Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Sam Raimi makes his return to the superhero genre with this long-awaited sequel to Doctor Strange, further embellishing on the multiverse arc that was introduced in Loki and properly fleshed out in last year's Spider-Man: No Way Home.
The trailer for this flick certainly promised much, including a number of tantalising live action interpretations of characters from the popular What If? animated series. And yet, as is so often the case, the promotional material doesn't really translate into the finished product.
For me, Raimi is straight-jacketed by the well-established - but undoubtedly formulaic - MCU approach to film-making. There was talk of this being Marvel's first horror movie, but I'm not sure even the underage kids who sneak into its screenings will be disturbed by anything they see on screen. Needless to say, Evil Dead this ain't.
Akin to the first Doctor Strange flick, the most impressive aspect of this film is its aesthetic. There are some mind-bending visuals that really establish the multiverse as something completely different from what we have seen in the MCU to date. But for those visuals to be anything more than superficial, the drama needs to be engaging and, for the most part, the Multiverse of Madness isn't.
That's not down to any lack of effort on the cast's part - Benedict Cumberbatch is dependable as ever in the lead role, newcomer Xochiti Gomez is great and Elizabeth Olsen in particular is tremendous as the anguished Wanda Maximoff. But the material they're given to work with ultimately feels like a retread of things we've seen before - the cocksure hero who finds himself out of his depth, the unsure newbie who can't control their powers, and an antagonist whose heart isn't really in it.
Maybe I'm just getting too old for this sort of stuff, but MCU's big screen releases have felt really flat as of late. Sure, they still provide a good afternoon out of the house but there isn't much in the way of originality to be found here.
