Review: 'Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness' is a fun, dark ride through the MCU, and a perfect fit for director Sam Raimi
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is at its best when it’s toying with genres outside the superhero action movie — such as the patriotic war movie in “Captain America: The First Avenger,” the political thriller in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” or now flirting with elements of horror in the fiendishly entertaining “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.”
(I will attempt to avoid spoilers or any details that haven’t appeared in the movie’s trailer.)
We first see our title hero, surgeon-turned-sorcerer Doctor Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), running through a chaotic starscape of floating debris, accompanied by a young woman (Xochitl Gomez), trying to outrun a flaming monster to get to some unidentified glowing thing.
The audience ultimately sees this chase didn’t really happen — but was a dream Strange was having. Or was it?
When the young woman, who identifies herself as America Chavez, shows up not in Strange’s dream but on his Manhattan street, being pursued by a different tentacled monster, the good sorcerer wonders what is up.
Strange goes to ask an old acquaintance, Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), a question: “What do you know about the multiverse?” She replies that her husband, Vision, “believed it was dangerous.”
(That exchange is in the trailer. I will add that if you haven’t watched “WandaVision” on Disney+, you should — both because it’s really good, and because it sets up a few things that play out here.)
Director Sam Raimi, who kickstarted the superhero movie with the Tobey Maguire “Spider-Man” movies, and screenwriter Michael Waldron (who was the show runner on Marvel’s “Loki”) take viewers on a ride through several multiverses, with a visual inventiveness that’s just breathtaking. Yes, the filmmaking team known as Daniels recently plowed through a different multiverse, in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” — and one wonders if the teams consulted each other or took the same drugs or something.
Many of the multiverses allow Strange to encounter some faces from his 2016 screen debut, “Doctor Strange,” such as Benedict Wong, Rachel McAdams and Chiwetel Ejiofor. (Again, they are all in the trailer.) In one universe, Strange encounters characters he hasn’t met before — and there’s not a price you could name that would make me spill the beans about that.
Dark magic and a book of spells are ideas that are right up Raimi’s alley, since they were focal points of his “Evil Dead” movies. Raimi applies some of his horror skills to this story’s spookier passages, with some terrifying CGI imagery and some unsettling camerawork.
Cumberbatch, in his sixth movie as Strange, seems to have found the battered soul of the character — someone coming to terms with the idea that being a superhero doesn’t mean you get everything you want. He’s well matched by McAdams, as Strange’s almost-paramour, and Wong as his most trusted friend. The standout, though, is 16-year-old Gomez, who channels both the confusion and determination of a kid just learning to harness a dangerous superpower.
“Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” also shows the continuation of an encouraging trend: Hiring directors and letting them put their filmmaking stamp on the MCU. It didn’t work too well for Chloé Zhao, adding her sunsets and naturalist style to “Eternals,” but here, Raimi’s dark manic force fits the material as well as Strange’s cloak.
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‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’
★★★1/2
Opens Friday, May 6, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, frightening images and some language. Running time: 126 minutes.