Just like with No Way Home, I managed to spoil like 90% of this before I saw it. But for those of you who didn’t and have been avoiding the incredibly spoilery promotional material, I will be sure to mark when I dip into spoilers.
I know I said in my last post that I would put out the Anchorman Ruddtrospective this week. Or at least I think I said that? But the point is that I lied, and I will definitely do that this week. I maybe promise. I just finished up my first year of college, and my camp job doesn’t start for a few weeks. So you can have my uninterrupted musings until then. I might even bump things up to three posts a week. Maybe. We’ll see. Anyway, disclaimer over. Review time.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Wong, Xochitl Gomez, and Rachel McAdams. It also features [REDACTED], [REDACTED], [REDACTED], [REDACTED], [REDACTED], and [REDACTED]. It was directed by Sam Raimi, who is known for directing the Evil Dead movies, as well as Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, and Spider-Man 3. So it’s kind of cool that he came back to do this. I’ve probably mentioned before that I’m not really a fan of those movies, except for the second one, which I think is fine. But I still appreciate his work. And the script for this was written by Michael Waldron, who wrote and created Loki. And according to IMDb, he also co-wrote one of my favorite episodes of Rick and Morty: The Old Man and the Seat. And he created Heels, that wrestling show with the guy from Arrow. So good for him, getting stuff done.
My Thoughts Going In –
Usually when I write reviews like this I try not to call attention to when specifically I’m writing certain parts of it. Partially because I don’t see why anyone would really care, and I also think it’s kind of obvious when I pause a piece of writing and come back to it later. There’s typically a shift in tone and opinion. I actually started writing my review of The Flash months ago when it was supposed to come out this summer, because my hatred of what they’re doing with that movie is so all-encompassing that I believe it would consume me if I wrote it all out at once. I don’t mean I started reviewing the film, I just started listing the reasons why I think(and know) that it will be terrible. And I thought it would be interesting to do that for other big superhero movies. To write my thoughts going in and see how they change. So everything I’ve written so far has been pre-viewing of the movie. For months I have seen trailer after trailer and watched people all over the internet gush about how excited they are for this. And I’ve continued to think about how little I care. I don’t really want to see a movie that’s just full of cameos for the sake of cameos. Which is what this is apparently going to be, from everything I’ve seen. People think Tom Cruise will be in it for some reason? And basically everyone who’s ever played a comic book character is rumored to appear. And I don’t really need to see that. I’d rather see Doctor Strange going to a bunch of weird universes. I thought that some of the returning characters in No Way Home were only in it so they could make more references to past movies, and I really hope that isn’t what this is. But also cameos here and there are fun in moderation. I’m a Thor: The Dark World defender, and Chris Evans’s cameo in that is hilarious. So we’ll see. And I’ve also gotten a little hyped now that it’s the week of release. I already spoiled a lot of what’s going on for myself because I have no self-control. But I’m sure there’s more that I don’t know about. To recap: I’m cautiously optimistic about this. And I love Elizabeth Olsen and Benedict Wong.
General Non-Spoilery Thoughts –
Hello! I have now seen this movie. And I thought it was pretty good. As always I have some complaints, because I’ll never be happy. But it was fine. I will say that the title isn’t as accurate as I thought it would be. I expected them to visit a lot more universes than they actually did, and I guess I’ll know after a second viewing whether I dislike that or not. As I said above, I was interested to see what Sam Raimi could do with this. I may not like the Spider-Man trilogy, but it cannot be denied that his use of practical effects and ability to craft thrilling action sequences is unparalleled. But the script wasn’t written by him and you can tell from the trailer that this is mostly CGI. So I was a little worried that his style would get lost in the mayhem. That didn’t end up happening, though. I’m not entirely sure how much input he had in all of this, because he was hired to replace a guy who was going too off-book for Marvel’s taste. But it still very much feels like his movie. It’s weird how well he fits in to the MCU style, considering that he made his superhero movies well before it was a thing. The main reason I dislike those is because I find them to be so depressing and schmaltzy. But when you take his style and combine it with the wacky off the wall fun tone that is built into the MCU, I think it works really well. And since only the Hulk is allowed to not have a trilogy, I wouldn’t mind it at all if they brought him back for Doctor Strange 3(Not italicized because it’s hypothetical). He might not want to do another one though. We’ll see. Before I get into spoilers I’ll break things down by character and then talk about the action, score, and look of the movie in general. I’m not really gonna break down the plot too much because there’s really nothing I can say about it. But there’s a multiversal adventure. So yeah. And I will say that if you, like me, expected this movie to be cameopalooza and just the most insane thing you’ve ever seen because the trailers maybe made you think they’d only shown you the very surface? Maybe try to temper your expectations a bit.
