Doctor Strange and The Multiverse of Madness. (12A.)
Directed by Sam Raimi.
Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen, Benedict Wong, Xochitl Gomez, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Rachel McAdams. 126 mins.
At Christmas, while bemoaning my wretched lot and parading the stigmata inflicted by another year of film reviewing, I announced that I was fed up with all the comic book/ superhero movies. Then I was asked which films I was most looking forward to in 2022. After a moment’s pause, all I could come up with was The Batman and this.
And there were a number of legitimate reasons to have high hopes for this. The first Dr Strange movie was one of Marvel’s livelier offerings. This follow up is their first full dive into the multiverse business (parallel universes, alternate realities, various other ideas sprung from a token understanding of quantum mechanics) previously pioneered in two Spider-man films: the animated Into the Spider-verse and the global box office kick-starter No Way Home from last Christmas. Having concluded The Avengers story with Endgame, Marvel needs some new gimmick to tie all their upcoming films (and telly shows) together and for the near future, it's going to be the multiverse.
Plus it’s Sam Raimi, director of the original Tobey Maquire Spider-man trilogy, making a superhero film again. In fact, just Sam Raimi making a film again. The Evil Dead creator has always struck me as one of the most purely talented American filmmakers yet there's precious little in the way of classics to show for it. He hasn’t made a film since Oz The Great and Powerful almost a decade ago, but having seen this maybe he’d have been better off sticking to producing various TV series and other people’s films. The Marvel Mean Machine always make sure that whatever individualism or vision a director might bring to a product is bent to the larger needs of the Marvel Cinematic Sprawl.
And, to be honest, most times that’s fine, they hit a happy medium. Nobody is too good or too bad that they show up the others. This though is one of their dullest efforts. Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlett Witch is the baddy this time (for reasons that you probably need to have seen Wandavision on Disney + to fully comprehend.) The fate not just of the world, or the universe, but all possible universes rest on a girl called America (Gomez.) Which ought to make her interesting but largely doesn't. The film is taken up with lots of dark overcast mumbo jumbo witchcraftery that made me yearn for the simple stick pointing contests of Harry Potter. There are a few nice visuals, a really inventive sequence using musical notes as weapons and it starts off with a giant octopus attacking New York but after that, it’s all remarkably drab looking for a film in which alternate realities collide and overlap.
Anyone expecting the joyous frivolity of Spider-man: No Way Home is going to be disappointed. True, that was an exercise in lazy fan service – giving people exactly what they wanted, just when they wanted it most - but who couldn't get a little excited at seeing the three Spider-men together? This though is boring pedantic nerd service. (Apologies for using the "N" word.) At some point, certain characters turn up unexpectedly and it’s all a big secret and I’m not allowed to say, but, to be honest, I didn’t know who half of them were anyway. The nerds did though, and they whooped with evangelical glee.
Even the numbers of the different universes got them banging their tambourines. Initially, I thought it might take a year or so for the novelty of all these parallel worlds, cross-promotional marketing opportunities to wear off but I’m heartily sick of them already. Their Multiverse is such a depressing vision of creation: an infinite number of earths in an infinite number of universes where everything is exactly the same except the Marvel superheroes are all slightly different.
Directed by Sam Raimi.
Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen, Benedict Wong, Xochitl Gomez, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Rachel McAdams. 126 mins.
At Christmas, while bemoaning my wretched lot and parading the stigmata inflicted by another year of film reviewing, I announced that I was fed up with all the comic book/ superhero movies. Then I was asked which films I was most looking forward to in 2022. After a moment’s pause, all I could come up with was The Batman and this.
And there were a number of legitimate reasons to have high hopes for this. The first Dr Strange movie was one of Marvel’s livelier offerings. This follow up is their first full dive into the multiverse business (parallel universes, alternate realities, various other ideas sprung from a token understanding of quantum mechanics) previously pioneered in two Spider-man films: the animated Into the Spider-verse and the global box office kick-starter No Way Home from last Christmas. Having concluded The Avengers story with Endgame, Marvel needs some new gimmick to tie all their upcoming films (and telly shows) together and for the near future, it's going to be the multiverse.
Plus it’s Sam Raimi, director of the original Tobey Maquire Spider-man trilogy, making a superhero film again. In fact, just Sam Raimi making a film again. The Evil Dead creator has always struck me as one of the most purely talented American filmmakers yet there's precious little in the way of classics to show for it. He hasn’t made a film since Oz The Great and Powerful almost a decade ago, but having seen this maybe he’d have been better off sticking to producing various TV series and other people’s films. The Marvel Mean Machine always make sure that whatever individualism or vision a director might bring to a product is bent to the larger needs of the Marvel Cinematic Sprawl.
And, to be honest, most times that’s fine, they hit a happy medium. Nobody is too good or too bad that they show up the others. This though is one of their dullest efforts. Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlett Witch is the baddy this time (for reasons that you probably need to have seen Wandavision on Disney + to fully comprehend.) The fate not just of the world, or the universe, but all possible universes rest on a girl called America (Gomez.) Which ought to make her interesting but largely doesn't. The film is taken up with lots of dark overcast mumbo jumbo witchcraftery that made me yearn for the simple stick pointing contests of Harry Potter. There are a few nice visuals, a really inventive sequence using musical notes as weapons and it starts off with a giant octopus attacking New York but after that, it’s all remarkably drab looking for a film in which alternate realities collide and overlap.
Anyone expecting the joyous frivolity of Spider-man: No Way Home is going to be disappointed. True, that was an exercise in lazy fan service – giving people exactly what they wanted, just when they wanted it most - but who couldn't get a little excited at seeing the three Spider-men together? This though is boring pedantic nerd service. (Apologies for using the "N" word.) At some point, certain characters turn up unexpectedly and it’s all a big secret and I’m not allowed to say, but, to be honest, I didn’t know who half of them were anyway. The nerds did though, and they whooped with evangelical glee.
Even the numbers of the different universes got them banging their tambourines. Initially, I thought it might take a year or so for the novelty of all these parallel worlds, cross-promotional marketing opportunities to wear off but I’m heartily sick of them already. Their Multiverse is such a depressing vision of creation: an infinite number of earths in an infinite number of universes where everything is exactly the same except the Marvel superheroes are all slightly different.
