Why Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a Disappointment
I watched Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Dr Strange 2) in TCL Chinese Theatre at the opening night. As a Marvel fan, I was very excited going into the cinema. I genuinely enjoyed the movie. However, as many would also felt, I left the movie feeling something was missing.
[For those who haven’t seen the movie, my advice is to treat Wanda Maximoff as the protagonist.]
The rest of the review contains major spoilers for not only Dr Strange 2, but also recent and related shows and movies including:
It’s hard to not compare Dr Strange 2 to The Batman and Everything Everywhere All at Once (EEAAO); the former being the most recent iconic superhero movie, the latter a remarkable movie with a similar theme exploring the multiverse. Unfortunately, Dr Strange 2 is nowhere near these two recent pieces. The pitfall mostly lies in the story of the film: it is even more boring than that of Eternals, and the execution is much less smooth than Spider-Man: No Way Home. While it is indeed a pleasure to watch our favorite characters such as Dr Strange and Wanda Maximoff on the big screen with stunning graphics, without a solid story, the film cannot avoid leaving holes in the heart of movie-goers.
I will examine pitfall of the Dr Strange 2 story from three angles:
- Cliche story: the whole story is straightforward, predictable, and boring
- Limited settings: the setting of how Multiverse works is limited, especially compared to the other MCU works we’ve seen on the same matter
- Flat characters: most characters in the film hardly have an arc, making them impossible to relate to
Cliche Story
I intentionally didn’t watch any of the final trailers and TV spots in the week leading to the movie’s premiere, so I didn’t know that Scarlett Witch is the villain. The minute her role was revealed in the first part of the movie, I immediately recognized that the story might turn out to be a cliche: it will simply be Scarlett Witch trying to get what her want and Dr Strange trying to stop her while dealing with whatever challenge might came up. Earlier when the first trailers were out, there were speculation that the Illuminati, Sinister Strange, or even some unrevealed characters would be the main villain and the driving force of the plot. Unfortunately, these characters simply come and go without meaningfully impacting the story.
Given that the story’s structure is so rudimentary, there is very little room to fit anything interesting in it. We don’t really expect Scarlett Witch to succeed in her effort in absorbing America’s power, as Dr Strange is meant to stop her as the protagonist of the story. As the story develops, it becomes clear that Wanda is doomed to fail, and there won’t be another turning point where she might discover a new path to fulfill her dream of reuniting with her children.
The lack of turning point is critical to the story, contributing to its mediocrity. We will notice that Dr Strange never went through any real challenge that put his heart to test. This is a fundamental element that we see in all good movies:
- In Dr Strange 1, this is when Strange lost the Ancient One and assumed his responsibility as a sorcerer
- In The Batman, this is when Batman discovers another crisis is still dooming even after Riddler is arrested
- In Eternals, this is when Ikaris turned on the rest of Eternals
- In Spider-Man: No Way Home, this is when Peter lost May before his variants show up to support him
- In Everything Everywhere All at Once, this is when the identity and purpose of Jobu Tupaki is revealed
In these turning points, the protagonist sometimes goes through a major challenge (physical or emotional) and sometimes face up a looming crisis that would hold the audiences’ breath. However, there isn’t such a moment in Dr Strange 2. Strange simply goes from one universe to another, resolving the puzzles presented in each. Of course, Scarlett Witch was making a scene in Earth-818 slaughtering the Illuminati, but there is no much Dr Strange could do with it except running away. Even when Illuminati revealed that Dr Strange is the biggest threat to the Multiverse, it didn’t change anything about how our Dr Strange would behave. The audience will find the revelation very cool but irrelevant.
Running away was essentially all Strange and America were doing throughout the entire film, which will be discussed further in the characters section. This makes sense as Scarlett Witch is so OP’d; however, the downside is that the story itself becomes very flat: it’s the same thing (Wanda beating Strange and everyone else) happening over and over again. The fight between Illuminati and Wanda was thrilling, but it has nothing to do with Strange, our protagonist; this is why I think the story might make more sense emotionally if we treat Wanda as the protagonist instead.
Limited Settings
A main reason why the story and characters are so flat is because the setting of the story is awfully limited: there is not much the characters can actually do. Earlier in the film, it was explained that America’s power is to open a gate to travel through the Multiverse, and Scarlett Witch is after this power because apparently it’s not otherwise possible to travel through the Multiverse.
Except that we as the audience know that there are other ways to travel through the Multiverse, the TVA and the Loki variants do it in Loki. Even worse, Strange actually did open pathways between universes in Spider-Man: No Way Home, although it is through a broken spell. In other words, America’s power and her character isn’t strictly necessary in this movie. The whole story could have been Strange and Wanda having a fight on how inter-dimensional magic should be used.
As for the TVA technology to travel across Multiverse, it makes sense to not introduce it in Dr Strange 2, as it is beyond the scope of story. However, for Marvel fans who did watch Loki, knowing that other possibilities exist make it extra painful (both emotionally and logically) to watch Wanda’s attempt in taking America’s power.
