Review of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) by Dmichaelc — 10 May 2022

Overall a disappointment. There's definitly some things to like, like adventuring through the multi verse, and Dr Strange is as charming as ever. The visuals are amazing, and it's cool to see some of the crossovers that the multi verse allows for.

I really liked the advanced tech world that they showed off. But then, there are many more negative things that just destroy suspension of disbelief, so many bog standard writing cliches. For starters, the intro pulled the old, "omg, high steaks intro, lol no just a dream" cliche.

Sometimes characters are stupid for no reason as part of the painfully telegraphed "horror" moments. In one scene Dr Strange and co. are running from Wanda, who is destroying blast doors 2 meters behind them, but they all stop for no reason after closing a bigger door.

And it holds in silence on them just standing there doing nothing for 20 seconds. Then Wanda reappears, and they keep running. There are times when the movie tries to fake out a horrible monster right around the corner, but they try way too hard such that all fakeouts are very obvious.

The movie also struggles with power creep. Wanda is plain and simple OP. However, she only uses many of her OP abilities one time and then never again for some reason. She can create entire illusory worlds around people.

She can snap peoples necks remotely. She can easily make peoples mouths, and presumably noses, disappear. She can charm weak minded people. She can summon giant lovcraftian monsters to great effect. She can appear as a giant demon monster.

However, she only used each of these once, and never again, except for the monsters, which she used twice in the beginning and never again. In most of her battles, she still defaults to pew pew laser bolt hands or occasionally remotely tossing people.

And the ending is kinda bad. The whole movie we are told the evil book corrupts whoever uses it, but then Strange does and is fine, save a third eye. Strange at one point is losing to a mass of spirits, but then a side character reminds him that he's got magic, as if he forgot, but then he suddenly wins.

The "character growth" is spoiled from the beginning of the film, so there's no real payoff. And OP Scarlet Witch is defeated by a small girl walking up and pushing Wanda through a portal, and Wanda does basically nothing to stop it.