Doctor Strange 2 review: why Multiverse of Madness maddens

I came out of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness feeling that it was surprisingly maddening, and not in the way we expected. The sequel, released on May 6, 2022, stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange and Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda. I think a lot of what undercut it was how it ignored the stories that came before it, and for the hardcore fan that left it unsatisfying and underwhelming.

There was a debate starting in the press at the time about whether Marvel movies require too much homework to stay accessible to the casual fan. Doctor Strange 2 continues so many MCU stories, on the big screen and now on the small screen. My view went the other way. I would wager the casual fan enjoyed it more, because they would assume anything that didn't make sense was simply because they weren't caught up.

Multiverse of Madness ignores what Loki and What If built

The hardcore fan is the foundation of the MCU's success, and the MCU rewards long term commitment. That's why people like it. Multiverse of Madness doesn't make those connections, and it skips the payoffs we were looking for. That goes for the multiverse itself too. In Loki and What If, the multiverses don't look that different. What changed was the people in them, transformed by the smallest shift in circumstance or choice. That ripple effect is a big part of time travel and multiverse storytelling.

Here there was almost none of that. Even when we met wildly different versions of favorite characters, we never learned why they were so different. I kept wondering where Jeffrey Wright's Watcher was when you need him. I love his little intros pointing out the choice that was made and inviting you to see what happens. They should have brought him in to introduce each multiverse. You have the tools, so use them.

Without that, I think the movie seems shallow and silly. A whole universe where red means go instead of green, what's the point of that? It wasn't clever or funny, especially without exploring the larger implications of that mentality. I know some people liked the visuals, like the painted universe. That was a funny gag in the Spider-Verse movie, but even there, what worked was the people. How the people are different is what makes multiverses interesting, not the setting.

The Reed Richards, Captain Carter and Professor X cameos fell short

We thought this movie would make our Marvel dreams come true: John Krasinski as Reed Richards, and Hayley Atwell as a live action Captain Carter, after she blew many of us away in What If. But I think these appearances were not good. I just think John Krasinski, it turns out, was miscast as Reed Richards. More broadly, I didn't think they went for it with these appearances; they felt half hearted.

One thing that upset me was Professor X in his yellow hover chair, and it never hovers. I couldn't believe that never occurred to anybody. We even saw some previews where they'd planned for it and it was too expensive. What's too expensive at this point for a Marvel movie, when they make so much money and are a cornerstone of the Disney empire?

The Illuminati scene was also so oddly short that I personally don't think it was worth doing at all. I would have preferred that time go to the rest of the story, which so desperately needed it.

The music fight between Doctor Strange and his evil variant

I think whether you like this movie overall boils down to what you think of the third act music fight between Doctor Strange and his evil variant. I thought it was ridiculous. The movie turned into a theme park slash educational experience, like Mickey's PhilharMagic, and it took me out of the movie. I see that some people loved it and thought it was very clever. Maybe you have to have an appreciation for music. Even with Danny Elfman, I didn't come away wanting to buy the soundtrack.

To the people who loved it, I'd love to know why, and I'd wonder why they gave it a pass. Doctor Strange has never used music spells before, and he has used a lot of different spells. It's not as if we were in a music based multiverse where that's how you had to fight. They just had a lot of instruments around them. If it had been explained, maybe I would have appreciated it more, but it came out of nowhere. That describes a lot of this movie.

Now, with the third eye he's kept, Doctor Strange has a heavy metal theme. I don't like that. I don't think it fits the character, and I think it's too close to what Taika Waititi is trying to do thematically with Thor: Love and Thunder. Is the whole MCU going heavy metal now? I don't think there are a lot of heavy metal fans, so it struck me as a very odd choice.

Doctor Strange's best moments, and Wong's missing makeover

Doctor Strange does have some great moments. I loved when he jumped off the balcony at the wedding in his tuxedo, casually tossing his drink back to the waiter as the Cloak of Levitation swept in behind him. It was so smooth. Then he floated down and changed into his uniform. It was great.

