Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (MV3)

2022, Sam Raimi (Spider-Man) -- Disney+

OK, rewatch complete. And I got ta tell ya, second time around I felt pretty much as I did the first time... it was alright. I almost wished I could have approached the viewing, even the second viewing, after having read his post, as Kent did, with Sam Raimi's film making fully in mind. Maybe it would have worked out better if I had seen it in the spectacle focused environment of the cinema. Maybe.

The 2 cents plot for this movie is that a multiverse hopping teenager shows up and interrupts Christine's (remember? Strange's ex? Rachel McAdams, The Time Traveler's Wife) wedding reception being chased by a giant, initially invisible, eye-ball monster. It, the good Doctor (Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog) and Wong ([Benedict] Wong, The Martian) fight, and wreck real estate (who do you think is assigned to clean up dead giant monsters?) while defending America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez [soh-chee], Gentefied), the teenager whose superpower is to open star-shaped portals from one universe to the next, when she is under duress. Being hunted by eye-ball demons that want to suck her power from her is a good definition of duress. Turns out Doc has been helping her in a previous universe, before dying. Stephen sees this preamble as a dream, and the rule of the universe, that what we dream is in fact lives in other universes, is set. 

Really? Dreams are windows into other universes? If so, then kudos to Other Universe Toast, as he seems to have it so much better put together than this universe's version. Most of my non-nightmare dreams are punctuated by a marked lack of anxiety & stress that is ever present in my waking world. When I wake, these feelings slowly fade, leaving me envious of my Other, even with his questionable fashion choices -- in many dream universes, I am still wearing voluminous Constantine (tine not teen) style trench coats, like it was 1992.

So, MCUniverse Doctor Strange notices that the monster was covered in runes, a sign of witchcraft, and heads off to consult the only witch he knows, a certain, possibly scarlet coloured one? Yeah, Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen, Old Boy) shows up, hot off the tails of Wandavision, lacking a post which cannot be blamed on the 2018 Hiatus. For those who didn't watch it back then, and don't care about spoilers, Wanda took over a town, and using her powers, manipulated it and everyone in it, into believing she was a happy various-sitcom-era family, with Vis(ion) and two annoyingly precocious boys. She literally conjured the boys up. When it all ended, so did the boys. And her mental stability. Her current idea is that in every other universe, she actually had those children, or kept them, and all she has to do is get to one, to have it all back. That makes her the BBEG of this movie.

So, that whole idea is weird. Either she actually figured out how to have children with Vis in all the other universes (he was a robot for those not recalling), before he was killed in the Thanos fight. OR she conjured them, AND kept them. Likely, every universe has its own weird or bad choice, that apparently leads to single mom Wanda with two annoying kids. And MCUniverse Wanda wants that.

The rest of the movie is Strange and Wong playing keep-away with America, eventually leading to the two being tossed through one of her portals. The fly-through of the different universes is fun, until they eventually end up in a weird, almost idyllic one full of flowers and memory machines and Bruce Campbell. And a big statue of Stephen, who died fighting Thanos. Who didn't die is this universe's version of the Avengers, a weird collection of squee-worthy cameos who call themselves The Illuminati. They include Professor X (Patrick Stewart, Logan), Reed Richards / Mister Fantastic (John Krasinski, A Quiet Place), Captain Carter (fresh out of What If...? Hayley Atwell, Blinded by the Light), Baron Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Love Actually), Monica Maria Rambeau ver. Captain Marvel (Lashana Lynch, No Time to Die) and Black Bolt (Anson Mount, Inhumans). They have decided that the real BBEG is Strange himself, for his own universe hopping and dark magic meddling lead to the annihilation of some other universe. Its a weird plot pivot that doesn't work for me, but it does delay any potential Team-Up, before they are off-ed by Wanda anyway, in the most horrific ways. Enter final act / final battle !

Final Act pits America and Strange and Wong against Wanda on Mount Wundagore, a magical mountain where The Scarlett Witch is prophesized to become the most powerful. This is a weird nod, along with the green cow man at Kamar-Taj, to the High Evolutionary and his "new-men", weird genetic half animal, half men. Its also a place mixed up in the magic of the comic book universe. Strange goes to yet another universe, one where he let himself get corrupted and is in the final stage of being destroyed, to get some help from the magic book, the DarkHold, that created The Scarlett Witch. But this Stephen is different than all the others, so he defeats Wanda with compassion and refuses to kill America, which would have solved all the universes woes.

The write up was a lot of fun. As was the movie. It was just .... well, just fun. But what else should comic book movies be? I guess, I am just, by this stage in the decades long MCU, hoping for a little ... more. Especially from Raimi. But that's just me.

Speaking of multiverse fun, the "designation" (which Stephen learns from Illuminati Christine) for our MCU is Earth-616. Buuuut to all the comic book fans, they know that is the designation for the prime universe of the comics. So, MCU 616 is not aware of another main universe that lays claim to the 616 designation, and in fact designates MCU as 199999. Not sure if that is really fun, or just another weird pivot.