Last night my wife and I filled our car with delicious snacks and went to the Drive-In to see Doctor Strange get lost in the Multiverse of Madness!
For a rainy Thursday night there were quite a few people there… it felt like the beginning of the summer movie season and the anticipation was killing me. What new characters will show up and make my inner comic geek scream in ecstasy? Will Doctor Strange 2 measure up to the near perfect Spider-Man: No Way Home?
The Avatar 2 trailer tried to distract us for a few moments. It looked pretty cool, with more of the same visuals we loved from the first one. Lots of cool animals and blue people running around. The only spoken line was about the strength of family. It was just a teaser, so only small nuggets of where the story is going. My wife was underwhelmed by it, which was interesting. I’m looking forward to it.
This is a Doctor Strange review, though, so let’s get to it! America Chavez and Doctor Strange show up in the middle of a battle with some tentacled monster as they try to retrieve a glowing book, and away we go!
So, my overall reaction to the movie was… disappointment, to be honest.
I had a hard time getting engaged by the story and the characters. Now, that can sometimes be the case seeing the movie at the drive-in, but I don’t think it was just the movie-going experience that was the problem. Whether it was the story, the pacing or the acting – the movie didn’t make me really care about the characters and what was happening to them. Doctor Strange was mostly just reacting to everything and for a large portion of the movie he didn’t really feel like the main character.
America Chavez is an interesting character from a concept standpoint. She can travel across different universes, and she has no duplicate like most everyone else does. Unfortunately, the character didn’t really click for me. First of all, there are several parts where her acting is just terrible (sorry!) and the manifestation of her powers is pretty cheesy. Worst of all, she can’t control her powers at all even though she has traveled to 72 different universes. I just didn’t buy into it. If you lost your parents when your powers first manifested, then I’m pretty sure you have all the motivation you need to figure out what is triggering your powers and how to control them better, to test your limits and try to find your parents. The whole ‘I can’t control it!’ trope just doesn’t work too well for me at this point in the MCU.
Granted, I have not read this character in comic form, so my first exposure to her is in this movie. But I would say the movie suffers by focusing so much on her and seems to improve the less she is in it. At any rate, you can tell Disney is all-in on these new characters and trying to set them up for the future.
Speaking of established characters, let’s talk about Wanda. She really goes full bad guy in this film and they set her up as basically the most powerful Avenger ever. She kicks everyone’s butt and kills a lot of heroes (more on that later). Why would she do such a thing? Well, she is still motivated by losing her imaginary kids from Wanda/Vision, and is willing to kill anyone who gets in the way of her motherly love.
It feels a bit repetitive to me and I had a hard time fully buying into her story arc as well. There is some sort of demonic book involved that has warped her mind so you can pretty much write off any details that don’t add up that darn demon book corrupting her.
There are quite a few surprise appearances. We already knew about Professor X from the trailer, but there is also Reed Richards from the Fantastic Four, Black Bolt, Captain Carter and Captain Marvel. It’s pretty cool and exciting. Plus, they all get murdered by Wanda, which is fun.
I’m a bit unsure about Jim from the Office as Mr. Fantastic – it could just be this movie though that didn’t give him a full chance be effective as the character. I mean, Reed Richards is supposed to be a genius and 10 steps ahead of everyone. In the film he boasts about how they will easily defeat The Scarlet Witch – then he tells her how to defeat Black Bolt and immediately after that, he dies. Weak sauce!
There is also a mid-credits scene where Charlize Theron shows up as Clea, and she invites Doctor Strange to fix an incursion in some other universe. He happily accepts because she is Charlize Theron and they rush off into an adventure (and probably love).
To sum it all up: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has some cool parts (undead Strange!) and a lot of new characters, but only manages to be somewhere in the mediocre range of MCU movies. I enjoyed watching it, but once is probably enough.