I checked my watch during “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” and was surprised to find that only thirty minutes remained. The surprise was less about the swiftness with which the film moves (admittedly, its 126 minutes move with momentum) but instead I was wondering when the assault of exposition that merely promised potential drama would actually give way to some kind of robust characterisations or plot developments or anything that felt genuinely meaningful.
Even within the framework of the serialised nature of MCU films, this new entry feels fascinatingly devoid of much that feels lasting or indelible. Certainly, there’s a great deal of eye catching spectacle at work, courtesy of Sam Raimi’s direction. And, certainly, there are familiar characters, and some unfamiliar versions of familiar characters. Characters exist. Things happen to them. And there’s a ghost of something that feels somewhat momentous towards the end. But for a film so dressed in technical manoeuvrings, my lasting thought after finishing “Multiverse of Madness” was how much it seemed to be suffused with a lasting sense of nothingness. Instead, every other turn seemed to ask us to trust in belief in the thinnest of character arcs or motivation. At every turn it asks us to “just go with it”. Not towards any seismic sense of madness, but just an ordinary muddle.
We open with a sequence in an alternate reality, where we find a variant Stephen Strange fighting a demon. But he’s not the focus of the scene. Instead, this opening is really about America Chavez a teenaged girl who is trying to harness her inexplicable ability to travel between dimensions. This is our first meeting with America, and it almost feels as if it is a scene in media res because of the way none of what is happening in this moment feels contextualised. As a beginning, it is ambitious. We don’t know this girl but we root for her on an instinctive level a teenager thrust into chaos. In theory, the rest of the film sets itself up with the task of justifying why we should care about America. But what reads first as ambition soon reveals a strange self-reflexive ambivalence, as if screenwriter Michael Waldron has ceded all interest in contextualising anything we see here. The rest of the film is disinclined to do any of that character building. Any vigorous interest in building a characterisation for America feels scant, but then, despite her centrality to the plot America’s inability to control her abilities the film never really seems sure if she is the crux, or if there is any crux.
We might say that the film is really about how Stephen Strange learns to get himself out of his mental funk and his lingering feeling for his ex fiancé Christine Palmer. It’s not very much in the way of plot, but it offers an opening: a jaded Strange learns to believe in the world during his misadventures with a teenager. But that also isn’t quite what “Multiverse of Madness” is about. As a kind of sequel to the Marvel miniseries “WandaVision”, one might say that “Multiverse of Madness” really is about Wanda Maximoff recognising the possibilities and limits of the powers she holds as her Scarlet Witch alter ego. It is most accurate to say that “Multiverse of Madness” is doing all three of these things, but the tripartite structure that seems uncertain as to who its main character is, also means that for much of its running time it doesn’t seem to be doing any of these very well. How can a film with so many possibilities feel so unusually empty?
Ostensibly, this is a sequel to 2006’s “Doctor Strange”. Although we’ve seen Benedict Cumberbatch’s stylish wizard in other Marvel films since, this serves as his second official solo entry. Yet, the six years between then and now means that “Multiverse of Madness” feels only faintly linked to the activities of that initial film. But the faintness also carries over in the links it shares to other Marvel properties. Like all MCU films after “Endgame”, it feels like an extension of this world’s post blip existence. And coming on the heels of “Spider Man: No Way Home”, the MCU’s official feature-film interest in the multiverse, the faint links to that property also feel significant. The opening sequence with America is merely a set-up. The main story begins in the reality we know, where Strange is dejectedly attending Christine’s wedding to another man before America crashes into his universe. She is being chased by demons who want her power, and the activities are too strong and complex for Strange to work out. He seeks assistance from Wanda, reeling from the events of her small screen story in “WandaVision” and who in her grief has sought refuge in the Darkhold a book of evil spells. And there the leaps into varying universes begin. Can Wanda find healthy ways to grieve? Can Strange save America from Wanda’s wrath? Can America learn to understand her skills?
