Doctor Strange 2 gets lost in a tangle of fan service and half-baked ideas

Most of the movies from the Marvel Studios are meant to be accessible regardless of how much familiarity one has with the larger MCU or the comics a film is based on. Sam Raimi's Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a film that goes all-in on the concept of alternate universes. Multiverse of Madness feels like it wants to be a fresh start for a new phase of superhero stories, but it's a testament to how easy it is to get too big.

It's easy to forget how little time Stephen Strange had in theInfinity Saga and Spider-Man: No Way Home. In Multiverse of Madness, Strange gets little alone time, but the film opens with a set piece that is reminiscent of Jack Kirby's magic in Doctor Strange.

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Stephen Strange has faced down Dormammu, helped defeat Thanos, and pulled reality back together after breaking it with Spider-Man, but he doesn't really think about the vivid nightmares he keeps having. Horrific dreams filled with enchanted beasts are the sort of thing that experienced practitioners of the mystic arts like Strange and Earth are used to. When one of his night terrors takes a turn so grim that he wakes up and wonders who the young girl is, Strange can't help but feel that something isn't right.

Multiverse of Madness clues you in through small details about the world around Stephen, where he has become known as one of the heroes who saved the universe. Multiverse of Madness feels almost pointedly focused on emphasizing how much people have moved on with their lives since the end of the game.

If it weren't for Strange and the Avengers, Christine Palmer and her fellow surgeon, Nicodemus West, would still be dead. With people's lives returning to normal, it's hard for Stephen and those around him to make peace with who he has become. In Multiverse of Madness, Stephen Strange's comics accurate assholery returns, both as a reminder of what kind of haughty jerk he has always been, and as a crystallization of how alienating his life as a superhero is. In the first Doctor Strange, Strange's glibness with patients and his peers made him unlikable almost to ridiculousness.

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America Chavez accidentally crash-lands in Strange's home universe while being chased by a demonic creature from one of Strange's nightmares. America's Multiverse of Madness is the closest thing to an audience surrogate, bringing a new level of understanding about the multiverse as a concept to Earth's heroes. Gomez's America is a promising and powerful presence in scenes where she interacts with Strange and Wong, but her chunks of exposition heavy dialogue do little to distract you from the reality that she is also one of the movie.

America's ability to travel between universes is visualized stunningly as her creating star-shaped rifts in space, which makes her the target for an unseen magical menace that is hellbent on killing her. Like Spider-Man: No Way Home before it, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness leads with the idea that Stephen Strange has picked up where Tony Stark left off in terms of becoming a mentor to troubled children.

It often feels as if the movie slows down to show you that Doctor Strange doesn't think he'll look after a child, because he hasn't said anything about it in the movie. Multiverse of Madness never finds the time to let America be more than a quippy kid who needs to be saved, which has the effect of making Strange care for her more.

Multiverse of Madness takes on Wanda Maximoff, a powerful magic user whose dreams have become distressingly vivid and realistic. Multiverse of Madness uses the logic of comic books to bring WandaVision's brain trust together early on in the movie. The Scarlet Witch's motives and newfound grasp of magic might not make sense to anyone who didn't watch the show. Even though it isn't explained, what makes sense and feels more like a reflection of the character is the overall tone and energy of the film.

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Multiverse of Madness is able to get more imaginative and cerebral in its depictions of monsters, and many of the enchantments that defined early Doctor Strange comics like the Flames of the Faltine and the Icy Tendrils of I. Multiverse of Madness does have a way of getting too busy for its own good, because it is still a production from a major studio. Multiverse of Madness is a Sam Raimi film that is very much a Sam Raimi film in that the director's unmistakable personal tastes rush to the forefront in moments that feel like he was given the clear to get.

Multiverse of Madness is not a horror film. It's another big, very expensive superhero movie in which a spooky and sometimes genuinely alarming filter is applied with varying degrees of success. Raimi tries to mirror that idea with a mixed bag of ambitious but not always successful shots in Multiverse of Madness. Danny Elfman's aggressive score that dramatically oscillates between different degrees of excess is never fully compatible with Multiverse of Madness.

Many people will be going to see Multiverse of Madness because they want to see how many cameos there are and figure out who all that multiverse brings into the MCU. The movie delivers on that front with a few featured players who bring an interesting energy to the film that it could use a little more of. If you've seen Spider-Man: No Way Home, you already know what Doctor Strange is meant to do in the Multiverse of Madness. It is a fun and flashy trick that makes you long for the past and wonder what's next. Multiverse of Madness is a plot device meant to move its story forward, unlike No Way Home, where the multiverse was framed as being more like part of the landscape its heroes had to navigate.

The beginning of a new chapter for Stephen Strange and his associates is what you get when you watch Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. You wouldn't have dreamed of seeing more of Strange's brand of magic and far-reaching characters in the MCU just a few years ago, but that's about to change. What seems less and less clear is how the studio plans to get to that point.

Chiwetel Ejiofor is in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The movie will be in theaters on May 6th.