Characters –
Stephen Strange AKA Doctor Strange – Benedict Cumberbatch
I’ve never been a huge fan of this character in the movies. Like he’s fine and all, but he’s kind of just a slightly more arrogant version of Tony Stark who can do magic. I don’t know if I mentioned him when I did my No Way Home review, but he was fine in that. I think so far my favorite Doctor Strange appearance was in Thor: Ragnarok. He’s good in Infinity War too. And he’s fine in this. I like Benedict Cumberbatch in general because he just seems like a funny guy, but in terms of roles he’s played, none of them have ever really clicked for me. There was one line in this though that really got my attention, because I didn’t expect them to touch on this at all. This isn’t really a spoiler, by the way. Early on in the film someone asks Strange if there was really only one way to stop Thanos, in all of the infinite pathways he looked at. And this question kind of makes him stop in his tracks and think for a second before he says yes. I really enjoyed this moment. Because you can see in his eyes that he still questions this himself, whether the collective trauma that everyone on Earth went through was necessary. And maybe there were a few alternate paths that ended with him dying permanently, but he wasn’t as selfless as he thought and chose the one that ended in Tony’s death instead. This in turn made me think back to that scene in Infinity War where Tony asks Strange why he gave up the stone to save him. Of course Strange doesn’t correct him, but that’s the exact opposite of what he did. He’s still sacrificing Tony, but later down the line and in a way that Tony thinks is his choice. Tony just hasn’t outlived his use yet. And I’m sure this is part of why a lot of people criticize his portrayal in No Way Home, because we’ve seen this guy be very calculating and logical. But he makes mistakes all the time. He could’ve made one in Infinity War and we don’t know it. So I believe that this guy would take a risk and try to fix the life of a kid he likes, especially because he basically orchestrated the death of the kid’s role model. This was all a very long way of saying that I think this character is okay, and this movie made me appreciate him slightly more. Also he does more weird magic stuff in this than he did in the last one, and they didn’t just throw in a mirror dimension scene where a bunch of buildings go all Inception just for the sake of having that shot in the movie. I’m looking at you, No Way Home. Maybe instead of putting that scene in there you could have developed the villains more than the .5% that you did. Oh, and you probably know from the trailers that there are a few different versions of Doctor Strange. They’re all fine. Benedict is a good enough actor that he can pull it off, but there’s also one Doctor Strange that’s really only different because he has a ponytail. If you have a male friend who has a ponytail that looks like it was stapled to the back of their head like this one, you should take them to see this. I guarantee you they’ll cut it off then and there and you’ll be able to be seen in public with them once more.
