Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Review

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NO RESTRAINT ON SPOILERS!!

While not as good as Spider-Man: No Way Home, the Sam Raimi directed Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is an incredibly fun movie with a bevy of awesome cameos. I give this a B+ to A. Where it fully lands will be more deeply established when I see it a couple more times. My May movie theater review article will have my more settled thoughts, as I am writing this the day after I saw the movie for the first time. I will almost surely see it twice more in theaters, possibly a double header the day after I write this. What follows below, much like my Loki review, is a scattershot of random spoiler-laden thoughts related to the movie.

Let’s get into the spoilers. The Illuminati shows up. No, not that Illuminati, Alex Jones. Which gives us plenty of cameos. We did not get Tom Cruise Iron Man. That would have been dope, although Tom Cruise does not allow action figures of himself, so that would have been a major waste from my perspective. I was right about Mister Fantastic. John Krasinski portrayed him, likely meaning he plays him in the main continuity. We get the best-looking Professor X in live-action, with that awesome floating yellow wheelchair those who grew in the ‘90s, like me, loved greatly. This will likely be Patrick Stewart’s last rodeo as Professor X, as they will almost surely go with a younger actor less likely to die on them for the mainline continuity. I want Lance Reddick, but as long as Gus Fring plays Magneto, I won’t be too upset who they cast. My theory? Giancarlo Esposito could easily portray an Argentinian Jewish boy who was hounded by Nazis who fled there but have the start of his journey be the 1970s or later. This allows Magneto to still have a deep hatred for Nazis while not being ancient. We have reached a point where if Magento is a direct survivor of the Holocaust, the character is almost fully aged out. That creates narrative problems, to say the least.

Bruce Campbell shows up for a bit, including in the post credits for a joke. A Sam Raimi superhero movie ain’t complete without a Bruce Campbell cameo. I was disappointed he was not Mysterio in some continuity, but maybe Sony makes Spider-Man 4 after making the rumored Amazing Spider-Man 3. My theory on those rumors, based on Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man in Spider-Man: No Way Home explicitly stating aliens don’t exist in his reality, is that Tom Hardy’s Venom and Jared Leto’s Morbius both exist in the Amazing Spider-Man continuity, which means that Sinister Six movie will finally happen, just in the continuity fans don’t actually want it in. But more on that when I finally discuss Morbius in earnest in my April movie theater review (I’ll get to it eventually, folks.)

Even the horrible Inhumans show I never watched got a shout out when the actor who played Black Bolt in that got a cameo in this where he gets a much more comic accurate costume. Monica Rambeau also comes back to play a continuity’s version of Captain Marvel. And Peggy Carter gets her first live-action rodeo as Captain Carter, the only direct reference to What If…? The Watcher would have been nice. Maybe Jeffrey Wright was too busy playing Commissioner Gordon in The Batman.

No implication of Mutants or the Fantastic Four in the main continuity, although they establish it is possible to affect all continuities all at once. I’m sure they have a plan.

Scarlet Witch is the main villain, which they cut right to the chase on. No dancing around her being evil, just right into that. The trailer didn’t make it obvious she was the main villain, although a lot of people suspected that. America Chavez was thankfully mostly not her comic book counterpart (a flaming progressive,) although they made sure to throw in one line of dialogue to let her get her political say. She mentions how it is weird that people pay for food in the mainline MCU continuity as in most realities, food is free. Just eyeroll-level stupidity. Tell that to the vendors at Disneyland sometime.

Scarlet Witch’s apparent death makes things complicated for that white Vision from the finale of WandaVision. Vision isn’t in this at all, for some strange reason. Was Paul Bettany not available for even a quick cameo?

