Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

[Typhon]

snip

TBF, I am absolutely the target demographic for this movie. I am a long-time comic nerd, I've mostly liked Sam Raimi movies including the Evil Dead movies and specifically Ash v. Evil Dead most recently, and I like the horror/supernatural genre (though not as much as schild). I don't have any problem with Raimi as a director, though I do agree he's kind of leaned pretty heavily on his old visual tricks that he started using the in first Evil Dead. It's just that those visual tricks haven't really aged well, nor has he evolved them much at all - the scene of creeping evil in ED1 is done in almost the exact same way as Wanda's presence in her counterpart's dimension in DS: MoM. The only real difference between the two was resolution and film quality - everything else about those tricks is 100% the same. What's worse, is that it absolutely felt out of place even within this movie. I had the same sort of criticism for Raimi in the scene in Spiderman 2 when Doc Ock first uses his mechanical arms. It's shot in a very similar fashion to a number of shots in both Evil Dead movies. That's been what... 20 years since Spiderman 2?

MCU movies can be from wildly different genres. Comics often have a wide range of genres. You bring up Ms. Marvel and that's a very good example. Both the comic and the TV show are firmly in the lighthearted teen angst drama with mild superhero antics genre. Both the comic and the TV show work for me as a nice "palate cleanser" type of show, a light contrast to the more naturalistic style of say Falcon and Winter Soldier or the darker, more violent DS: MoM. They still have to execute. Ms. Marvel could have easily been CW level of shitty teen angst, but it isn't.

Nothing wrong with the MCU experimenting with things, I hope they do, because I can easily see the formula getting stale. And there's no reason that solo movies can't also be mostly isolated from the MCU proper or its phase flow. They still have to execute an entertaining movie and unfortunately, both DS: MoM and Eternals have fallen very flat for me. Whatever experiment they were trying with either one didn't work. Neither are bad, but I also don't feel an overriding desire to watch either of them again.

Thanks for the thoughtful response, I appreciate it.  I thought you were saying, "neither of these movies moved the MCU forward, which is what I wanted/expected", but you were saying something different and I didn't pick up on that.

[Trippy]

My biggest problem with the movie had more to do with its place in the MCU. Both No Way Home and this movie promised series repercussions for the MCU in terms of the multiverse, especially based on what we'd seen in Loki as well as what we were set up for in Wandavision. And then it just didn't deliver. It was a very self-contained, self-referential story that I don't think really stood on its own all that well. It meandered especially in the middle, but rather than do so by showing us lots of different multiversal changes, we got what... glimpses in montages and only really 1 or 2 universes that had any depth to them. In the context of a solo movie, it was meh to me. It's not Dark World bad and forgettable, but it's probably Black Widow or Eternals level of unfortunate. And Black Widow's stinger had more impact on the overall MCU than anything in Multiverse other than maybe the introduction of America Chavez.

You can't really pull MCU movies out of the context of the MCU because the first 3 phases specifically trained the audience to try to put whatever movie it was into the larger context. They are built specifically as vehicles to advertise the next MCU movie (or one down the road). It's ingenuous, but when it doesn't work, the movie feels somewhat empty.

I think it very much did setup the end of Phase 4 and Phase 5 by making {spoiler} such a major plot point.

[eldaec]

Second question is, "Am the target audience?"  Ms Marvel isn't capturing my attention because it's a teen/young adult film and I'm old.  There isn't a problem with either of those things.  It's appropriate that teen/YA entertainment is primarily for teens/YA.  Humans get old.  I feel like the only comment about Ms Marvel that I should make is something along the lines of, "I was pleasantly surprised, they made this appeal to a broader audience" or "I wasn't the target audience".  I feel like a lot of you either forget that, or it just never occurs to you.

I don't know that the Ms. Marvel show is any more specifically teen/YA targeted than say, Spider-man or that it's not capturing your attention because you're old.

Ms Marvel definitely is not limited to YA appeal. I can probably accept that it has less to positively attract a single adult living away from family. But it makes none of the lazy compromises of a typical YA product.

As for this film, it got a bit flabby in the second half but was decent throughout.

