Finally! The first true multiverse project I’ve reviewed since “What If . . . ?” But in all seriousness, this was a sequel that many fans have been looking forward to ever since Dr. Strange made a bargain with Dormammu. Years after his original movie, we find Strange hot off the heels of preventing a multiversal disaster in “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” This is when he meets a girl named America Chavez, who has the unheard power of naturally traveling through other worlds. With former hero Wanda Maximoff relentlessly pursuing Chavez for her own goals, Strange must team up with America and go through a dimension-hopping journey to find a way to defeat the Scarlet Witch.
Pro/Con #1: Wanda
I’ll admit: when I first watched this movie and found they had made Wanda the villain, I was not a fan. However, while I still have mixed feelings about this decision, I can agree that it unfortunately fits with her character. And I say “unfortunately” because of everything Wanda has been through in her life: she barely survived a bombing that killed her parents, got experimented on by HYDRA, her brother died, and she had to watch the love of her life die twice. Even when she accidentally created a reality where she had a family, she had to give it up to save all the people she incidentally trapped and enslaved. So she not only had to watch Vision die a third time, but she had to let her own kids die as well. What’s worse is when she told Strange that she dreamt about her kids every single night, and then she wakes up back to a reality where they aren’t there. Knowing everything Wanda’s been through, and how much her family meant to her, it’s really hard to think about the morality of her actions when your heartstrings are being yanked on. Aside from sympathy, though, Wanda definitely fits the role of a villain because of how horrifying she was! If you’ve ever read comics like “House of M,” you know this movie had a pretty accurate Wanda. Much like the aforementioned comics, Wanda was able to casually manipulate reality as she saw fit, defeat whole groups of people singlehandedly, and even accomplish those same feats via control of a non-powered variant from a world away. In addition, the way she crawls out of the Mirror Dimension like a demon, and when she’s soaked in blood while mowing through the Illuminati, it’s moments like those that give me goosebumps. She was already creepy in “Age of Ultron,” where she moved her fingers like a conductor and made everyone see their worst fears, but “Multiverse of Madness” amplified it up to ten! If nothing else, this movie not only makes Wanda more of a sympathetic yet tragic villain, but it also serves as a testament to her insane levels of power.
Yet, in spite of how it furthers Wanda’s character arc, I’m still not fully convinced that Wanda should’ve been the villain of this story. Even though she definitely possesses the aura and presence of a villain, it just doesn’t make sense for her to be one after everything she’s been through. For example, in spite of all the previously mentioned but horrible events that happened in her life, she never fully gave in to the darkness. In “Age of Ultron,” she would see the mistake of working with Ultron, ultimately join the Avengers to defeat him. After her brother’s unfortunate passing, many good people in her life would serve as amazing sources of inspiration, comfort, and encouragement to keep her from falling into the dark. Plus, although she served as a kind of antagonist in “WandaVision,” she still went though an amazing character growth as she seemingly decided to let go of her family, accept her past, and take on her newfound responsibilities and powers. But as if none of that happened, Wanda took a complete 180. All throughout this movie, she’s sending monsters to rip apart cities just to find one child who could aid her plans. As if that wasn’t enough, Wanda would eventually do the dirty work herself and start killing almost every single person who gets in her way. The only time she doesn’t is in cases like Wong, where she keeps him alive only as long as he’s useful to her. I mean, this woman was so unhinged and making trails of bodies just to get her two kids from a reality she made. I just feel like that’s not the Wanda who we know and love, the Wanda who’s served as a source of inspiration to keep going even in the darkest of times. While it’s understandable that she may have reached a breaking point like anyone else would have, as well as the Darkhold having overwhelming influence over her, it still feels like a complete slap in the face to her previous arcs. Aside from that, another reason I’m not fully onboard with Wanda as a villain is because of the original rumors about Nightmare being the villain instead of her. For those of you who don’t know, Nightmare is a supernatural being who rules the Nightmare World (the source of all bad dreams). Long-story-short, he’s one of Dr. Strange’s biggest enemies in the comics, so if you combine that with an impressive resume like ruling the Nightmare World, it would’ve made more sense to fit Nightmare into the horror theme that Sam Raimi was going for. Further, if you’re going to make a movie centering around the multiverse, then what better way to do so then with yet another inter-dimensional entity? I feel like it would’ve been so much cooler to see Strange and Wanda traveling through the Nightmare World, and Nightmare would push both of them to their limits with past fears and traumatic memories. Such a premise would’ve expanded upon Strange and Wanda’s characters, and thus make us like them twice as much.