Despite the wonky VFX, I thought the first fight was very Doctor Strange. I loved him running around lower Manhattan. I live in New York City and know that area very well, and it's where Doctor Strange is supposed to be located, so it felt authentic, even though I'm sure it was largely shot on a sound stage. The visual effects reel for No Way Home, set around the same area, shows it's all green screen. With his trippy spells and demon fighting, it's very lower Manhattan, very SoHo, and that's a cool way to describe Doctor Strange.

I liked all his interactions with Wong, the new Sorcerer Supreme. But why doesn't Wong get a costume upgrade? He seems exactly the same. I guess Wong is a humble guy, but I think he deserves a power up and a makeover if he's going to be Sorcerer Supreme, because it doesn't register until someone brings it up.

Defender Strange exposes a flaw the movie never explored

I liked Defender Strange a lot, and there were huge missed opportunities with him. He tries to take America Chavez's powers, killing her, saying her sacrifice will serve the greater good, and he's killed before he can do it. You open the door to killing people, it might be you. I think it highlights a major flaw in all the Doctor Stranges: extreme emotional detachment. It affects him as a hero, might be one of the reasons he messed up so badly in No Way Home, and affects his personal life with Christine.

I would have loved the movie to explore that, perhaps contrasting him with Wanda, who could be depicted as loving so much that she refuses to let her children go. Strange is too quick to let people go, and Wanda won't. That could have been interesting, but you can't do it with this Wanda because she's too evil. How can she be about love when she kills so many people? She snapped Xavier's neck. I don't think the Wanda from WandaVision would ever do that. She didn't even kill Agatha, who killed Sparky.

I loved him dreamwalking back to his own universe through the corpse of Defender Strange, which I thought was clever, along with the line "who says anything about the other version of me being alive." I loved Wanda calling him a hypocrite, because there's very little difference between them in their arrogance to do whatever it takes with their powers. Wong's reaction was another missed opportunity. Using the demons who first tormented him to power up was an incredible moment, and I was upset the ad campaign gave it away, especially because the scene never went far enough. It should have built to an amazing fight against Darkhold Wanda, and that never materialized.

The zombie Strange pep talk and the Wonder Woman 1984 comparison

I think the whole zombie Strange idea was undercut by his hokey third act pep talk to America Chavez, which the audience I saw it with laughed at. I guess that's very Raimi humor. I was marveling at the VFX, with a huge chunk of his cheek missing as he talked, but what he said undermined what should have been a big third act fight.

It reminded me a lot of the end of Wonder Woman 1984, which many people had a huge problem with. I knew it was hard for people to believe this movie was as big a mess as it is, and I wanted to see the reaction, but I don't think you can have problems with Wonder Woman 1984 and not have problems with this movie, for many of the same reasons.

I found the idea that Stephen and Christine never work out in any universe very touching, especially after that What If episode. But it wasn't handled nearly as well here, because we only heard about it. Instead of the Illuminati, why not show us some Christines and Stranges? That would have driven the point home. It doesn't help that Cumberbatch and Rachel McAdams have no chemistry whatsoever. I don't think anyone is rooting for them.

What the movie did to Elizabeth Olsen's Scarlet Witch

I love Elizabeth Olsen in this role, and I still believe she's the first female MCU character to be as popular as Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark and Chris Evans' Captain America. Some people feel threatened by that, and it has earned her detractors, but she's fantastic. It's jarring that as soon as we see her she's totally gone mentally and over to the Darkhold side. She's no longer even at the cabin where WandaVision left her, and the mountain she was at the foot of there wasn't made Wundagore, which I thought was a missed opportunity.

Seeing a character I got to know and relate to in WandaVision turned into a one dimensional hysterical woman was sad. Hysteria has long been used by society to undercut and punish women; that's where the term comes from, and it's what women were accused of during the real Salem witch trials. You couldn't win, and it was designed that way. Seeing this done in 2022 was sad and disturbing, especially with some of what was happening in real life at the time. I felt worst for her limping through the tunnels after Strange, America and Christine, desperate and lost. I wanted to give her a hug.

