Doktor. Turn off my Strange inhibitors.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a movie. It stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange, a man who has the ability to do magic. He is sad that his ex-lover is marrying someone that isn't him. It also stars Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff, also known as the Scarlet Witch, a woman who has the ability to do magic. She is sad that her tulpa children are dead. It also kind of stars Xochitl Gomez as America Chavez, a child who can do stuff with multiverses and otherwise just serves as a MacGuffin. Rachel McAdams is in it too and she gets to shoot a flamethrower at Spirit Halloween props which is decidedly a step up from the first movie, but mostly she is still relegated to just being an object of desire and self reflection for Doctor Strange. Other people are in the movie too, I guess.

Here's the good: within the first 15 minutes of the movie, an eyeball got plucked out of a CGI octopuses' face and it made a cartoon pop sound effect. I was the sole person in the theater who laughed out loud besides my brother who I heard chuckle in response a moment later. I was practically doubled over in stitches for half the runtime. This movie is drizzled with a thick layer of Sam Raimi's groovy gravy. They pull the "mirror is actually water" trick in this movie. They do a deadite impression. Bruce Campbell punches himself in the face. The amount of snap zooms, dutch angles, pull-ins, and camera whips are dizzying. Genuinely talented character actors are given the trashiest lines of dialogue I've ever heard and are made to writhe around on the floor acting like dumbasses. It is delightful. Sam Raimi also does his best James Gunn impression by introducing with fanfare and then absolutely letting 'er rip to several inconsequential characters just to prove a point about character power levels and to revel in a lavish and frankly pushing it for PG-13 level of violence. A guy blows up his own head from the inside. It is delightful.

Here's the bad: Wanda is a sincerely underwritten and under-set up villain. Her motivation might be clearly stated several times, but her reasoning lacks nuance and a sense of reality. It feels like they are going for that – y'know to maybe be too blunt, but it really feels like this is the tone they're going for – that kind of crazed mom who gets put on the evening news for doing something horrible to her kids in some state of psychosis. The movie wants to convince you that Wanda is deranged, but like, for why? Because an evil book made her go nuts? I'm sorry but an evil book is a bad explanation for a movie that also tries to have a touching scene where she confronts the terror she's brought on herself while looking in her children's horrified faces. I loved Olsen's performance and I also love the idea of Scarlet Witch as a slasher movie villain who unrelentingly pursues the heroes, but this just wasn't it.

Here's some more bad: what was up with all the burned up ashen corpse imagery in this movie? There's nothing wrong with grotesque imagery to prove a point about how violence is bad, but it's a bit tonally inconsistent with the other parts of the movie where like a guy shoots demons out of his eyes. Definitely not well balanced. Also, does every movie have to be like this now? There was a part near the end where Wong was in a perilous situation and was still tossing out so many jokes. "Oh boy, I'm not even gonna ask" *laugh track*. Raimi's ability to make a joke land has never been in question for me, so I gotta wonder whose decision that was.

Also, that movie was kind of dumb. Dreams are multiverse windows? Multiverses just happen to have perfect copies of every person we know even though the societies are so different? A book was copied off the walls of a big fuck off tower on the top of Mt. Yermomalot? There were just demons hanging out there? A group of some of the smartest characters in all of Marvel comics history called Doctor Strange arrogant and then died because they were arrogant? What????? I mean, I loved all this dumb trash because I'm an idiot, but I can't imagine how hard it might be to take this stuff seriously if you actually care about these movies.

What would happen if the Avengers took a nap while they were time traveling during Endgame, would they have the same dream as their original counterpart would? The correct answer is that it was throwaway dialogue that only existed so that America Chavez could have that line where she says she's the only one of herself and that further implications don't matter, that these stupid speculative hypothetical situations are a waste of time. Anyways, I digress.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness... Multiverse of Madness gets abbreviated as MoM. Wanda is a mom. I wonder if there was some connection here? It's like Metroid: Other M all over again. Anyways, go watch the movie or don't or whatever, it doesn't matter. I liked most of it and didn't like other parts. End of review.