Probably is a good example of why the MCU attracts the talent it does, because the whole cast had an opportunity to show off and do fun stuff.

I honestly give no shits about impact on the continuing MCU because you guys are massively overstating the degree to which 'the continuing MCU story' is more than fun easter eggs and shared MacGuffins.

Fwiw  Wanda's Ultron-> Infinity War - > Wandavision -> Strange2 arc is probably the most meaningful multi title character arc in the series.

[Velorath]

It's worth noting that Feige recently that the direction of phase 4 at least would become a lot clearer once Love and Thunder releases, and Marvel Studios is going to be doing a Comic-Con presentation next month for the first time in three years I think.

[MahrinSkel]

I liked it better on the second watch, but still bugged about a few things.
I'm not putting it down with Thor 2/IM3, but for what was pitched as the linchpin of Phase 4, it did not deliver.

--Dave

[schild]

All of my hatred aside, since everything in the movie could be thrown away, I'd say it did absolutely zero for phase 4. It was possibly less relevant than No Way Home.

[Riggswolfe]

I liked it better on the second watch, but still bugged about a few things.
I'm not putting it down with Thor 2/IM3, but for what was pitched as the linchpin of Phase 4, it did not deliver.

--Dave

You're the second person that said this was pitched as a linchpin and I went into it without ever having heard that. Was this from some Kevin Feige interview or something?

[Khaldun]

I dunno but right now it's hard to say what they've got in mind in terms of something that brings everybody together and creates some of the fun and smart interactions that popped up as everything converged towards Infinity War. That sense of "densification" that really kicked off in Civil War added some pop and fun to many of the films as well as a sense of an overall steering current heading towards something. Right now there are a lot of threads that don't feel at all connected. There's Loki and the TVA and Kang which doesn't seem to have much of anything to do with anything--I guess maybe that will pay off some in the next Ant-Man film (an odd place for it to go, but hey). There's the Falcon/Cap and Winter Soldier kind of stuff, which doesn't seem to have any weight or relevance to anybody else, even the less cosmic characters. There's the strange lack of connection between the Spider-Man film and Strange 2, which looked from outside as if they'd link up but they didn't. There's Shang-Chi, whose solo film doesn't seem to have been of any importance to anybody but him despite the fact that it features an entire group of people who could be at least as cross-connecting or cross-relevant as the Wakandans. (Except for Wong showing up. Wong is sort of becoming the Fury of this Phase.) Then there's Eternals, which felt as if it should have been hugely important and instead was an irrelevant wet fart of a film.

Even when MCU films haven't really had a plan, they've felt as if they had a plan. Right now they just do not feel like they have a plan. I suppose that dismays some fans just because the consequences of a lack of a plan are so very evident in other major franchises.

[Samwise]

The Star Wars series is a good example of what happens when you worry more about "how do we make sure this movie connects to all the other movies as much as possible" than "how do we make a good movie".

[Velorath]

I dunno but right now it's hard to say what they've got in mind in terms of something that brings everybody together and creates some of the fun and smart interactions that popped up as everything converged towards Infinity War. That sense of "densification" that really kicked off in Civil War added some pop and fun to many of the films as well as a sense of an overall steering current heading towards something. Right now there are a lot of threads that don't feel at all connected. There's Loki and the TVA and Kang which doesn't seem to have much of anything to do with anything--I guess maybe that will pay off some in the next Ant-Man film (an odd place for it to go, but hey). There's the Falcon/Cap and Winter Soldier kind of stuff, which doesn't seem to have any weight or relevance to anybody else, even the less cosmic characters. There's the strange lack of connection between the Spider-Man film and Strange 2, which looked from outside as if they'd link up but they didn't. There's Shang-Chi, whose solo film doesn't seem to have been of any importance to anybody but him despite the fact that it features an entire group of people who could be at least as cross-connecting or cross-relevant as the Wakandans. (Except for Wong showing up. Wong is sort of becoming the Fury of this Phase.) Then there's Eternals, which felt as if it should have been hugely important and instead was an irrelevant wet fart of a film.

Even when MCU films haven't really had a plan, they've felt as if they had a plan. Right now they just do not feel like they have a plan. I suppose that dismays some fans just because the consequences of a lack of a plan are so very evident in other major franchises.