I wondered the whole time where Vision was. Some people argued she made peace with his death in WandaVision, but I don't believe that. Their final exchange, where Vision says they've said goodbye before so it stands to reason they'll say hello again, means she expects to see him again, and so do we. There's a White Vision running around. Vision is her most important emotional connection, so it makes no sense that he isn't in any of the universes we visit, or that Strange and Wong never thought to find a variant Vision to break through to her.

Why the Darkhold excuse felt like lazy writing

I know the Darkhold corrupts, but I think it's lazy writing to blame it, because Agatha still had her senses about her. The variant Strange who read the Darkhold and was killed by the Illuminati also seemed okay, even agreeing he should be killed, which I guess echoes what happens to Wanda at the end. I'd have liked that explained or highlighted. I also believe the final Strange variant had read the Darkhold, which is why he had a third eye, and our Strange gets one from using it too. But neither has black fingers, and I'd think the fingers would turn black before you grew a third eye.

To me it felt like Michael Waldron focused less on WandaVision and more on how Scarlet Witch was portrayed in the comics, which I think was misogynistic in the original story. If they wanted to be faithful to that, the solution was right there: make this Wanda the villain from a different universe, and have our Wanda help save the day. I think that would have made everything fine.

So would having Wanda create mutants, a reverse nod to the comic where she got rid of almost all of them. I think people would have forgotten all the problems. Without that, the character assassination seems even more pointless. We also didn't get her kids back and aged up toward Wiccan and Speed. I did like Wundagore and some of what they did with her powers. I don't think she's dead; I think they want you to think so, and that she intended to kill herself, which I hate after the empowering end of WandaVision.

America Chavez was wasted and diluted

America Chavez was a waste of screen time and, I think, another character assassination, which fits a pattern with the female characters from Michael Waldron and Sam Raimi. I did think her powers looked visually cool, with the shattered glass and portals opening onto stars within stars. I've never understood why a character from a universe with no United States is named America and wears a star spangled outfit, and the movie didn't try to explain it.

What makes her stand out in the comics is her edginess and her authentic representation of urban Latino culture. She should look like she walked out of In the Heights, so to see her Disney Channeled hurts what connects her with her fans. And she does have fans, or they wouldn't keep bringing her back.

I also thought it was horrible representation of the LGBT community. She's a lesbian in the comics, but here you'd think she wears the pride pin for her mothers. And why does a utopia where everything is accepted need pride flags? She lost her mothers, and Wanda lost her twins, so you'd expect a parallel and some sympathy between them. Again, nothing.

The action never reached Russo brothers level

I would forgive the shallowness if the action made up for it, but it doesn't, and I was starting to miss the Russo brothers. I've often repeated Steven Soderbergh's story about seeing someone at an airport fast forward through a Russo brothers movie from action scene to action scene. Here, every promised iconic action scene was a fake out. At the Kamar-Taj buildup, I expected the massive red energy I saw in Avengers: Endgame, and instead she sent a single beam. Why go easy after saying she wouldn't?

I liked the mind control brought back from Age of Ultron, which was done well. I liked the trap she stepped into, with the swirls and shards of glass, though it confusingly looked like the prison from What If. Her travel through reflections was very Raimi, but she came out disjointed once and undamaged the next time. Comic book fights need rules for everyone's powers. Here it seems Wanda can do whatever they think of, which is less fun. The Illuminati fights were over before they began, and should have been Russo level fights.

The end had no real fight. America opens a portal to Wanda's children, again that same poor family, who are scared of her, and the other Wanda says they'll be loved. Wanda cries. That's almost identical to the final revelations of Wonder Woman 1984, where Wonder Woman wins through emotion, holding up a mirror to the villain, just as Maxwell Lord turned to his son. To criticize that lack of action and not have a problem here is more unfairness in how these franchises are judged.

I think there's a good movie in here. If they had taken out America Chavez and the Illuminati, built better on what came before, and given it another 30 to 40 minutes, I think they could have had something. People will see it, but I don't think it will stick with them, and that's a shame, because some great elements deserved a better platform to become lasting MCU moments.