Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Honest Review - SPOILERS!!
Last night (Thursday), I was thrilled to go watch the new MCU film, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. This film has been speculated upon for the past year with people trying to guess who the cameo appearances would include. Right off the bat, the first cameo we all expected was Patrick Stewart‘s version of Dr. Charles Xavier from the X-Men. Other people assumed that this would be a good segue to bring in other X-Men into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, most notably Hugh Jackman‘s version of Wolverine. Other people were expecting to see Superior Iron Man that was rumored to be played by Tom Cruise. There was also talks that the Fantastic 4 could be introduced into the MCU and people had their fantasy castings, which at the top of the list was John Krasinski playing Dr. Richard Reed a.k.a. Mr. Fantastic. I, personally, was hoping they somehow managed to fit Deadpool into the movie, finally bringing him over into the MCU.
Let me begin my review by saying I am a HUGE fan of Marvel and I have made it to almost every opening night since the first Iron Man. The majority of the films I have been extremely pleased with and I’ve only been slightly disappointed by a few…namely Thor’s Dark World, the Eternals, and Iron Man 2, yet i understood their place and storyline, and appreciate the acting in all three of them. I had watched all of the trailers for Multiverse of Madness, which included cameo appearances from not only Tom Cruise as Superior Iron Man, but also Magneto, Cyclops, and the man himself, Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. I posted the trailers days before going to see the film.
All of that being said, I have never been more disappointed with a movie in the entirety of my life. This movie was bad. It sucked all around. The storyline was horribly put together. The acting was atrocious. The fight scenes felt like they were put together by a toddler, yet at some points in the film it felt like the action sequences were just going for shock value in grotesque and violent visuals. I wouldn’t even consider it typical horror, but rather clunky B-rated horror. Maybe C-Rated. Not to mention it felt extremely sexist towards women and their horribly stereotypical place in the world. The overall plot felt like it was written as it was being filmed and not planned out at all. I really don’t know where they can go with this without somehow creating plot holes in past films. You should definitely save your money when deciding when to watch this and do NOT under any circumstances drop the extra money for D-Box or 3D because you’ll immediately regret it. I’m flat out giving this film an F and I’ll explain more in the rest of the review.
WARNING: THE REST OF THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.
The movie starts out in a dream sequence with a version of Doctor Strange and America Chavez trying to escape some sort of demon entity. They are trying to get to some sort of blue glowing book that will inevitably save them from anything they need to be saved from. That’s how the book is described… It will save them from whatever they need to be saved from. I’m guessing it’s the end all, be all of whatever plot point they can come up with. This specific ponytailed version of Doctor Strange betrays America Chavez and is going to take her power from her to save the universe, which is the ability to teleport in between worlds and universes, yet America has absolutely no control over it at this point in the movie. He ends up being brutally murdered by the demon entity and immediately wakes up in the sanctum. It feels expected. Action without a backstory rarely ends any other way without a dream sequence coming into play, plus him waking up startled was in the trailer.