America Chavez AKA America Chavez – Xochitl Gomez
Apparently America Chavez was created just under eleven years ago. Who knew? Probably not a lot of people. Other than Wikipedia, of course, which is where I got that information. So you can see this in the trailers, but America Chavez has the ability to open star-shaped portals into other dimensions, and this is how Doctor Strange ends up traveling the multiverse. Except she can’t control it until she believes in herself and blahbity blahbity blah. I know that Miles’s story arc in Into the Spider-Verse isn’t super original, but it felt pretty fresh and fun in that, whereas here I kind of felt it was just a watered down version of that. But Xochitl is fine in this. She isn’t really playing a character though, she’s kind of just a slightly more fleshed out than usual narrative device. I’m probably being too harsh on her character and I’m sure my opinion will soften after a second watch, but I thought she was just generic and not that interesting. In the comics her character is a lot sassier and strong-willed and just a general bad-ass. She’s also great friends with Kate Bishop, another comics character that was portrayed as sassy and strong-willed until she was put in the MCU, where she became a fast-talking idiot who can’t do anything right and needs Jeremy Renner to clean up all her messes. I don’t have any particular love for the character of America Chavez in the comics. I don’t dislike her, I just think she’s an okay character. But I can’t imagine that any fans of her would enjoy watching two hours of her acting all scared and whining about her sad backstory until someone finally tells her to believe in herself and that makes it all okay. But again, none of that is the fault of Xochitl Gomez, who did a great job performing the lines she was given, and I hope she’s cast in more things off the back of this. Also there are a few times in this movie where people ask if America is okay, and every time it happened I wanted to scream “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?! NO, AMERICA IS NOT OKAY!!! FOR MULTIPLE HORRIBLE REASONS!!!” Anyway, I don’t think you should name fictional characters after the names of countries. Or real people either. I’m not a huge fan of my name, but this would be a very different blog if I had to call it Too Many Servings of Yemen or Too Many Servings of Scotland.
Wanda Maximoff AKA The Scarlet Witch – Elizabeth Olsen
I don’t really remember what I thought of Elizabeth Olsen when she made her MCU debut in Age of Ultron. I don’t really remember what I thought about in 2015, but I was thirteen at the time so I was a really bad person. Seventh graders are the most horrible people and I was the worst of them all. I never really cared about that character much either in the comics or the movies until WandaVision, when I realized that Elizabeth Olsen is the best and should be given every award. Without spoiling anything, a lot of this movie is about her, and kind of works as another slightly longer episode of WandaVision. And I’m not going to complain about that, even if Paul Bettany wasn’t in it. I don’t have much else to say. She’s an amazing actress and there’s nobody else who could bring that character to life the way she does. If you haven’t watched WandaVision and you’re going to see this movie, go watch that show right now. But all you really need to remember about this character is that she’s lost her parents, her brother, and her children. She’s lost the love of her life three times. And Hawkeye is one of her mentors and friends. That amount of trauma is bound to fuck someone up pretty bad. Marvel has gotten really good at changing my mind on characters I thought were boring by throwing relentless trauma at them. Because now Scarlet Witch and Thor are probably my two favorite MCU characters.
Wong AKA The Sorcerer Supreme – Hollywood Legend Benedict Wong
Speaking of favorite MCU characters, I will now talk about the man who deserves his own movie. I was telling my dad the other day that I would pay so much money that I don’t have in order to force Marvel to make a movie about Wong, M’Baku, and Red Guardian. Go ahead and throw JK Simmons in there to yell about Spider-Man too and I will be a very happy man. That’s all I want. Cancel everything else and just make something with all the funny side characters. There’s not much to say about Wong in this. Marvel puts him in movies to do three very specific things:
1. Spout exposition and mumble a bit so you never understand 100% of what he’s saying.
2. Wisecrack and call Strange on his bullshit while being a badass.
3. Be literally the best.
They revealed in No Way Home that he became Sorcerer Supreme by default when Wong blipped, which makes so much sense. He’s so much more competent and trustworthy than Strange is. If he had done the spell in No Way Home, Zendaya would still know who Peter Parker is. Anyway, Wong is still very funny and I wish he was in this more.
Christine Palmer – Rachel McAdams
Bucking the early trend of quickly forgotten love interests that appear in either one or two movies and are never seen again, Rachel McAdams has returned to make Doctor Strange regret letting her get away. He kind of tolerated her in his movie and now that What If…? has decided he would destroy a whole universe for her, he loves her more than anything in the world. I don’t really enjoy that yet again she’s there just to provide emotional support and motivation for Doctor Strange and does very little else, but at least she wasn’t a one and done. And I like Rachel McAdams, so I’m not gonna complain too much. I will say that in one of the universes you see them travel to in the trailers she has red hair, and that wig does not look good on her. There is a surprisingly large amount of movies with Rachel McAdams and guys that would destroy timelines just to be with her. It’s surprising in that there’s more than one. There’s the Doctor Strange movies and his episode of What If…?. There’s The Time Traveler’s Wife. And my personal favorite, About Time. That’s a great movie, but if you happen to have a dad you will not be able to get through it without sobbing for days. Again I’ve gotten off track. Kudos to Rachel McAdams for making this boring character interesting. And I believe those are all the characters I can talk about without spoiling the movie, so let’s move on.