I kinda understand why they didn't want to come out directly after the 11 year Infinity Saga and not say "ok, here's the next big thing we're building up to". They've got some long term storylines running (Young Avengers, Thunderbolts/Dark Avengers or whatever, Kang, Celestials). They've got GotG wrapping up with the 3rd movie. It's anybody's guess how much longer any of the current MCU actors will be around for. I also think they're running low on unused characters worth building movies around until they're ready to get the X-men up and running.

If I had to guess, I'd say they're building up a number of Cosmic threats and whatever storyline that builds to will take most of the Phase 1-3 characters off the board, allowing them to put a heavy focus on the Mutants after.

[Khaldun]

Young Avengers and Thunderbolts are a good example of where it almost feels like the slow burn is a bit too slow--by the time they make a Young Avengers movie they're going to be Thirtysomething Avengers.

[Velorath]

I think it feel that way partly because the pandemic put a big gap between Endgame and Phase 4, and also because with the launch of the D+ shows there's an order of magnitude more MCU content getting released each year than there used to be. It's worth noting that WandaVision started in January of last year, and Black Widow came out almost exactly a year ago. In that time we've had Kate Bishop, Eli, Billy and Tommy introduced, and announced Cassie Lang's recasting. For the potential Thunderbolts, we've had Val working with Yelena and U.S. Agent and there are a number of others who would potentially fit in.

Phase 2 was just over 2 years long, and Phase 3 was 3 years. Phase 4 extends out until at least July next year with the Marvels, possible longer depending on where FF, Blade, and Cap 4 fit in. The D+ stuff is a little murkier because there's around a dozen live actions shows and specials announced at least, but only vague or no release dates for half of it.


Edit: Another interesting point of comparison for people who think that it was always clear where each phase was heading: Avengers released in 2012 ending Phase 1. Phase 2 started in 2013 with two MCU movies released that year, which were Iron Man 3 and Thor: Dark World. The former was almost entirely ignored by the rest of the MCU movies until Trevor was brought back in Shang Chi, and the latter is typically widely considered possibly the worst MCU movie. It wasn't until just about a year after the phase started that Winter Soldier came out.

[eldaec]

I liked it better on the second watch, but still bugged about a few things.
I'm not putting it down with Thor 2/IM3, but for what was pitched as the linchpin of Phase 4, it did not deliver.

--Dave

You're the second person that said this was pitched as a linchpin and I went into it without ever having heard that. Was this from some Kevin Feige interview or something?

I'm pretty sure people just drew that conclusion from the title explicitly having the word 'multiverse' in it.

DSatMoM is a pretty bad title though.

Dr Strange : Dreamwalker or some shit might have been a better name. But marvel have never been good at movie titles.

I would have thought Ant Man is going to provide even more crossover exposition, if that is your kink.

[schild]

Ant Man should weave in Kang.

[Khaldun]

I think it's going to. So maybe yes this is the long breath before the next metanarrative plunge.

A little of this is the consequence of a certain kind of fraught success. MCU audiences are getting high off the same supply that turned out to be one of the two great original properties of Marvel Comics when they first came out: that the characters very much existed in the same universe, interacted in very ordinary ways, referenced each other, etc., long before there were giant company-wide cross-over events. Spider-Man tried to join the Fantastic Four and got turned down; Loki brought the Avengers together but the Hulk quit and became an enemy quite early and then allied himself to the Sub-Mariner briefly; the Black Widow was romantically involved with different superheroes in different titles (at different times, ahem), and so on. (The other original property was that most of the heroes had 'ordinary' hassles to deal with in their private lives--work-related problems, relationship issues, money troubles, illnesses, hang-ups; oddly, the one exception to that is Doctor Strange, who didn't have any narrative room to develop a private life until three or four years into his original series of adventures).