Next in the movie, Doctor Strange is at Christine’s wedding. Needless to say she’s not marrying him, and he pretends to be OK with that, which anyone can see he noticeably is upset by it. Out on the balcony we see some kind of commotion with an invisible destructor causing damage to the city and chasing after a girl which is the same girl, Chavez, from Doctor Strange’s dream. Doctor Strange uses sorcery to reveal this giant eyeball octopus looking beast and ends up killing it and saving America Chavez. This, of course, is when he says “you look familiar! I’ve seen you in my dreams.” Which America Chavez responds “that wasn’t a dream.”Apparently dreams are just glimpses into other realities and universes and America Chavez has never had a dream. Instead, she literally gets blasted into these realities and alternate universes unexpectedly when she gets extremely frightened. And it’s a giant star portal. To prove her point, she has somehow managed to bag up the corpse of the Doctor Strange that betrayed her from the first scene of the movie and bring him to this reality. It’s a gross corpse, so Doctor Strange buries it in the roof using magic. Wong explains that dreams and the multiverse and the ability to travel between them is witchcraft not sorcery… Enter Wanda Maximoff a.k.a. the Scarlet Witch. Doctor Strange goes to visit her while she’s out trimming her apple orchard which is quickly revealed to all be a fake plot of land like she did in WandaVision. Wanda is no longer a good guy. She is now completely possessed by the dark hold book and is hell-bent on getting her children from an alternate reality or taking over as their mother in an alternate reality and killing their actual mother. Still following?? She admits to dream walking and sending demons to attack America Chavez because apparently America is the only way to get in between realities physically. She vows to murder anyone who gets in the way of her plan, so she shows up at Kamar Taj which is now filled with wizards and sorcerors and starts killing them all mercilessly. America Chavez freaks out and somehow manages to blast herself and Doctor Strange into another reality. I find it hard to understand that Wanda is so far gone that there wasn’t even a movie or a series to describe how dark and evil she has become. Not to mention, her entire purpose is being driven by “I’m a mom and that’s all I care about.” It just feels like lazy writing. Like she violently killing. Burning bodies. Snapping necks. Turning people to dust.
Anyway, in this alternate reality it turns out that Stephen strange died heroically fighting Thanos and now the entire world seems to be in perfect bloom and harmony. They realized red lights mean green lights and America says that they can just get food without money because the reality Strange is from is basically the only reality where people have to pay for food, which she is immediately corrected when a food vendor played by Bruce Campbell gets mad that she didn’t pay for the food she took. So Doctor Strange uses magic to make him punch himself repeatedly. He makes a joke saying he’ll stop hitting himself in just a few minutes…..or weeks. They decide to go to the sanctum to find anyone that can help them and they’re met by Baron Mordo who hated Doctor Strange and had resorted to trying to kill him in the original reality. This one seems to miss him and happily hugs him and calls him “brother”, but quickly poisons them both and has them put in glass cages at a compound we find out is home to the “Illuminati” and the lab where they are being kept is being tan by none other than Christine, the love of his life. She is not having any of his conversation because every Stephen Strange she has ever come across has always been selfish. He’s taken to meet with the cool kids club and asks that Christine please keep America Chavez safe. This is the part of the movie where I thought I would start enjoying it because in the trailer this is where you get to meet all of the cool cameos like Patrick Stewart and Tom Cruise and all the other awesome characters from other movies. But surprise… The trailers lied. For the most part. All you get is Patrick Stewart as Professor X. There is no superior Iron Man and Tom Cruise is not in this movie. At all. He’s not even mentioned. Guess who else isn’t in the movie at all?? Magneto, Cyclops, Wolverine, Deadpool. No mention of them. You do get a Captain Marvel that is Maria Rambeau instead of Carol Danvers, Black Bolt from Inhumans, Professor X, and (surprise, surprise) John Krasinski as Richard Reed. This is literally the only part of the movie where people in the packed auditorium seemed excited. The rest of the movie was met with grumbles, confusion, and disdain. But don’t be too excited because he’s viciously murdered by the Scarlet Witch within five minutes of having screen time. So is Professor X (head snapped). Black Bolt is about to scream and destroy her, but she manages to magically take his mouth away and he moans causing his entire head to graphically implode. Like…..don’t take your kids to see this. One because it sucks. Two because it’s over the top graphic in a lot of spots. Marie Rambeau is crushed to death. And now we find Doctor Strange and Mordo fighting, but it doesn’t last long and Strange escapes with America Chavez who is powerful enough to punch through the glass cage. Christine takes them to the place where this realities Doctor Strange claimed the glowing blue book is kept. They are being chased by the Scarlet Witch the whole time and before he can get to the book, he is blasted into another reality which appears to be several realities falling in on themselves.