Pro/Con #2: The Story
Whether you love it or hate it, one thing that I’ve come to appreciate with this movie is how they continued Dr. Strange’s story. In his first debut back in 2016, we saw Strange grow from the self-centered, egotistical surgeon to the selfless sorcerer supreme. The man outsmarted Dormammu, played a key role in defeating Thanos, basically saving the whole universe twice. However, in spite of these amazing acts of heroism, we never got to see much about Dr. Strange’s own character journey (again, aside from his origin movie). “Multiverse of Madness” fixes this as we get to watch Strange struggle with letting go of his past, mainly regarding his feelings for his former colleague, Christine. During the scene where Strange attends Christine’s wedding and watches her walk down the aisle, I could just feel the conflict and regret stirring within Strange. It must’ve been so hard to see the woman he mistreated and neglected, yet still loved with all his heart, move on and deny him the chance to make up for lost time. As if that wasn’t enough, Strange is forced to confront another personal issue: himself. More specifically, the danger that everyone seems to believe he possesses. For example, later when Strange meets the Illuminati, each member makes it abundantly clear that Strange is a bad dude. This mainly stems from how their version of Strange, desperate to stop their Thanos, dreamwalked and caused an Incursion that destroyed another reality. Therefore, as punishment but also fear of Strange doing more harm, the Illuminati executed him. Even though our Strange pleaded with them and defended himself, everyone feared and distrusted the sorcerer too much to give him an ounce of credibility. But it gets even worse when Strange suddenly finds himself stranded in a collapsed world where another Strange has gone completely off the deep end, serving as a testament to the Illuminati’s concerns. With all of these things in mind, it becomes all the more satisfying when our Strange rises up against all the naysayers and negative beliefs. Every time someone calls him dangerous, he pushes through and finds a way to solve the problem in front of him. Even when he uses the forbidden practice of dreamwalking, he uses it to help defeat Wanda and save the multiverse. And the icing of the cake comes in the finale, when Strange fixes the broken watch that he received from Christine way back in 2016. At first, I hated that he changed such a unique symbol of his past, but now I’ve come to appreciate how it shows his willingness to let go and move on.
Setting aside Strange’s personal story, though, you’ll end up finding the rest of the story leaves too much to be desired. First, one thing that ticks me off to no end is how they portrayed the Illuminati. Long-story-short (for those of you who don’t know), the Illuminati in the comics are consisted of the smartest and/or most powerful heroes on Earth, such as Iron Man or Mr. Fantastic. In this movie, however, it’s honestly baffling how they ever defeated Thanos with how dumb and discoordinated they are. For example, five seconds after Wanda runs into the whole group, Mr. Fantastic (the smartest man alive, mind you) reveals their strongest member’s greatest power, which Wanda quickly exploits by removing his mouth. Instead of being calm like Black Bolt was trained to do, he freaks out and implodes his own head. After which, Wanda spaghettifies Mr. Fantastic, but takes an extra five minutes to kill Captain Marvel and a girl with a shield. Oh, and Professor X? One of the strongest psychics and leader of the X-Men? Wanda kills him in a psychic duel, his own element, in five seconds flat. This movie truly took some of the most iconic, powerful characters, and turned them into cannon fodder. Also, if Wanda can kill heroes like Mr. Fantastic or Black Bolt with no effort, how does it make sense that she struggled against Captain Carter of all people? It’s utterly ridiculous at best, and lazy writing at worst. Moving on, though, another issue I have with this film is Wanda’s character. As previously mentioned, the writers neglected so much about Wanda’s character arc and development. But what I also hate is how she seemed to utterly forget about Vision. In her show, we see how much she absolutely loves the synthezoid, telling him that he’s a part of her as well as a mixture of all her feelings. However, she spends the whole movie focused on her two boys and doesn’t even mention their father. Not even Strange or anyone else gives him so much as a namedrop. If Vision meant so much to Wanda, then he should’ve been just as much on her mind as Tommy and Billy were. Speaking of whom, Wanda’s whole plot to find them is kind of a lame storyline. I mean, after being influenced by an incredibly powerful but evil book, I would’ve expected something bigger. Again, like in comics such as “House of M,” Wanda’s sanity was so forgone that she literally wiped the existence of mutants from the face of reality. She even coordinated events to tear the Avengers apart in another story. But you’re telling me that all we get here is: “I’m gonna kill everyone just to find my kids.” Like, that’s it? You find a temple with evil rock monsters, all of which solidify your Scarlet Witch title, and yet you still just wanna find your kids? It’s not that I want her to turn evil and destroy the universe or anything, but for a horror-level movie of this scale, I would’ve expected way more from its villain. And again, even though her plight and background are sympathetic, it just doesn’t resonate with the audience nor make enough sense given her previously established character development.
