Review: _Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness_

Kate is out of town visiting her family and I had an evening to kill, so I decided what the heck: time to mask up and go to an actual cinema. I took the opportunity to catch Doctor Strange before it leaves the big screen.

Summary: not bad, but not one of Marvel's standouts.

As so often with Marvel, the movie suffers from being a little over-stuffed. Most of these movies are adapting something that was a significant epic in the comics, often multiple -- for example, the upcoming Thor movie is clearly smooshing basically the entire Jason Aaron run into a single movie. But this one is built from something like five separate runs of various comics, ranging from relatively recent back to the mid-80s. Madness indeed.

It's not much of a spoiler to say that the movie has three main characters (all of whom show up in the first ten minutes or so): Stephen Strange, America Chavez, and Wanda Maximoff.

Each gets a character arc, of which Strange's is the least interesting -- basically, he learns to be slightly less of a self-absorbed asshole. (Which is a recurring theme with him.)

I'm delighted to see America show up on screen, but annoyed that this movie puts her into the "girl who must be protected" role. By the end we're starting to see the America we know and love, but it's disappointing that it takes the whole movie to get there. (In the comics, she is a badass pretty much from the outset.)

Really, though, Wanda is the most interesting character here. I can't get into details without major spoilers, but suffice it to say, this movie is a direct sequel to the Wandavision TV series, and IMO it's not worth watching this without seeing that first -- this is telling the rest of that story.

(ETA: it's probably also worth watching the What If animated series on Disney+ before this -- it's not essential the way that Wandavision is, but this movie ties into it in multiple ways.)

There is lots of sound and fury here, across multiple worlds, and all the fan service one could wish for, but some of it just annoyed me -- for example, they take one major multi-year Marvel crossover arc and use it almost as a throwaway, with none of the depth that made the corresponding comic interesting. (The same problem as with Civil War -- it isn't quite so much that it is awful in the movie, as that it could have been so much more interesting if they had taken the story more seriously and given it room to breathe. Here, it is downright gratuitous, pulling this story in solely because it is another "multiverse" epic.)

It's notable that the two Scarlet Witch storylines that are loosely adapted here are two of her most important stories, and they are woven together in a way that makes sense; that plays into why I found her story most interesting. (If not happy.)

Overall -- it's fine. It's not one of the actively bad Marvel movies: the story is decently coherent, it has some fine actors (including appearances by a couple of favorites), and it's an interesting yarn chock-full of special effects. If you like typical Marvel movies, you will probably enjoy it. But it's not going to be one of the cultural-landmark movies: it's neither that good, nor that important.