Action/Horror Elements –
There are a lot of great action sequences in the MCU and there are a lot of bland and boring action sequences in the MCU. It varies from movie to movie. But they never really determine my enjoyment of a movie. If we get a cool action sequence, then great. All I care about is seeing a good and fun movie with interesting characters. At the same time, though, good action sequences are always fun to see. Sometimes they get stuck in a pattern of showing us the same things over and over. For instance, each Avengers ends with everyone fighting a faceless army of some sort. Doctor Strange had some fun stuff in it, but a lot of it was just people hitting each other with magic whips and shields and stuff. But this one really ramps things up in terms of inventive magic. There’s lots of blasting, as always, but a lot of new stuff as well. There’s one particular sequence where I thought two characters were going to blast energy at each other, and the energy would meet in the middle and wave one way and then the other way before exploding and sending the characters in different directions. And that didn’t happen, thank god. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m so sick of seeing that particular sequence in every Marvel movie all the time. It isn’t interesting at all. If you’re writing a movie currently, please please please don’t put that in. Do something more creative. But only if you’re writing the script for some big budget superhero/sci-fi/fantasy/action flick and you need something to copy and paste in before getting back to writing generic dialogue. If you’re writing some slice of life comedy about people trying to discover who they are, feel free to put that in, because that would be hilarious. Like if you’re touching up the script for Bridget Jones 4(Italicized because it’s an inevitability) and you need a new way for Colin Firth and Hugh Grant to fight for the love of Renée Zellweger. Definitely have them blast shit at each other to their heart’s content. And yes, I’m well aware that Hugh Grant’s character died in the third movie. No need to message in. I know my stuff. Anyway, there’s some interesting stuff in here that’s really fun to watch. And there are some elements of horror as well. A lot of people seem to think the gore and fight scenes in this are more intense than I do, but Sam Raimi definitely brought his horror background into it in a good way. It’s all kind of a step up from the usual weightlessness CGI leaping and punching that we usually get.
Score and Cinematography –
The score for this movie was written by legendary composer Danny Elfman, longtime friend and collaborator of Sam Raimi’s. I’ll have to listen to it independently of the movie to know what I think, because there are a few times that it just gets lost in the madness of it all. I don’t really have a lot of thoughts about it though. There are some bits where he just drops in electric guitar riffs randomly throughout the score, and I wish that happened more often. It’s definitely not bad, but at this exact moment I don’t find it to be as memorable as his work on Batman or any of his other hundreds of great compositions. I do like him though. He’s very talented obviously. Just listen to the theme for The Simpsons. There was just a lot going on in this and I lost it a few times. In terms of cinematography, I was incredibly surprised to find that a lot of the shots in this movie are just incredibly well-done and cool to look at. Nothing against anyone who works for Marvel, but their effects are always a mixed bag, and that tends to overshadow the creative camera angles and shots being used in the movie. But there’s a lot of great camera work in this. I don’t know how you can get creative with stuff like that when the majority of the film is rendered after the fact, but again Sam Raimi’s style has shone through. John Mathieson, the DOP(Director of Photography), also did a great job. He’s worked on a bunch of other movies I enjoy, like Logan, X-Men: First Class, and August Rush. So good for him just quietly killing it for years.
Alright, you know the drill.
I’m gonna type a few spaced-out sentences in bold red font and then drop a poster so you don’t scroll down and spoil the movie for yourself on accident.
But each sentence is basically just a rip-off of the end of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off where he asks why you’re still here.
It’ll be like “Guys, really, you need to leave and not spoil this movie for yourself if you are in fact still reading this, and you probably never were in the first place.”
I’ll pepper in some self-deprecative and unnecessary comments about how nobody reads my blog, tell you to leave one more time, and then call it a day. So yeah, let’s get going.