So folks want to see that sense of simultaneity--that these things are all happening at once, bouncing off of one another. But the MCU does some of that in a kind of postmodern ironic mode (Strange and America's conversation about whether Spider-Man shoots webs from his ass) and it is also constrained in a way that the comic-books weren't, because it has to tell stories in an expensive format that takes months or years to make where audience attention is a precious thing and narrative coherence is important. Four panels in a Fantastic Four story that shows them trying to reach the Avengers, SHIELD, and the X-Men to help with Galactus only to find that they're all busy (usually via an editor's note) doesn't derail the story, but it would get tedious fast in a two-hour film. (Imagine a scene where Strange is trying to find Thor, Captain Marvel, and the Hulk to help with defending Kamar-Taj and he can't get a hold of any of them. That just feels like a waste of time in an already overstuffed narrative.)

[Typhon]

[snip] Four panels in a Fantastic Four story that shows them trying to reach the Avengers, SHIELD, and the X-Men to help with Galactus only to find that they're all busy (usually via an editor's note) doesn't derail the story, but it would get tedious fast in a two-hour film. (Imagine a scene where Strange is trying to find Thor, Captain Marvel, and the Hulk to help with defending Kamar-Taj and he can't get a hold of any of them. That just feels like a waste of time in an already overstuffed narrative.)

I think they could have a one-off line or two in the next movie(s) where two+ of those characters end up teaming up; Strange giving an Avenger shit for not being available to assist holding off Wanda, and comedy/drama/tragedy that comes out of that.  So, not a one-off, but something that could drive a B or C plot line.  MCU did a fair amount of that kind of friction in Avengers, which was really one of the main challenges they had to overcome. I think that worked well, especially with newer teams, or non-team heroes having to work together.

[Sky]

Watched it with the old lady, who is a Cumberho and has to date only seen Dr Strange as far as MCU stuff goes. It...didn't go well. I didn't expect it to. The reason she likes movies, and I tend to agree, is the human elements. The original Dr Strange had a lot more character building and dialog that made it an interesting movie in between the fight scenes (which were pretty creative but still ended up being CGI slogfest #14 etc).

So she didn't know who basically anyone was that wasn't in the original movie. She felt the stuff with Rachel was very phoned in/tacked on, it lacked any sort of human element. The Wanda stuff felt completely flat and she thought the character was unlikable and confusing with no dimension (ironic given the effort put into making her situation have some depth).

So many action scenes. It's a reason I feel the big movies tend to be the worst, much more summer action movie than character studies.

I enjoyed the movie, but it was definitely a weaker one overall compared to Ragnarok (which also has some shit fight scenes that are basically placeholders imo) or the original Cap movie which to date the only MCU film I've asked her to watch, given that she loved the Peggy Carter show. Her experience with the new Strange movie probably means she's done with the MCU. As for me, the further they get away from characters I know from reading comics, the better the movies have to be. Ms Marvel has been a pleasant surprise, so I'm hopeful we can continue to get good stuff through the shows. The next Ant-Man will be telling, as I've enjoyed those movies a lot despite their many flaws. If they lose the good stuff from those and try to focus too much on the 'crossover event' (that ironically built their MCU empire but was also where they over-reached in the comics time and time again)...

[eldaec]

So maybe yes this is the long breath before the next metanarrative plunge.

You guys realise the 'meta narrative' in the vast majority of the first 20 films that weren't called 'Avengers' was just a credits scene showing a glowy thing in a box, right?

This film was about as meta as MCU movies get and almost certainly more meta than they should.

[Velorath]

Yeah, I mean the last two movies were built around the main character asking another hero for help.

[Khaldun]

Yeah, it's just that the fandom wants a ticker that tells them where everybody else is while this shit is going down.

I do agree that I really didn't care for Strange's connection to Christine in this film--that feels forced. It's not just that Strange has to hold the knife, it's that he has trouble making strong relationships to anybody. There's a version of this film where he's realizing that more generally, and how becoming a sorcerer didn't really help him with that problem. He decided to do something about Dormammu with the Time Gem without asking or telling anyone about it, despite the fact that he could have discussed it. He made a play on the Thanos situation without talking to anybody about it, he made a call about doing something for Peter Parker where he didn't tell Peter what he was going to do until he was already doing it, etc.

I think if they'd worked that more strongly and just cut Rachel Adams out of it altogether, then what's more important is the friendship he forms with America and the respect he learns to show to Wong. Which might be exactly what gets him ready to form a true partnership relationship with Clea when she shows up.

