strange meets America Chavez, a girl who is being hunted for her unique ability to travel through the multiverse, he steps in to help America survive. Facing a threat too great to handle alone, Strange turns to Wong and Wanda for their assistance, but soon discovers that the danger comes from an unexpected – and extremely powerful – source. Plunged into the multiverse, Strange is pitted against all sorts of surprises as he attempts to protect not just America, but the state of the multiverse too.
It’s a storm that’s been brewing for a long time. Threads from 2021’s WandaVision, What If…?, Loki, and Spider-Man: No Way Home, plus as far back as Avengers: Endgame (2019) and the original Doctor Strange (2016) have all led here, to one of the most thrilling adventures of the MCU yet.
Multiverse of Madness cold opens in the midst of the action, with Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and newcomer America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) running for their lives in another dimension. From there, the crazy events don’t stop. The two hours pass in the blink of an eye as the film leaps from one big, exciting moment to the next. You don’t go into a film called Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness expecting a slow ride, and the movie certainly doesn’t disappoint; it’s a veritable cinematic supernova, bursting with the weird and the wonderful and the wild.
Sam Raimi appears to have been given free rein to go full Sam Raimi on the film, and he didn’t sleep on the opportunity. Multiverse of Madness marks something of a comeback to mega-budget cinema for the director of the original Spider-Man movies, and it was a return worth waiting for. Raimi unleashes his full potential; there’s plenty of trippy camera twists and turns, and the director of The Evil Dead even dips back into the horror handbook to pull out a number of jump scares and inject a good dose of creepiness into the plot. When all mixed together with the magic and the sci-fi elements, it makes for a bold, hectic, action adventure film that manages to remain exciting for every minute of its run time.
America Chavez has the power to blast open portals through the multiverse, so all bets are off; anything is possible. America and Strange jump between universes, confronting demons, monsters, villains, and the rules of alternate worlds as they fight just to remain alive. It’s a circus of epic battles, full of magic duels that are fierce and whimsical in equal measure; there’s everything from energy blasts, to sorcerous sling-ringing, to a truly stunning duel made up of weaponised musical notes.
Thankfully the film doesn’t get lost in its own extravagance. The cast hold down the fort, tethering all the chaos back to matters of heart and humanity. Cumberbatch and Olsen are really given the chance to stretch their acting chops; Strange’s arc sees the sorcerer reckon with his past choices, whilst Elizabeth Olsen is once again a stand-out, giving a gutsy performance as Wanda battles a full spectrum of tangled emotions. Xochitl Gomez shows great promise for the future; America Chavez is primed to be a powerful new addition to the MCU’s catalog of superheroes. However, while this film served as an explosive introduction for her character, it would have been great to see America get the chance to do a little more herself; she does spend rather a lot of her time running and yelling and being captured.
Steeped in so much lore, newcomers might be slightly baffled by some of the finer points of the plot, but there’s plenty to be enjoyed even for a casual viewer; anyone who likes action won’t want to look away from the screen. Marvel fans will find plenty to love in all the cameos, references, and meta jokes that made their way into the script.
Marvel certainly brought the razzle and dazzle with Multiverse of Madness. One crazy, chaotic, magical ride from start to finish, it’s a distinctly Sam Raimi film through and through. As every Marvel fan will have hoped, the latest instalment in the MCU lives up to its name; Multiverse of Madness is truly an example of Marvel at its most marvellous, and its most mad.
The movie should have been titled: World War Wanda and Her Mulitverse of Madness. The storyline borrows a bit from Hulk’s, World War Hulk, which was a much better story, and more accurate from a power level standpoint in regards to Super Hero abilities and powers. Scarlet Witch is way overpowered in this movie, and Captain Marvel, which withstood a headbutt from Cosmic Thanos in Endgame, is defeated by a statue in this movie. It appears Marvel is being anything but consistent in their recent movies, as Marvel is beginning to look like Pro Wrestling in it’s deliverance of established characters.
Hulk fans, Thor fans, and even Dr. Strange Fans, know very well, that their favorite characters are being purposely diminished, to make way for the long Marvel/Disney tracks, of the PC train.