What? You mean I wasted the space I reserved for this stupid song and dance by explaining it to you even though you already understand what I’m doing? And that this song and dance in itself is yet another unnecessary addition to this multi-layered and completely stupid meta joke? And I should just get on with the review and stop wasting all my stupid material on this dumb bit? Ugh. Fine.
What are you still doing here, don’t spoil the movie for yourself, blah blah blah.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Spoiler Review
Quick plot rundown. The movie begins with America and ponytail Strange running from these weird blob monsters who are trying to steal America’s powers before her and Strange can retrieve this mystical item called the Book of Vishanti that gets destroyed toward the end of the movie because it’s just another MacGuffin put in place to push the plot forward. The presence of this book is largely irrelevant. The monsters are about to steal America’s powers when ponytail Strange decides the only way to save the multiverse is to kill her by doing that generic “suck the energy out of the body” effect. She breaks free and makes a portal as the monster kills ponytail Strange and the two of them tumble into universe 616, AKA the main MCU universe. They reveal that this is it’s number later in the film, which I don’t like at all. Mainly because that’s the number for the regular comics universe, and I’d like to think they exist in the same multiverse. But who cares. So she ends up in the universe we usually watch movies about, where our Doctor Strange is attending the wedding of his old flame, Dr. Christine Palmer. While there he talks to her about how he loves her and should’ve been better, and he also talks to an old colleague by the name of Nicodemus West, who questions whether Strange chose the right path. During all this the streets of New York are attacked by a giant one-eyed squid monster who is trying to kill America Chavez. Strange and Wong defeat the beast and tear it’s eye out before questioning America and dedicating their time to ensuring that her powers do not fall into the wrong hands.
Strange’s immediate instinct, despite never interacting with her in any prior film, is to ask for help from Wanda Maximoff, whose most recent heroic endeavor was enslaving a town out of grief. Remember when I said it was okay for Strange to be an idiot? In their conversation, Strange tells Wanda that America is being held at Kamartaj, the stronghold of sorcerers which was introduced in the first film. Wanda suggests that he bring America to her farm. It takes her a few seconds to realize that Strange never told her the name of the girl, and the illusion starts to fall away. Gone is the beautiful tree-laden vista, replaced by a grove of twisted black trees against a blood-red sky. The ominous ending of WandaVision turns out to be pretty much the entire pitch for this movie: Wanda becoming exponentially powerful while her astral form searches the Darkhold for a way to be with her children once more. From there Wanda destroys Kamartaj and kills every sorcerer except for Wong and Strange, which causes Strange and America to escape into the multiverse.
Now in the trailers, you probably saw a scene of the two of them tumbling through different dimensions. My least favorite thing about this movie is that’s pretty much it. They tumble through some weird universes and then land in this weird, colorful flowery dimension where they stay for the majority of the film. Which kind of says to me that the title came before the story and all the reshoots. This isn’t a multiverse of madness. It’s a multiversal adventure, but there’s very little multiverse fun to be had. I still enjoyed this film, but it didn’t live up to it’s promise. Everything Everywhere All At Once also mostly took place in an IRS building, but they managed to show us hundreds of other universes. And of those universes we at least got to see long involved sequences in about twenty of them. So that was frustrating. But in this universe Strange learns that he died stopping Thanos and is drugged and brought before the Illuminati by Chiwetel Ejiofor as this universe’s Baron Mordo. I’ll talk about the Illuminati in a bit. Wanda inhabits the version of her in this universe by dreamwalking, which is a spell you aren’t meant to cast. She kills the Illuminati and captures America, while shoving Strange and this universe’s version of Christine into a sort of nowhere universe. Strange defeats another version of Doctor Strange and inhabits the corpse of ponytail Strange so he can fight Wanda and tell America to believe in herself. America does and shoves Wanda back into the universe they were just in, where she realizes that her children are scared of her and she’s done a horrible thing. She allows Strange, America, and Wong to escape before destroying the temple she’s in and seemingly dying. And in the post-credits Strange is visited by Clea(Charlize Theron), Sorcerer Supreme of the Dark Dimension, who says he messed stuff up and she needs his help fixing it. They disappear into a portal and the movie ends with another post-credit scene I’ll talk about later. So that was slightly more than I thought I’d have to write. But there’s a lot I want to delve into, and if you haven’t seen it but want to read the review, these elements won’t make sense unless I explain the plot. So let’s continue.
