Multiverse of Madness

2022 - 5 - 3

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Image courtesy of "Den of Geek"

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Review (Den of Geek)

Director Sam Raimi returns to Marvel for the mind-melting Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, one of the weirdest and most ambitious MCU entries of ...

Gomez, who’s got appealing screen presence and fits the part, is too often reduced to the role of exposition machine in the course of the film’s events, and her performance suffers for it. Elfman’s score also adds a great deal to the sense of disorientation, mixing grandiose strings with discordant single notes on the piano, and even the occasional screeching guitar. It’s Wanda’s search for her two sons, directly following up the events of 2021’s WandaVision TV series, that makes it fortuitous when she crosses paths with America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), a young woman who seems to be the only person in existence with the ability to travel between universes. Yet it’s also very much in line with Raimi’s ability to empathize with even the most lost souls in all his movies, a part of the director’s toolbox that’s supported by Michael Waldron’s zigzagging yet heartfelt script. It’s also very much a Sam Raimi movie, and perhaps the most singularly identifiable vision of an MCU director since James Gunn sprang Guardians of the Galaxy on us nearly eight years ago. Directed by Sam Raimi, who is making his first Marvel movie and first superhero outing since completing his pre-MCU webslinging trilogy in 2007 with Spider-Man 3, Multiverse of Madness lives up to its title in all sorts of ways.

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Image courtesy of "Roger Ebert"

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness movie review (2022 ... (Roger Ebert)

There have been complaints about MCU properties that feel like they exist merely to get people interested in the next movie or TV show, but it's never felt ...

By the time that “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” was pulling out the universe-bending scenes that will probably be spoiled by Friday afternoon, I started to wonder if there’s a breaking point to these CGI orgies that serve so many other properties they forget to be interesting on their own. It’s sad to see her and the character take a step back instead of exploring the ideas in the show that bore her name. It’s got a plot that could have creatively surprised viewers over and over with new variations on the very concept of a world with heroes in it and a director willing to go there. It’s very much a sequel to “WandaVision,” the show that expanded the Marvel Cinematic Universe into television. Think about how many properties are being sequel-ed in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” It’s a sequel to “ Doctor Strange,” although just barely in that you probably need to have seen that film less than the Strange adventures that followed. It’s a sequel to “ Avengers: Endgame” and “ Spider-Man: No Way Home” in that it references action in both films and extrapolates somewhat on the universe-saving decision that the title character made in the former.

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Image courtesy of "Vanity Fair"

Sam Raimi Giddily Drags Doctor Strange Into His 'Multiverse of ... (Vanity Fair)

The Spider-Man director adds some much needed flair to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Raimi runs right toward that madcap future, keeping Multiverse of Madness silly and loose and less concerned with the maintenance of careful branding. In Multiverse of Madness, the death of an entire universe, trillions of souls, is alluded to. Mortal stakes are much harder to render when there’s a very similar version of the same person—or alien, or god, or whoever—lurking just one croissant-layer of spacetime away. It’s a clever, kicky subversion of fan-service expectations, suggesting for a scene or two that the movie has a more developed vision of how to please, and surprise, an audience. The opening act of the film is hurried and featureless, the Marvel tank low on gas and Raimi seemingly stymied by the difficulty of taking the reins of a world so long after its genesis. Of course, now that we’re dealing with the multiverse, any of those characters could come back in a future film.

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Image courtesy of "The Verge"

Doctor Strange 2 review: The Multiverse of Madness is a gorgeous ... (The Verge)

MostMost of Marvel Studios' movies are meant to be at least somewhat accessible regardless of how much familiarity one has with the larger MCU or the comics ...