Sam Raimi’s return to comic book films with this entry has made this film a much anticipated entry in the MCU. Beyond the structures of the general MCU, we can see peeks (and peaks) of his stylistic flair. An early battle with a many limbed demon is gross and ridiculous and exciting. A very brief scene where Strange and America fall through multiple universes is weird and colourful and odd. Later on, a Frankenstein like moment of possession is visually inventive. But the visual panache is working double time to tie together the limpness of the actual stories, which feel disconnected in their inconsistency or incredibly prosaic in their approach to climaxes.
Very late in the film, America asks Strange how she can unlock her power. “Trust in yourself,” he tells her. The solution works in a bit of plot development by way of convenience, and I winced at the triteness. The line should feel meaningful, like Glinda in “The Wizard of Oz” telling Dorothy she had the power to return to Kansas all the time. Even though it is kind of a trick the story has built the gradations of Dorothy’s character development we understand. And we understand why the Dorothy from the beginning may not have known her own strength. Here, though, the moment feels inexact for America. She is no Dorothy, and this multiverse does not hold the thoughtful delights of Oz. It doesn’t help that Xochitl Gomez’s characterisation of America feels unclear and indistinct. It’s hard to blame her when the script itself offers little to establish who this girl is and the trio of wrestling protagonists interrupt the momentum so that the film has three moments of “aha” climaxes that seem to be attempts at emotional resonance, although neither of them feel earned or organic or indelible.
Is this a story about Strange realising the limits of his own goodness? If it is, Cumberbatch tries his best but eking out a fledgling romance with Rachel McAdams’ Christine feels hazy when we have little to invest in. Is this a movie about Wanda recognising the limits she will go to for absolution? Perhaps, but for all of Elizabeth Olsen’s commitment, the nuance here feels counterintuitive to the possibilities of “WandaVision”. Is this a movie about America coming of age? Maybe, but what complicates things is that we never know her enough to understand her coming of age. A brief late film moment offers a brief glimmer of the stakes she’s fighting for, in the form of her two mothers she has been separated from. But it’s a narrative hook but not a commitment to characterisation. Who is this girl? Who are any of these people actually? One recognises an interest in paralleling Strange’s paternalistic relationship against Wanda’s own maternalistic plot point (I hesitate to call it a character arc) but it mostly feels empty.
It’s trying to be all of those films, but too schematically; so, it ends up becoming none of them. Or a potpourri version of all three that ultimately feels too insubstantial for comfort. Even in a framework where MCU films’ serialisation occasionally make them feel referents to the past and the future, “Multiverse of Madness” feels incredibly transient. As a single film, what does it have to say about any of these characters that we have not known before? With only America as a figure who feels tied specifically to this film, what does it mean that she seems to faint? What does any of this really mean, thematically, beyond what it sets up?
And there’s where the queries multiply. What is “Multiverse of Madness” communicating to us that feels novel, or even significant or valuable? That Dr Strange will always burn for his love-that-got-away in the form of Christine? That when she pushes the limits of her power Wanda will be horrified and repelled by her Scarlet Witch personality? Inasmuch as a movie is doing something, there isn’t very much going on here, which makes Raimi’s participation feel both sensible in a way (a visual technician sent it to make the act of marking time seem more tactile and layered than it is) and frustrating (a visual technician sent in to carry a story that seems to exist in stasis). How can something that has moments (albeit occasional) of such visual weirdness feel so ordinary? And it doesn’t help that the moments of really errant technicalities from Raimi feel side-lined by uglier ideas of magical battles that look so underwhelmingly normal. Where’s the strangeness? Where’s the madness? Too brief, too brief.
And how odd that the power of the Scarlet Witch feels so ordinary beyond occasional aesthetic delights? In defining Wanda, a woman who has experienced the loss of her brother and love interest in previous instalments, as a character whose catatonic grief is hyper focused on mourning things she never had in its reality, the film also squanders an opportunity to examine what it means to mourn things that you never had. Is this all the multiverse can imagine for this powerful woman? The resolution of that wreckage of grief comes in the form of a not quite deus-ex-machina. Why do characters do the things they do? As with people we cannot always know and there’s great value in characters whose actions feel humanistic in their spontaneity but Multiverse thins outs the arcs of these characters so that they feel not quite spontaneous but ultimately very random and pointless.
