SPOILERS AHEAD – The MCU’s Phase 4 continues with more of the Master of the Mystic Arts, Doctor Stephen Strange. In this outing, horror auteur Sam Raimi injects his signature directorial style throughout much of the movie. On the heels of Sony’s bleak box office Morbius effort, does Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness get things back on track with comic book movies?
Mainly, yes! While not perfect, this is a very entertaining horror/fantasy which blends something old with something new.
This is a story of a protagonist and an antagonist wrestling with the same questions about happiness, agency, and boundaries. Our protagonist, Stephen Strange, is having difficulties accepting his love interest Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams) has moved on and is marrying another man. Wanda Maximoff is having even more difficulty moving on from losing her WandaVision family and becomes hellbent on acquiring her two songs from another universe, by stealing the abilities of multiverse-jumper America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez).
Through the acquisition of the Darkhold, an ancient spell book, Wanda has become even more powerful but at the cost of her empathy. Wanda only cares about reuniting with her two sons in a real sense, and doesn’t care about the means, only the ends. One of the chilling moments in the movie is a beat-up and bleeding Wanda doggedly pursuing Strange, Chavez, and Palmer through subterranean tunnels, having dispatched several powerful members of the Illuminati and some Ultron-bots.
This Wanda-plot is the driving force of the movie and Elizabeth Olsen has many great acting moments throughout. She pulls off being crazy, but not in a maniacal way — more of a measured, calculated madness based on motherly love instead of material greed or revenge. There is a secondary plot with Stephen Strange meeting a multiverse Christine Palmer and getting to say what has long been in his heart, and coming to some peace with his feelings.
The Illuminati element introduces the concept of an incursion, a collision of two or more universes resulting in catastrophic destruction (similar in theory to the convergence of Thor: The Dark World). This is likely setting up both the third Doctor Strange movie and possibly a big MCU cross-over event in the future.
Financially, the first weekend shows great returns and this will be the highest grossing movie of 2022 so far by the end of May, but critics have not embraced this movie as warmly as they did Spider-Man: No Way Home. Once fans discovered there was 35 minutes or more cut from MOM, they definitely seem interested in a director’s cut, but it is unclear if that will ever see the light of day in any universe.
I’ll end with a warning to parents: there have been many audience members reporting children being very scared and very disturbed by multiple sequences in this movie. It is probably not for young children. There is graphic violence, a few jump scares, and some creepy sequences punctuated by the score. If your kids are prone to nightmares, steer clear of this.