Unlike No Way Home, though, where the multiverse was framed as being more like part of the landscape its heroes had to navigate, Multiverse of Madness treats the concept like a plot device meant to move its story forward. It’s important to note that despite its Marvel-esque stylistic sensibilities, Multiverse of Madness is also very much a Sam Raimi film in which the director’s unmistakable personal tastes rush to the forefront in moments that feel like Marvel gave him the clear to get really wild and into his specific brand of messed up. Rather, it’s another very big, very expensive superhero movie in which a spooky and sometimes genuinely alarming filter is applied with varying degrees of success. Stephen Strange’s comics accurate assholery returns in Multiverse of Madness, both as a reminder of what kind of haughty jerk he’s always been and as a crystallization of how alienating his life as a superhero is. Multiverse of Madness does not truly get rolling until America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) unintentionally crash-lands in Strange’s home universe while being chased by a demonic creature from one of Strange’s nightmares. To a certain extent, this is also true of director Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, a crossover event-style film that goes all-in on the concept of alternate universes.

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Image courtesy of "Polygon"

Doctor Strange 2 review: spoiler-free thoughts on a multiverse of ... (Polygon)

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness brings back Benedict Cumberbatch as Stephen Strange and tries to sell him as a lead character, but he's mostly a ...

As an answer, all that Multiverse of Madness has to offer is the second button the MCU has worn down to a nub: Tune in next time! Eventually, though, Multiverse of Madness has to leave the realm of endless parallel earths and return to its titular wizard. But strip away all the sparks, and Multiverse of Madness is simply leaning on the same cross-referential thrill-of-recognition joy-button that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been frantically pressing for more than a decade now, designed to elicit huge gasps from die-hard fans, while sending everyone else to the Google search bar on their phones. In the DC and Marvel settings, the multiverse springs from the simultaneously capitalistic and nostalgic desire to preserve all versions of the characters that fans love, holding them fast against the ravages of time, editorial mandate, plot hole, and paradox. The real hero in Multiverse of Madness isn’t a person; it’s the visuals — particularly the way Raimi and his team depict mind-rending magical abilities, ones that obey no wands or Harry Potter-like pig-Latin incantations. In the hallowed halls of Marvel Comics, Dr. Stephen Strange is a much more consistent visitor in other heroes’ stories than a star in his own.

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Image courtesy of "Rotten Tomatoes"

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness First Reviews: The ... (Rotten Tomatoes)

Critics say Elizabeth Olsen steals the show and Sam Raimi reaches back into his horror bag to deliver a visually spectacular, surprisingly violent entry in ...

–Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist –Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist –Michelle Kisner, The Movie Sleuth –Brittany Murphy, Muses of Media On an emotional level, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness leaves a lot to be desired. –Don Kaye, Den of Geek One of the biggest highlights of the film is easily Gomez’s star-making turn… [but it’s] much better than the shallow fan service of Spider-Man: No Way Home. –Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist This is the first MCU movie in which many of the shots have legible fingerprints on them. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has more twists than a bag of pretzels… Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is unlike any Marvel movie you have ever seen… According to the first reviews of the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe installment, the Doctor Strange sequel is darker, weirder, and more surprising than most of the movies in the franchise.

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Image courtesy of "TIME"

<i>Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness</i> Is Extravagant ... (TIME)

The new Doctor Strange movie, directed by Sam Raimi and starring Benedict Cumberbatch, is moderately entertaining, if predictably excessive.