Wanda’s Story
I know some people thought the ending of WandaVision was meant to redeem her, and that this movie doesn’t make sense in terms of her character arc. I would argue that if you rewatch that ending, you can see an extremely powerful woman who just went through a lot of trauma and tried to be the hero, but has been broken yet again by another loss. There’s also a line very early on in this movie that makes it sound as if she’s been corrupted by the Darkhold, which she stole from Agatha, so if you want her to be the hero again you can hold out hope. A very interesting concept introduced in this is that every dream you have is just a look into the life of a version of you in another universe. So it’s implied that the children Wanda created were taken from a dream she had where they were real. So her plan is to kill America and take her powers so she can go into the universe where her children are real, kill that version of her, and be their mother. And if that version of the universe comes under attack, she can just take her kids to another, safer universe without having to rely on America to help her willingly. There’s probably a lot of holes in her thinking, but I can believe that her judgement has been so overtaken by grief. So she uses the Darkhold to take over the version of Wanda that exists in the universe Strange and America end up in, and uses that body to kill the super-team that protects that universe: The Illuminati.
The Illuminati –
In the comics the Illuminati is a team made up of prominent members of the Marvel universe from different super-teams. This group of people banded together in order to make sure certain threats never reach their world, and they are always willing to do the things that others may not be. That version of the team originally included Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Charles Xavier, Black Bolt, and Namor the Submariner. Later on Black Panther joined the team as well. This version of the team is a little different, and three of the members were already revealed in the trailers. A lot of people knew this team would be appearing, which is kind of why I expected there to be more cameos than just these guys. But I’m glad they didn’t go overboard. I’ll go into the members below.
Charles Xavier AKA Professor X – Patrick Stewart
I love Patrick Stewart and I’m really glad he’s back. He was always the perfect choice to play this character, and while I never watched the 90’s X-Men animated series, I appreciated them using that theme for his entrance and giving him that weird yellow floating chair. He said in a recent interview that he’d come back if they asked him to, but he’s also in his late 70’s and looking pretty old, so they may want to retire him from the role now. I can’t imagine doing all that green screen stuff is fun at that age. He’s the last member Wanda kills, which she does by snapping his neck in his mind.
Peggy Carter AKA Captain Carter – Hayley Atwell
I assume from context that she isn’t the version from What If…?, especially since that version is alive still. But I enjoyed her appearance. I liked that they used the theme from The First Avenger when she showed up. I liked that she told Wanda she “could do this all day”. And I really liked the jetpack she had. I would totally watch a Captain Carter movie. But again, it would have to be a different version, because Wanda cut her in half with her own shield.
Maria Rambeau AKA Captain Marvel – Lashana Lynch
I’m not a huge fan of Captain Marvel or Brie Larson’s performance in that movie. I liked Lashana Lynch in it though, and she’s also good in No Time To Die. Presumably this version of her was in that spaceship accident instead of Carol? She’s good in this for the few minutes she’s onscreen. I wish they hadn’t made her costume all black, since she’s on a team with Black Bolt, but who cares. She was crushed by a statue, but I’d like to see another version of her character down the line.
Blackagar Boltagon AKA Black Bolt – Anson Mount
I had heard that this guy was going to be in this movie, and I wasn’t entirely surprised, since he’s on the team in the comics. But I didn’t think they’d get Anson Mount in. Anson Mount played Black Bolt in the universally reviled ABC Inhumans TV show, and I never thought they were going to touch those characters again. But here he is, in his comics accurate costume with the tuning fork and the arm wings and everything. So weird. I do suspect they only brought him in so they could make fun of the TV show by killing him off first. Wanda makes his mouth go away, because his powers are vocally-based. He could level an entire street by whispering. I think shockwaves come out every time he speaks. But Wanda gets rid of his mouth and he screams, causing his head to crumple and explode. A fun inclusion!