Rintrah, an awesome Minotaur sorcerer, is never named, but since I got the BAF from the Marvel Legends line for this movie, I was glad he didn’t die. A lot of sorcerers do get killed by Scarlet Witch. Her villain turn was not unexpected, but the brutality was. And there are some messed up horror elements that ride the line of PG-13, much like Shazam! did. This is a hard PG-13. Souls of the damned and the very clearly decomposing “zombie” Doctor Strange make this not one I’d take the little ones to. Oddly, no astral projection Doctor Strange, which confuses me. The astral form Doctor Strange figure in the Marvel Legends line came with a genie-like lamp. Weird how that didn’t factor into the movie at all…

Baron Mordo shows up again, but he’s not the mainline one. Although offscreen, it is apparent mainline continuity Baron Mordo has declared he wants Doctor Strange dead. Maybe we get a Disney+ series to flesh that out.

Charlize Theron shows up in the mid credits playing a character I had to pay attention to the end credits scroll to even know who she was. Clea. This is apparently Doctor Strange’s future wife, so we’ll see what happens with that. It appears Doctor Strange has been corrupted by the Darkhold and has a freaky third eye in his forehead we see first on the not very well explained evil Doctor Strange (maybe the second one in the movie.) It appears Clea and him are heading to see Dormammu again.

The action was fantastic, usually involving Scarlet Witch wreaking shop and just murdering tons of dudes. We don’t get enough of that in the MCU against named characters or humans. Usually largely faceless CGI armies. The fight sequence against most of the Illuminati was at times pointless as everyone knows how it will end but it allowed most of them to get a few good licks in or lines of dialogue before they were dispatched.

With most of my thoughts exhausted for that movie , I thought I would talk about the MCU Disney+ show Moon Knight real quick. I didn’t have many deep thoughts about it other than I enjoyed it. Probably the strongest MCU Disney+ show overall so far, although I still think the Loki finale was stronger. Only one tiny reference to the broader MCU at all. The ancestral plane, from Black Panther, is mentioned in a throwaway line in the fifth episode. That’s it. Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke were both excellent. The voice of the weird bird skeleton Egyptian god, Khonshu, is F. Murray Abraham, a wonderful character actor. The very kaiju/Power Rangers-styled big monster fight in the finale was awesome. The action sequences, when we got them sprinkled throughout the series, were amazing. The trippy nature of the insane asylum in Marc Spector’s mind was dope. The hippo god was weird. I’m glad that wasn’t spoiled for me. I was disappointed the rumors about Jon Bernthal reprising his role from the Netflix series The Punisher didn’t come true, but I have a feeling Moon Knight is gonna spend a lot of time in New York City in the very heavily teased second season. Werewolf by Night is happening in a Disney+ Halloween special (something I hope becomes annual) played by the main character from Jon Stewart’s Rosewater (and the dad in Old.) We’ll see where that goes.

The next MCU movie on the docket is Thor: Love and Thunder, which has Christian Bale playing the main villain, Gorr the God Butcher. Looks like Hercules will almost surely show up, as Russell Crowe is playing Zeus. In the Marvel Comics continuity, Hercules is the guy from Greek mythology, but is a goofy dude who mostly does space adventures, sort of like the direction of Thor starting with the third movie. If The Rock played Hercules, I wouldn’t be mad. That’d be good stunt casting, since he played Hercules prior in a bad movie directed by the dude who did the Rush Hour series (still want a fourth one, folks.)

After that, it is the sequel to Black Panther. Just make M’Baku the new Black Panther. With all the problems related to the actress playing Shuri, Winston Duke is certainly the best option after the unfortunate passing of Chadwick Boseman. We are also getting a Holiday Special with the Guardians of the Galaxy to close out the year, written and directed by James Gunn in his return to the MCU. On the Disney+ series side of things, we’re getting a likely Power Cosmic-inspired Ms. Marvel and maybe a She-Hulk show (although it has a tentative release this year with no further information as of yet outside of casting for the titular role.) We’ll see how those shake out, although I am not very excited for the Ms. Marvel show outside of the aforementioned Power Cosmic.

And that’s about everything I have to say. RANT OVER.