The ‘Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness’ Marketing Bait And Switch Was Masterful

I knew every single scene of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness before I watched it. The trailers gave us two, officially, and three more leaked out before the release.

I was not expecting that the way the film was marketed would fool me into thinking the main storyline and the roles of the main characters were the same.

I loved it.

There are more to come.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was sold. The trailers made two main points, that Strange would go to Wanda for help, and the two would take on both monsters and alt-universe superheroes, and that the villain appeared to be an evil version of Doctor Strange himself.

That was not true. The big secret of the film was that Wanda herself was the main villain and that she wanted to steal America Chavez's power so she could travel to multiverses.

Wanda hasn't been doing a lot lately. In WandaVision, she broke Vision's body out of containment and enslaved an entire town so she could have a fake idyllic life with him and her invented children. We knew she was reading the Darkhold by the end.

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But still! In Multiverse of Madness, Wanda was going to be a horror villain and lay siege to Strange and his army of wizards, and then brutally murdering almost all the members of the Illuminati in an alternate universe, shredding Reed Richards like string. I thought I was watching The Boys.

Incredible, wild stuff here. Wanda was a great villain for this movie, and her role in the film was hidden to the degree that she was. That evil looking Supreme is Strange Supreme. Another great twist, when it turns out that Strange has the corpse of a dead alt-universe Strange and can use the power of evil spirits to wage war against Wanda. It is very Raimi/Evil Dead, and another fantastic part of the film, total misdirection from the trailer.

It is very easy for misleading trailers to lead to disappointment in a movie, and very hard for things to be hidden to have that plan turn out well. I love the bait and switch the film's marketing did with Wanda and Strange, and it really enhanced my enjoyment of the film by producing a turn I genuinely did not see coming, even if in hindsight, the clues were sort of there that Wanda was on the way.

Excellent marketing work here. It was too bad none of them surprised me, but hiding the entire storyline to this degree was a lesson in misdirection. Excellent.

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The Herokiller series and The Earthborn trilogy are my sci-fi novels.