[Trippy]

I liked it better on the second watch, but still bugged about a few things.
I'm not putting it down with Thor 2/IM3, but for what was pitched as the linchpin of Phase 4, it did not deliver.

--Dave

You're the second person that said this was pitched as a linchpin and I went into it without ever having heard that. Was this from some Kevin Feige interview or something?

I'm pretty sure people just drew that conclusion from the title explicitly having the word 'multiverse' in it.

From what I've dug up so far it looks like the actual word "linchpin" did not come from Feige / Marvel Studios and is a media creation. However Feige did call Doctor Strange the "anchor" of the current MCU and pre-Disney+ launched called out how DS2 would link to WandaVision and Loki. And at one point DS2 was going to end Phase 4, making it the transition movie between Phase 4 and Phase 5.

There's the strange lack of connection between the Spider-Man film and Strange 2, which looked from outside as if they'd link up but they didn't.

At one point DS2 was going to be before Spider-Man: No Way Home (and America Chavez was also going to be in NWH), with DS2 releasing May 2021 and NWH releasing July 2021, but that all changed thanks to SARS-CoV-2. That might explain why there's only some throw-away dialog in DS2 regarding NWH.

[Khaldun]

I mean, Strange having to forget that Peter Parker is Spider-Man might be so powerful a spell that he forgets that Spider-Man came to him asking him to erase public knowledge of his secret identity (because to remember that is to remember that he used to know what it was) and hence forgets that the entire adventure ever happened at all, but that gets back to the nerding out I was doing over in the NWH thread. That's a hell of a spell that almost has to cause some mental illness in some of the people most affected by it. Wong wouldn't have to forget, so he must remember that Strange cast a really powerful spell that involved the multiverse in nearly disastrous ways. What happens when he says something about that and Strange can't remember? There must have been video of the sky over Manhattan during the final battle of NWH, and I would think that Strange must be in some of that video.

There's an old issue of Dr. Strange where they fix a continuity problem about Strange's history of battling Dracula. There's the famous original battle between Strange and Dracula where he leaves the battle thinking he not only won, but destroyed Dracula. When he hears years later from Hannibal King that Dracula is (un)alive and well and seeking the Darkhold, he's like wait a sec, because he's getting a nagging feeling that there's something he forgot. He probes his own memory magically and recalls that he fought Dracula a second time with the Defenders and that a demon erased his memory in order to protect Dracula from Strange.

I would basically think Strange is as capable of tracking down magical meddling with his own mind in the MCU, especially if turns out he's the one who did the meddling. The moment anybody says wow, all this stuff about the multiverse recently and that stuff you were doing with Spider-Man, you're the guy we need to talk to, he's going to go "what stuff I did with Spider-Man? I barely know him."

[Draegan]

Strange 2 is better than Iron Man 2.

Edit:

Just going to repost my personal rankings from over on Discord from best to worst (and going to add some breaks in between what are essentially the tiers to me):

Iron Man
Endgame
No way Home
GotG
Winter Soldier
Ragnarok

Avengers
GotG 2
Infinity War
Black Panther
Shang Chi
Cap 1

Homecoming
Dr. Strange 2
Civil War
Iron Man 3
Dr. Strange

Far From Home
Age of Ultron
Captain Marvel
Iron Man 2
Thor
Ant Man

Incredible Hulk
Black Widow
Eternals
Ant Man & Wasp
Dark World

I'd switch Shang Chi and Civil War, but overall this is a pretty good order.

[Khaldun]

I might swap Eternals for Ant Man & the Wasp, which wasn't unpleasant to see once.

I think this is partly a "would I watch this if I came across it while channel-surfing despite having seen it before"? grouping.

In the first group, always, they're just going to grab me. (I'd move Avengers into that group, despite having uninvolving stretches.)  Second group, almost always? Not sure I'd rewatch all of Shang Chi that compulsively, for example.

In third group, not really. If it's at a favorite moment, yes. Like, Civil War? I'll rewatch the airport fight or the end fight, but not the earlier stuff. Iron Man 3, maybe the conclusion?

