REVIEW #178 Doctor Strange and The Multiverse of Madness (2022)

The Multiverse of Madness sees Doctor Strange encounter America Chavez, a young girl who has the powers to travel to different universes. This encounter leads to Strange teaming up with the rest of the Sanctum Sanctorum to stop a powerful force hunting her. 

This highly anticipated sequel delivered some of the best scenes in the MCU so far! If you have read my previous reviews on Marvel projects my wish has always been to have darker tones and themes run through an otherwise lighthearted and fun universe. The Multiverse of Madness shows signs of this slowly happening at Marvel, it has the most brutal scene in the MCU as well as multiple scenes that incorporated horror like influences that worked incredibly well. I think the first act was definitely the weakest part of the film, the first scene kicked off the film with a bang but for about half an hour after it was a little uninteresting. However the final two acts were great and that’s where everything really kicked off, it was constant entertainment! There won’t be any spoilers in this review but the amount of cameos in the film was absolutely perfect, my concerns of over saturation weren’t necessary because their involvement was small in the grand scheme of things but it was so god damn cool and they were part of the biggest display of brutality Marvel fans have seen in the MCU. I do wish Marvel hadn’t released so many spoilers in the TV spots and trailers, apparently Kevin Feige wasn’t happy about that and rightly so, the audience needed to go in knowing far less than we did. That being said the actual storyline itself was pretty unexpected, I tried not to think of what the core storyline could be and I’m glad I did because I was pleasantly surprised. Now Elizabeth Olsen absolutely stole the show, Benedict Cumberbatch and Benedict Wong were great too but Olsen just brought so much to the film. The introduction of American Chavez has given us a really interesting character and Xochitl Gomez played the character well, I hope to see her in future projects very soon. The cinematography was fantastic 90% of the time, there were a couple of sketchy CGI moments, although like I said, the majority of the time this film displayed incredible visuals, taking us on a journey across the multiverse in spectacular fashion. The musical score stood out massively, it was brilliant and there’s one action sequence that incorporates musical notes so the actions have a direct effect on the musical score playing, it was such a clever scene! The character development was insane, the journey we’ve seen Wanda go on has been fantastic but even the exploration into Strange and his happiness, or perhaps lack of it, was a refreshing take on the character, showing true vulnerability underneath the egotistic person we’ve come to love. Overall it’s another solid addition to the MCU, as a fan I’m praying that we see more and more of these horror influences and hopefully we get to see more of the brutal nature of which these heroes/villains are capable of because there wasn’t one child in the packed cinema today, give us adults some R rated MCU content! Get out to watch this film in the cinema, it’s perfect for the big screen.

Overall 9/10

Thanks for reading. 

Callan