Meanwhile, Wong who barely made it out of Kamar Taj is now being forced by Wanda to take him to the original tomb of the Darkhold way up in the snowy mountains. It is guarded by four demon entities and Wanda realizes it’s not a tomb, but a shrine to the Scarlet Witch and the demons bow to her. Doctor Strange is back in the collapsing reality and find the Doctor Strange of this reality and realizes he has also been possessed by the Darkhold and now has three eyes, but the original Doctor Strange needs his help to learn enough to stop Wanda. They fight…in what I will say is the goofiest fight sequence I’ve ever seen. Everyone around me was looking around, too, to see if anyone else thought it was just as stupid. Yes, I’m right here and fully agree with you. At one point our Doctor Strange is thrown into a piano by evil Doctor Strange and when the music papers fly up in the air (which I’m guessing was intended for movies with 3D effects) somehow they manage to turn the music notes into weapons and start throwing them at each other to some ridiculous classical music that has been over dubbed with rock guitar. I can’t make this stuff up. It’s so cheesy. Finally he manages to kill the evil Doctor Strange as he’s impaled on a gothic looking fence. He plans on using the Darkhold to dreamwalk which is against the code of the sorcerers because the powers are too evil for its user to not be possessed, but he’s out of options at this point. I can’t remember how America Chavez end up back in the origanal reality/universe, but I remember how Doctor Strange does!! Christine is upset that he’s using the Darkhold, but understands the predicament, so she agrees to be ok with it, but asks him “How can you dreamwalk in a universe where the person you’re using isn’t there??” He replies “who said they had to be alive?” Yep. As if it couldn’t get any cheesier…he resurrects the corpse of ponytailed Doctor Strange and it crawls out of the roof and is immediately attacked by demons from within the Darkhold, but because Doctor Strange is in control and is determined to save the day, he manages to rope the demons into a makeshift cape and flies to the Darkhold Shrine to help Wong and fight Wanda. America Chavez has been taken control of by Wanda and she’s in the process of taking her powers, when Strange shows up and is fighting as a zombie. Right before all is thought to be lost, he tells America to open a portal and she cries saying she doesn’t know how and can’t and he gives her a motivational speech and VOILA!!!! She breaks the spell and beats the crap out of Wanda for a few punches before opening the portal to the world in which Wanda’s children exist. Evil Wanda goes in and the children scream in terror and The Scarlet Witch throws their mom (this reality’s version of good Wanda) across the room. Evil Wanda tries to calm the kids down because she says she loves them, but they are too traumatized to allow her to get near them. She breaks down to her knees crying as the boys’ mother comes up to her side and touches her cheek. It’s so cringy because THIS should be the epic battle of the whole movie because while Evil Wanda wants to think her kids are real, this Good Wanda has done real time for years as a real mom that unconditionally loves her real kids and their lives are in danger of being taken away. But no. That doesn’t happen. Instead they look at each other and Good Wanda says, “Just know they will be loved.”
For real?? Stupid. Wanda agrees she needs to get herself together and goes away. America Chavez gets everyone home safely. Right as the movie is about to end and Doctor Strange is happily walking down the road in normal street attire like the happy Leonardo DiCaprio walking meme, he drops to his knees screaming and grabbing his face and looks up as a third eye appears on his forehead. The end. The mid credits scene is one of Angelina Jolie as Thena from the Eternals and complains the Doctor Strange has created an event with his multiverse travels and has to help her and she asks if he’s ready, his third eye appears and he’s like yep!!! The final scene at the end of the credits is Bruce Campbell still punching himself and finally he stops and he yells “Yes!! IT’S OVER!!!”
I was more excited than he was. I felt like I had been punching myself for weeks watching this train wreck of a movie. It felt like it didn’t build anything up. It could have been a one off limited series with a single episode to introduce America Chavez because I can understand her usefulness, but this was a waste of time and effort. The ball was dropped. I wasted $47 dollars on D-Box tickets, popcorn, and soda. Do yourself a favor and forgo this abomination in the MCU. I know people had contracts, but damn. I’m so sorry to everyone involved. Better luck next time.
-Crisco Zills