Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: Saving the universes, one trope at a time

By Jim Slotek

Rating: B-minus

Is it possible to suffer from apocalypse fatigue?

It used to be that superhero movies – and Marvel Cinematic Universe movies in particular – were about saving the Earth.

Then, they were about saving the universe (Avengers: Endgame). Now they’re about saving the universes.

Welcome to the “multiverse,” which, like a drug for writers, was once a kick and is now a crutch. After the creative and commercial successes of the artfully animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and its live-action inspiration Spider-Man: No Way Home, comes the less-inspired and overly expository Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (even the title is wordy).

Benedict Cumberbatch invokes the hoary hosts of Hoggoth

Maybe you need multiple Spider-Men to make it work (although the crowning achievement in the current multiverse craze – the non-Marvel Michelle Yeoh starrer Everything Everywhere All at Once leaves those others in the dust with its warmth amid the madness).

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a mostly joyless exercise whose only saving grace is the mordantly silly touch of director Sam Raimi, who delivers ghouls, demons, necromancy, imaginatively surrealist backdrops and at least one rampaging monster that looks like it escaped from an episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. For many, this is entertainment enough.

The movie picks and chooses things that worked in those previous Spider-Man efforts, including drive-by glimpses of cartoon universes and even goofier things (I imagine a writers’ room where everyone chews gummies and says things like, “What if there were a universe where everyone was made of paint?”)

It also, like No Way Home, introduces alternate universe versions of superhero characters, played in cameos by actors whose presence is supposed to be a surprise. You can google the spoilers if you want.

And yet, that part is missing the feel-good aspect of the “Spider-Men” meet-up in No Way Home.

Of late, most Marvel movies require some familiarity with the previous dozen or so films. Multiple references to “Thanos” and a plot involving The Scarlet Witch that springs directly from the Disney+ series WandaVision, makes Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness decidedly not a movie for newbies.

For all its “out there” intentions, this is a film that follows the familiar chase-the-McGuffin plot – you know, the “We’ve got to find the Book of Hogwash and use its power!” trope. 

In this case, there are three – The Darkhold (bad), the Book of Vishanti (good), and a universe-hopping teen girl named America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), who is a vessel for great power. That power is coveted by a deranged Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), who has been sipping a little too much Darkhold and wants the power to find a universe where she has kids, just like she had in WandaVision.

I know, I know. She could just have children the usual way, or conjure them up, just as she did in WandaVision in the first place. Don’t slow us down with details.

Instead, she fights Doctor Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), America and Strange’s friend, Sorcerer Supreme Wong (Benedict Wong), through different universes, killing and destroying as she goes, as each chases their own private talisman of power.

For all its bursts of dark, imaginative imagery, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has little heart. It’s a random series of violent events that are hard to care about – in this or any other universe.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Directed by Sam Raimi. Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen and Xochitl Gomez. Opens in theatres, Friday, May 6.