Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness Was Horrible (2024)

There comes a time when the events unfolding in a film become so ridiculous, all one can do is laugh. This was the case multiple times during Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness. I don’t know what I expected after discovering the writer to be directly from the team that made Loki. Needless to say, like Loki, it was a confusing mess that had me begging for the credits to roll. Additionally, Sam Raimi of the laughable Spider-Man 3 and over-the-top The Evil Dead was chosen to direct only after the original director stepped away. He had a big hand in the rewrite of the script, and it shows in the most horrible way.

Truly, I don’t know where to begin. So much about this movie went wrong, so I suppose I’ll start with what went right.

It follows Doctor Strange and America Chavez, a dimension-hopping young woman whose powers are the epitome of plot convenience. Essentially, they try to evade Wanda Maximoff, recently insane due to the losses she suffered in WandaVision and her encounters with The Dark Hold. Wanda wants to steal America’s powers to travel the Multiverse and find a reality where her children exist. Doctor Strange wants to save America’s life, and prevent the cataclysmic collision of all universes involved.

I won’t go into the plot’s finer details, mostly because there weren’t many. The plot was pretty straightforward but managed to become convoluted, losing direction due to weak characterization and unclear limitations in the world of the story. There were fights, a few multidimensional travel sequences, and some cameos from unexpected characters living in different realities. Marvel used this film to establish the existence of many different dimensions, deeming our Earth the comic-book famous Earth-616.

There was a lot of CGI, and from an artistic standpoint, it was visually stunning. Additionally, the performances of Benedict Cumberbatch and Elizabeth Olsen were breathtaking. Despite weak writing, they did what they could with the lines, and created a delightful watching experience for audiences. I can’t…