Fourth group, generally not. Maybe idly for a bit. Trying to remember this or that thing.

Last group, nope. Though I guess out of curiosity/perversity, parts of Incredible Hulk do draw me for 10-15 minutes if it's on.

[eldaec]

That airport fight is so very bad. For me it blots out my entire memory of that film.

I watched it again not so long ago, was definitely better than I remembered, mostly because iron man didn't do the same chartacter reset and repeat the same growth he usually goes though. Also zemo is a decent villian.

But my god that terrible airport fight.

[Threash]

Also zemo is a decent villian.

Yeah he was great, he also actually won.

[Velorath]

I might swap Eternals for Ant Man & the Wasp, which wasn't unpleasant to see once.

I think Eternals for me was at least interesting in its failure. Ant Man & Wasp has perhaps the biggest villain problem in the MCU (which is saying something) in that you've got Ghost who doesn't really get to develop much of a character, and then as the movie's only unambiguously evil villain you get Walton Goggins playing that popular Marvel villain... Sonny Burch? Laurence Fishburne gets kinda wasted as the (former) Giant Man, and the plot revolves around rescuing a character we only care about because of Hank and Hope.

[schild]

the eternals felt like a dc movie

[Velorath]

And as such I have it as the 3rd worse, but I'd rather watch it again than either of the two movies I have below it.

[schild]

ant man and wasp is trash but michael douglas and paul rudd and discount john leguizamo are more entertaining than anything in eternals

they are both VERY bad movies though

[MahrinSkel]

At least the comedy heist movie made me laugh a lot. Super-epic LotR prequel was just...I can't be bothered to find a metaphor.

--Dave

[Khaldun]

The airport fight is kind of trash but I sort of love it anyway.

Ant-Man & the Wasp is bad at the lowband cheaper end of the Marvel pool. Eternals to me is worse because it announces itself as a Big Deal and has Lots of Talent and because I knew from the beginning that it was a strange and interesting choice of a property to put money into but I just kept saying 'gotta trust them' and then it jumps off the high board and belly flops hard into the pool.

[Velorath]

When it comes to movies in general I always prefer to watch the ambitious or interesting failure as opposed to the ones that play it safe and still miss the mark. Ant Man and the Wasp was Payton Reed's (a director previously best known for Bring it On) second time with the franchise after the whole Edgar Wright situation with the first movie, so this was really his chance to settle in, and it ended up being worst than the first movie. This makes me a little nervous that he's going to be handling the Kang situation in the next one.

For Eternals, Chloé Zhao wasn't yet an Oscar winner when she was picked to helm the movie, but there was some buzz around her. Also the few previous movies she had done were all the opposite of super hero epics. They're these inexpensive movies following some regular person as they deal with personal hardship and journey through the heartland of America. In hindsight maybe that wasn't a great choice but I can see what the thinking might have been when it comes to telling a story about aliens that end up integrating with Humanity and having to decided if it's ultimately worth saving. On top of that, Eternals is dealing with the Celestials and telling a story that stretches across thousands of years so it has to deal with a scope well beyond what most MCU films are doing.

I could actually flip Dark World and AM&W depending on my mood. Dark World at least progresses the relationship between Thor and Loki, gives us a little insight into Loki (he genuinely seems to care about Frigga), and introduces an Infinity Stone (I think it's actually the first MCU movies where they start to explain what the stones are).

[Riggswolfe]

I'm not a big fan of Peyton Reed but am mystified by people who think AM&W is a lesser movie to the first one. It's a fun movie and I enjoyed the villain being sort of sympathetic and how the movie in general felt like it was a more personal movie as opposed to having epic stakes.

Movies I prefer AM&W over:

Shang Chi - My biggest disappointment of Phase 4. (I haven't seen the Eternals!) I had high hopes but something about it just didn't fully click with me. I liked most of the characters and the martial arts scenes and such but it was just a let down for me personally. I expected more.

Iron Man 3
Dr. Strange
Captain Marvel
Iron Man 2
Thor
Ant Man
Dark World

[eldaec]

The problem with And Wasp is it is basically the same jokes as Ant Man. And Ant Man already really drops off on a second viewing.