Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ on Disney+, a Chaotic MCU Escapade Rendered Enjoyable by Sam Raimi

LET IT HERETOFORE BE DECLARED that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (now on Disney+), being the 28th movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is a complicated endeavor. So, a note for the uninitiated movie watchers who for the first time want to see Benedict Cumberbatch play a comic-book wizard (as he has in several preceding movies), a demographic that likely does not exist: Your hope of understanding what happens in this movie is less than nil. If you haven’t seen the TV series Wandavision, or 2016’s Doctor Strange, or perhaps even the 23 films comprising what is amusingly known as the MCU’s Infinity Saga, turn the car around, because you missed an exit, or perhaps a dozen exits, and you’re near Atlanta when you were trying to get to Idaho. Some noteworthy context before we get into the nitty-gritty: Multiverse of Madness concluded its theatrical run a few dozen million bucks shy of the $1 billion mark, making it the second highest-grossing film of 2022 so far. It also signifies the return of beloved filmmaker Sam Raimi (Drag Me to Hell, and some other movies), who hasn’t directed a movie since 2013’s forgettable Oz the Great and Powerful, joined the film after the director of the first Strange, Scott Derrickson, dropped out, tackling a script from Loki showrunner Michael Waldron; I’m happy to note that Raimiites, if they’re not already aware, will be delighted to see their guy is back and having fun behind the camera, even within the confines of a gigantic franchise.

DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: So Doctor Strange (Cumberbatch) has a ponytail now. But he actually doesn’t! It – a crazed battle with a CGI gobbledy-monster in some floaty nether-dimension, an attempt to protect a teenage girl named America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) – was all a dream. OR WAS IT, because we’ll eventually learn that the stuff of dreams is actually the stuff of parallel universes, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, because we have events from movies from 2016 and 2019 to still talk about here. Case in point, Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams), Strange’s ex, gets married, but the reception is disrupted by a massive eyeball with tentacles that’s destroying swaths of New York City as it tries to harm and/or kidnap that very same America Chavez from his dream. Strange downs his adult beverage and swoops to the rescue, with the help of his sorcerer pal Wong (Benedict Wong), but oddly none of the many other MCU heroes who call this metropolitan area home, possibly because they’re not contractually obligated for this film, and also possibly because one film can only have so many goddamn guest-star cameos, and those are reserved mostly for the second act and end-credits sequences.

Turns out that America has a wild-ass uncontrollable superpower that allows her to travel through the multiverse, and the newly twisted-and-evil Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), would really appreciate it if the innocent young woman would stand still so this movie’s villain could steal her powers. This is where the movie’s lugubrious plotwads get extra dense – and it gets even thicker as it goes along – so gird yer loins for great and mighty exposition dumps, which demand extreme reductionism from foolhardies such as I who attempt to summarize them: As we learned in Wandavision, Wanda is a tragic figure. In other realities, she’s the mother of two boys. But in this sliver of the multiverse, she’s indelibly broken by their absence. Apparently, all she has to do is contort her limbs into odd shapes and use her magic to kill America and usurp her powers and then use those powers to exist in another universe where she can have her children.

This is a sad and quite affecting arc that carries significant dramatic weight here, but fear not, the Madness balances the tragedy, with mind-and-body tripping through space-time and nutty Raimified comedy. Not that we’ll get into that, since there are about 2.7 of you who haven’t seen the movie and don’t want it spoiled. But the shenanigans involve the type of character reveals that get the in-deep MCUers’ cockles in a fever, multiversal variations on the Strange character, a reality where red means go and green means stop, an A+ Bruce Campbell cameo (and one by the immortal ’73 Oldsmobile Delta 88), dialogue such as “This is the Gap Junction – the space between universes,” and not one, but two crazy-powerful magic books, neither of which demand the utterance of Klaatu Barada NAHEMGHHRRN in order to free them from some ancient magical temple. Point being, you’ll find this movie is full of surprises.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: An MCU movie that references more non-MCU movies than MCU movies? That’s unpossible! Multiverse of Madness brought to mind Raimi classics Army of Darkness, Drag Me to Hell and Evil Dead II, as well as the Inside Out trip at the brain and the multiversal antics of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Performance Worth Watching: Cumberbatch is a rock-solid comedio-dramatic foundation, and really seems to be enjoying himself; Olsen digs into a strong, emotionally fraught arc; Gomez cultivates Hopeful Newcomer status but her potential goes untapped (bet you a nickel America Chavez will show up again in the MCU). But in a role that seems expendable until you realize it makes sure the movie maintains at least some level of verisimilitude, McAdams gives a memorable performance, which is no mean feat in a movie where there’s a thousand other things going on.

Memorable Dialogue: Decontextualized for NO SPOILERS reasons:

“This time it’s gonna take more than killing me to kill me!”

“It’s me, in other me’s body.”

“Are you happy?” “You’d think that saving the world would get you there, but it doesn’t.”

Sex and Skin: None. Doctor Strange does not put the hex in sex. In fact, sex does not exist in the multiverse in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, except in the sexy universe that only exists in an alternate universe to our real nonfictional universe, where Disney is like the Spice Channel.

Our Take: Multiverse of Madness isn’t going to settle the debate as to whether a big-name director will ever be allowed to make a movie transcend the MCU’s finite tonal and visual boundaries, as the film exists in odd juxtaposition between Raimi’s unsquelchable creative impulses and franchise authoritarianism. But Raimi makes it work, and enjoys enough wiggle room to convince us that this MCU entry boasts the most auteurial vision yet. It helps that his horror-comedy track record jibes with the occulty origins and vibes of the Strange character, opening the door for Marvelified riffs on Deadites, Necronomicons and the like. Raimi’s penchant for Looney Tunes slapstick and malevolent mischief is intact here, and that aesthetic pretty much takes over the film during the strongest MCU third act since The Avengers. Speaking as someone who believes “I don’t want your cat you dirty pork queeeeeeen” just might be the pinnacle of modern cinema, I cackled with glee more often than I ever expected to during a Doctor Strange movie.

It takes a bit to get there, though. This is a dense, gooey, labyrinthine narrative that lives and dies on fodder first dealt up in Wandavision, sidetracking into a reality rife with surprises – surprises that sit around and explain things a lot, but also fight the bad guy and deliver comic and dramatic punchlines, so that’s good – dictated by MCU overlords bent on dominating the theatrical experience and possibly rendering extinct the concept of standalone fiction, before landing on the most inspired zombie scenario since Shaun of the Dead. It’s a thick, heavy, kinda chaotic hiccup-once-and-you’ll-be-lost plot that’s nevertheless entertaining, wildly so after about the first hour and 15, so at least there’s a hefty satisfying payoff for all the work – loopy, involving work, but work nonetheless – that precedes it. You can’t say that about every Marvel movie these days.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Having parsed the zillion points of analysis dictating any discussion of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, my gut says this is the best MCU movie since the Infinity War/Endgame narrative megacrunch, or maybe the last Guardians of the Galaxy. The overlapping piece of the Venn diagram of Raimi aficionados and MCU fans will be happy. And Raimi doesn’t save or destroy the MCU, so Disney is happy, too.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.

Stream Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness on Disney+