Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Review – An Unexpected Turn for the MCU

“We are excited to see what more this builds onto as Phase Four and beyond unravels.”

The concept of the multiverse has been teased as far back as 2019 in Spider-Man: Far From Home. After tipping our toe in with the likes of Loki and Far From Home sequel Spider-Man: No Way Home, finally we delve more heavily into this side of the fandom with the release of the second Doctor Strange movie.

The plot itself is quite spoiler-y, so we’ll try and be as vague as possible. Set a few years after Avengers: Endgame, Multiverse of Madness features sees Benedict Cumberbatch’s Dr. Stephen Strange teaming up with Xochitl Gomez‘s America Chavez, a young girl who has the ability to travel through the multiverse. With an unexpected villain hot on America’s tail to take her power for their own personal gain, she and Strange find themselves travelling through said Multiverse for a way to turn the tables on their antagonist.

It goes without saying, Cumberbatch is very much at home with his take on the Master of the Mystic Arts at this point. He returns to play him with as much flourish as ever. We also have a clear sense of character development for him too. We see how Strange is still dealing with the part he played in the events of the Infinity War/Endgame storyline. This mixes really well into the overall plot as he wrestles with the idea of if there really is ever an alternative way to save the day without casualties or worse.

Gomez is a very strong co-lead for such a young star. She holds her own well against Cumberbatch and is a fun presense on screen. We can only hope we’ll get more of her in future. Someone else we’ll be happy to see more of is Benedict Wong’s Wong. He is as fun to watch as ever and he gets a nice part to play through the film. He isn’t overly used but when he is, he takes the scene for himself.

The highlight performance, without a doubt, is Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff, now christened The Scarlet Witch (finally) after the events of WandaVision. We aren’t going to speak too much about her character arc, but she goes on a brilliantly unexpected journey that follows on beautifully from when we last seen her. This is one for the books, and her story plays out very well. There are other great character appearances, but we’ll leave that one for another time. We’ll just give a little nod later in the review.

There are, unfortunately, a few missteps when it comes to our characters. Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Mordo for one. Though it is great to see the character after six years off screen, we can’t help feeling that his appearance doesn’t get used correctly. We won’t go too deep into it, but the way this character has been built up and with how important he is in the comics, it should be him as a main villain or not at all. Here, he falls between, and it doesn’t feel right. There is also Rachel McAdams’ Christine Palmer. As with the first Doctor Strange, she is integral to the main hero’s story. But as a character she is very yawn worthy. It’s another case of an amazing actress being put in a role where she can’t flex as much as she should. A real shame.

The plot is surprisingly quite simple, which is perfect considering the twists and turns of traveling here, there and everywhere. One thing is for sure; there was no messing around when mentioning this is the MCU’s first Horror outing. Expect a few light jump scares and some graphic moments. Nothing overly terrifying, but enough for it to be marked as a nice new direction for the MCU. Another added plus is the use of cameos that has been long rumoured as a big part of the film. The story isn’t overloaded with them, which can go either way depending on what you want from the film. For me, in the case of surprise faces, less is more here. With those who do pop up, it’s much better than having a few dozen C-list cameos.

The only downside with the story? It doesn’t deliver on the title so much. There’s certainly a lot of madness, but if you’re going to put “multiverse” in the title, give us a lot of it. As much as Strange and Chavez travel around a lot, there actually didn’t seem to be enough multiverse travel really, except for our sequence which echoes back to Strange’s dimension trip in the first film. But is that really enough of a pay-off?

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We now get to our director, the one and only Sam Raimi. Spider-Man fans will know Raimi is a veteran when it comes to superhero flicks, having directed the original Tobey Maguire trilogy. This is actually his first return to the genre since then. It’s great to see him using some of the same filming techniques that we saw back then. Just in the way of using set pieces and camera angling. He also uses his Horror strengths to have a few aforementioned jump scares. But worry not, they’re not heart explode worthy, more of a quick jolt. He gauged it well.

Raimi is also sure to still honour what previous director Scott Derrickson did with the first Strange film. There is always the worry when swapping directors for a solo character’s film series that the new person in command will change everything and it will almost feel like a slightly new take. Sometimes that can be a good thing (COUGH COUGH Thor: Ragnarok COUGH) but if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Thankfully, Raimi carries on Derrickson’s through line whilst still giving his own vision.

The only aspect the great and powerful Raimi (let’s see who gets that reference) faults with is the runtime. This film should have been longer. A stretched runtime can be accepted in an MCU film nowadays, so use that where suitable. The film paces very well, but it still felt a tad shorter than it should have been. We could have seen a few more universe with that robbed time, Raimi.

The musical score is also something to be noted. As said, Raimi didn’t erase a whole lot of what Derrickson introduced. In that respect, we do get a few notes of the usual Doctor Strange theme here and there. We also get a little taste of some very nostalgic theme music when a particular cameo pops up. Seriously, I’m keeping tight lipped, but real fans will know it when they hear it. There is a downside with the overall score of this film though. Usually you can walk out of a film with the film’s main theme being what you hum on the drive home. In this case, the score wasn’t recognisable enough. As beautiful as Danny Elfman’s music is, with this it feels all over the place sadly.

This film further explores the fallout of Avengers: Endgame three years on, this time from Strange’s perspective, whilst finally taking us full…well, half full…throttle into the multiverse concept that’s been alluded to over the past few years. The slow burn we felt with the Infinity Stones is definitely there again, and we are excited to see what more this builds onto as Phase Four and beyond unravels.

Overall, this is a satisfying film that gives us what we were promised and has us enjoying certain characters on screen and makes sure to develop some in a brilliant way. We unfortunately just don’t get as much as we’d hoped in some respects and some characters feel like they could have been used more effectively in the story, or even could have been of more use in a future outing.

It is a 8.2/10 from us.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is now showing in cinemas.