Pro/Con #3: The Multiverse
Most people would disagree with this, but I personally love what they did with the multiverse here. It may be because we actually get the first project in a while that truly focuses on the multiverse itself, but it’s still fascinating to see additional new worlds and their different events. For instance, in the Illuminati’s world, we not only see a whole new group of “Avengers,” but also a lot more plant life and advanced technology. I mean, the city was mainly filled with trees, there was a free device that shows past memories, and the architecture is so unique and artistic! Plus, the fact that the Illuminati managed to defeat Thanos and prevent an “Endgame” level event is simply fascinating. After all, we already know what happened in “Infinity War” and “Endgame.” Therefore, fans get drawn in when they hear how Dr. Strange used a forbidden, powerful, and previously unknown ability to help defeat Thanos. Plus, with an entirely new cast of heroes taking down a massive threat is always attention-grabbing. The real kicker is that Strange’s method, while helpful, actually destroyed another universe and caused his former friends to kill him. Speaking of which, I love how this movie added more lore to the multiverse such as Strange’s aforementioned method of dreamwalking. It was already intriguing when they touched the idea of dreams as windows into other realities, but the fact that you can actually control other variants of yourself from a whole universe away? That is pretty awesome! It’s also convenient since you can still use your powers through the variant, like what Wanda did with hers. In addition, while I’m honestly still struggling to grasp the concept, I also admire the bit about Incursions. I find it to be an interesting take on the multiverse because Incursions are the apparent results of when universes literally collide, due to someone from another universe impacting the one they visited too much. The evil Strange’s world is a great example, because that Strange dreamwalked so much that it ended up destroying his own universe, with everything swirling into the sky and everything folding in on itself. Such a catastrophe adds more stakes to the whole multiverse saga, especially with many variants set to appear in “Avengers: Doomsday.” With Dr. Doom on the warpath, how will he be able to conquer our reality without causing an Incursion? How can our heroes hope to stop him without causing one of their own?
Only time will tell.
Yet for all the promise that this concept possesses, this movie continues to repeat the same mistake that was made in the past few projects. To put it simply, this movie fails yet again to properly set up the next “Endgame.” For example, in the Infinity Saga, we had a very clear and consistent storyline: we have a few origin stories or solo adventures, introduced to one infinity stone at a time, all while setting up the threat of Thanos. In the multiverse saga, we’ve been told that Kang the Conqueror would be the next big bad, but then was replaced by Dr. Doom. However, up until this point, we’ve had way too many Disney+ shows and barely any movies that so much as namedropping either villain. Much less give a hint of their universe-threatening plan. “Multiverse of Madness” is no exception, because while it delves into the multiverse, it might as well be its own adventure and separate from the rest of the saga. This is mainly due to its primary focus on the one-dimensional war between Wanda and Strange, where she goes on her “off-the-deep-end” crusade to find her children, finds a literal temple made for her, but sacrifices herself to fix her mistakes. Therefore, this leads to a painful lack of high stakes, and nothing memorable enough to register as a piece of the puzzle. To make it worse, instead of rectifying this in the end-credits scene, we get some random lady who pops up and cuts a hole into the Dark Dimension. Normally, anyone in this situation would at least have a hint of hesitation, but Strange pretty much agrees on the spot. Clearly, this scene was meant to pull us to the edge of our seats, but it only gives us more questions than answers. For example, while comic book fans would recognize this woman as Clea (the niece of Dormammu and the love interest of Strange in the comics), most other fans won’t have the same realization. Especially since she has literally never appeared in any MCU project until this movie. Further, if she’s recruiting him to stop an incursion he caused, then why are they going to the Dark Dimension? How does Dormammu fit into this? What does any of this have to do with Dr. Doom? Most importantly, how does this contribute to the overall story of the multiverse saga? Because otherwise, the events of this whole movie have been largely forgotten and overshadowed by the countless other shows and movies still being released to this day.
Conclusion
Overall, I would argue that this movie isn’t terrible but it’s definitely not great either. Again, I can appreciate how they handled Dr. Strange and the multiverse, but I absolutely hate how they handled Wanda and the general story. All I can say is that I hope there is some relevant callback to the events of this film in future projects, because Marvel is gonna lose a lot of fans if they don’t get their act together. But hey, if nothing else, we can at least appreciate seeing zombie Strange and his “Dementor” cloak right?