Reed Richards AKA Mr. Fantastic – John Krasinski
I understand why the internet is so intent on getting John Krasinski to play this character. He looks the part and he’s a fun guy that was in some dumb TV show everyone likes. I would rather see William Jackson Harper get the part, but that’s just me. Krasinski is fine in this. He wasn’t super aloof and dickish like Reed should be. But he was in it for like five minutes and I think it was probably the wrong decision to put him in the movie. Every other member of the Illuminati has played in the Marvel sandbox before in one way or another, and now they’ve set an expectation that he’ll be Reed Richards in the new Fantastic Four movie. People also probably suspect that this means Emily Blunt will play Sue Storm, despite saying that she’d rather not be in a superhero movie. If this is just a one-off and neither of those things will happen, it will make a lot of people very very unhappy. I personally don’t care. But if they aren’t planning to do any of this, they should have just brought in Ioan Gruffudd. People wouldn’t cheer as loudly for him, but they would still cheer. I like John Krasinski though. After hearing that Reed is in the Fantastic Four, Strange says “Didn’t you guys chart in the 60’s?” And instead of telling him to shut up, Richards just smirks and nods. It’s a tiny moment that I really enjoyed. And if he is in fact going to be Reed Richards going forward, I won’t complain.
Bruce Campbell
Bruce Campbell has been in, I think, pretty much every movie that Sam Raimi has directed. He was, of course, the star of the Evil Dead movies, and has gone on to be a very funny and genial character actor that I’m always happy to see in things. He cameos in each of the Spider-Man movies. In the first one he’s a ring announcer that gives Spidey his name. In the second one he doesn’t let Peter in to see MJ’s play late. And in the third one he’s a snooty waiter. In this he plays the Pizza Papa, a street vendor in the Illuminati’s universe. America takes food from him without paying, assuming that, much like many other universes, the food is free. Campbell gets all aggressive, which makes Strange cast a spell on him that makes him punch himself endlessly for weeks. In the final post-credit scene the spell lifts, prompting Campbell to look at the camera and joyfully proclaim “IT’S OVER!” And then the movie ends. So that’s fun.
What The Illuminati Mean For The Future Of The MCU
The Illuminati and Baron Mordo reveal to Strange that their version of him was not in fact a hero, but he went mad by consulting the Darkhold in a desperate attempt to stop Thanos. He killed Thanos, but in the process caused an incursion between two universes. An incursion is when two universes collide and destroy each other, which is the whole plotline of the 2015 comic book Secret Wars. And the Illuminati were a big part of that. So perhaps the next big MCU event will be a combination of both Secret Wars comics, the first being a big battle between characters on a planet that they wrote to sell action figures, and the second being a well-written multiversal battle of epic proportions. If that is the case, that’ll probably be really overwhelming. But we’ll see.
What The Ending Means
Doctor Strange uses the Darkhold at one point and opens his third eye right before he meets Clea. I don’t like the third eye effect and hope they change it before they show it again. In the comics Clea becomes Doctor Strange’s wife, and she’s actually the current Sorcerer Supreme in the comics because Strange is dead. She’s also the daughter of Dormammu, who Strange fought in the first movie. So we’ll see what happens. I don’t think Wanda is really dead though.
Before I Go
There’s a cool scene where Strange battles an evil Doctor Strange with music notes that play various classic music pieces as they attack each other. It’s really cool. So yeah.
Overall Rating – 7.5/10(I enjoyed the movie. It’s better than I expected it would be. There may be some clunky dialogue and bad effects here and there. There’s a scene where they literally play America’s backstory for Strange so he can sympathize with her. But who cares? It’s a comic book movie. And I think it’s better than No Way Home)
Wong Rating – 9.5/10(This would be higher if we saw other multiversal versions of Wong. Or if Benedict Wong just played every character. I love you, Wong!
I hope you liked this unnecessarily long review. Hopefully I will finish that Ruddtrospective by Wednesday. I don’t have much to do right now, so I plan to get the blog back on track. Anyway, have a great day!
Too Many Servings Of John 