That’s not the chief preoccupation of Doctor Strange in The Multiverse of Madness, but it sets the stage for the movie’s best scenes, the ones in which Cumberbatch and McAdams, both charming and perceptive performers, get to interact with one another as human beings rather than as place markers in front of a green screen. The studio behind Doctor Strange in the Multiverse, Disney, has strongly cautioned those writing about the film against “revealing spoilers, cameos, character developments and detailed story points,” with the aim of giving audiences around the world the opportunity to enjoy their “movies to the fullest,” as opposed to just enjoying them moderately, which wouldn’t do at all. That vibe, at least, permeates this Doctor Strange, even if most of the action—extravagant, messy, so over-the-top crazy that it ceases to be amazing—is business as usual in the Marvel world. Still, there are good reasons for terrific directors to take on these movies, which are the same reasons so many actors want to be in them: they’re the chief currency of the culture right now, and if an artist’s goal to is to reach people with a work of the imagination—even if that vision is essentially run through a Play Doh Pumper before it reaches the screen—who wants to be left out? And even in the midst of its typically (for Marvel movies) convoluted plot, The Multiverse of Madness has a Raimi-like sense of bleak humor: Dr. Stephen Strange, a flawed superhero who often does the wrong thing for the right reasons, is again played, as in the 2016 movie preceding this one, by Benedict Cumberbatch. Again, he plays the character with one eyebrow perpetually arched, as it should be. The best thing you can say about the moderately entertaining, if predictably excessive, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is that if you squint and concentrate really hard, you can tell it’s a Sam Raimi movie.

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Image courtesy of "Vanyaland"

'Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness' Review: Sam Raimi ... (Vanyaland)

Raimi is back to breathe some life into the MCU in 'Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,' the best Phase Four film yet.

Yet it’s telling that it feels like the reason Raimi was given more room to breathe is because of how muddled and messy the development process was, the equivalent of a creative during a shoot throwing their hands up and shouting “WE’LL DO IT IN POST” when the lighting doesn’t work out exactly as they intended it to in-camera, outsourcing their role to as an on-set craftsman to some people in a post-production house. Let me be clear: With the exception of a single mid-film reveal so eye-rollingly executed until the man who made Evil Dead II steps in and goes much harder than he needs to in that particular moment (you can almost feel him turn over the keys to Feige when it happens, as he leaves for a break so he can check on how the make-up guys are coming along), everything that people will enjoy on a minute-to-minute basis on this film is due to Sam Raimi being shot caller. Take, for instance, the film’s first major action sequence, coming after an obstacle course “escape” scene in the World-Between-Worlds or whatever, full of cotton candy clouds and collapsing buildings, as if someone hired the Thor concept design team to remake a Katy Perry video, in which an alternate Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), a teen from a distance universe who can summon portals to other dimensions, try to get a book of unimaginable power before they’re killed by a reality-intruding monster. That’s not wholly a dig at those comic book takes on the likes of Melville and Homer, because there was value in introducing them to kids in an easily digestible format: the problem only comes when they assume that it’s a substitute for reading Moby Dick or The Odyssey. Raimi’s Spider-Man films operated in a similar capacity, forcing nerds, much as Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher did, to acknowledge that people behind the camera play an essential role in shaping in translating these works for the screen, which is an approach that’s being slowly lost on the Disney side, under the metaphorical corporate thumb, as profit-oriented as it is predictably banal in execution. The disastrous behind-the-scenes drama during the making of Thor: The Dark World — which saw Patty Jenkins fired from the production and replaced by Alan Taylor, he of Game of Thrones fame weeks into shooting — was a rare PR failure for Feige and an opportunity for the Distinguished Competition to seize upon the one culture-war mountaintop that it seemed impossible for the Mouse to climb, which they grabbed by the throat as soon as they hired Jenkins to direct Wonder Woman. Since then, Feige’s attempted to grow filmmakers along with franchises, no matter the prestige of the names involved, dangling one-for-us-one-for-you shots at passion projects as a Faustian bargain to guarantee their fealty. It’s not a particularly high bar to clear when your film is competing against the likes of Black Widow, Shang-Chi, and Eternals, each of which featured ill-chosen directors smacking up against the outer walls of their skills in service of material that either couldn’t sustain a long-term series in the comic world (the first of the three) or had trouble escaping the gravity of audience/fan indifference in the before being brought to the big screen (the latter two). Little good has come from the MCU’s wilderness period following the departure of its biggest stars, and the diversification of the distribution of their media properties has added even more of a headache for those seeking to try and understand exactly what the hell is going on on-screen at any given point, even if they’ve devoted three calendar days of their lives attempting to keep up with these movies.

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