The limit on who can travel through the Multiverse has another implication: we won’t see multiple variants of the same characters appearing on the same screen as did in Spider-Man: No Way Home. We only get to see Strange on the same screen with Sinister Strange as he was pushing through the gateway opened by America, as he is the protagonist. This isn’t as mad or fascinating as fan would expect. Later we learn from the Illuminati that interferences over the Multiverse will cause universes to collide in an incursion, which explains this disappointing limitation. In Loki, this limitation is bypassed by having the Lokis quickly traveling through many universes or residing in the Void, which lies outside of the universes; however, Dr Strange 2 didn’t let Strange wander that far. It was simply not mad enough.
Flat Characters
Most of the characters in the story do not have an arc: they barely changed throughout the story or changed only for reasons that weren’t sufficiently setup. This make the story very hard to relate to, especially after the fact. While watching the movie, the audience might be captured by the thrillers and graphics, but the story broke down once they think about it after the fact.
America
As mentioned above, America’s power isn’t strictly necessary for this story, and so is her character. The character was simply running away from her pursuers through out most of the film. Her fear of her own power makes her unable to fight, and yet she wants to live on despite this fear. It was never quite clear how America reconcile her desire to live and the fear of her uncontrollable power. Does she love herself? Does she has a goal of learning to control her power? What does she want? Clearly she wants to live, but that’s way too generic.
In the end, America was able to get her power under control, but only after Strange encourages her to do so, which makes her feels like a minion. The comment that America always open the gate to the universe that Strange needs to be in also confirms that this character exists only to keep the story moving forward.
Strange
Strangely, Strange has no visible character arc either in this movie.
In the wedding scene, Christine was complaining how Strange is always in control, and throughout the film, the Dr Stranges were criticized multiple times for always going alone. These properties about Strange hold true for the entirety of the film: he was in control at the beginning, and he was in control at the end. It’s true that he got thrown into other universes here and there and faced some mischiefs such as being locked up by Illuminati, but he could always figure something out without meaningful efforts; at least without efforts that we Muggles could easily understand. Instead of being a character as part of the story which goes through ups and downs, Dr Strange feels more like a director who already have the script in his mind, just as when he shows Ironman in the fight with Thanos that there is only one possibility to win.
We’ve seen a Strange variant who also tried to take control but failed. Strange Superme spent centuries trying to save Christine’s life but couldn’t. He fall to the forbidden rituals overtime, which ended up bringing his entire universe into apocalypse. We do not see such series of tries and failures which audience tend to relate to in Dr Strange 2. Our Dr Strange’s imprisonment by Illuminati is completely out of his control and there wasn’t really anything he could do with it. Without the lessons of failures, our Strange from Earth-616 is always just and determined. Saving kids was always his priority, and utilizing the power of Darkhold to achieve such goal never present itself as a dilemma.
The saving the kid rhetoric was painfully stereotypical. Having broken the boundaries between universes in Spider-Man: No Way Home himself, Strange knows how dangerous it is to do so. Yet suddenly America’s power and presence becomes ok just because she’s a kid. This didn’t sound quite like the Strange who would allow the Snap to happen in order to finally defeat Thanos and who got furious over Peter Parker’s interference over his spell. We couldn’t help asking what would happen if America was much older, e.g. near her death anyway, and what if Scralett Witch was pursuing her using an Avatar in the human form, instead of with an octopus that’s easily recognized as monsters. Again, with a boring and predictable story, stereotypical elements are used to create mediocre storytelling.
One way that Strange’s character could have been made better is to put him through really tough decisions that create an emotion tension for both the character himself and the audience. A great example is Sylvie in the final episode of Loki choosing to kill He Who Remains. That’s actually mad and out-of-control. Another way to strength the character could have been emphasizing why he behaves the way he does. The Dr Strange 1 moment when the Ancient One said “It’s not always about you” could have been a powerful callback to remind the audience how Dr Strange makes his decisions.
Wanda
Wanda is the only character in Dr Strange 2 that has an internal motive that’s clear and strong: reuniting with her kids. She failed eventually, not because she doesn’t have enough power, but because what she sets out to do is impossible.
When Wanda first revealed her plan of traveling to another universe where her children exist, it raises the question in the audience’s head: would it work? From Loki, we know doing so would probably alert TVA and result in a similar story as Loki. More importantly, however, would it work if Wanda replaces her variant in another universe, essentially killing another version of herself?
A similar prompt has been discussed over and over in the history SF: could the clone replaces the original? The settings of Multiverse is a bit difference as the variants are each from a distinct universe. Still, what we end up realizing is that each individual’s life is unique, even if they are clone or variant of each other. Each lives through a unique life that’s not replaceable by others. Even if one inherits the memory of another and live under the influence of the other’s personality, he still goes through this unique experience of inheritance and becomes someone unique that’s different from the original.
So what ends up “defeating” Wanda in this story is not the magic power or even morality, it’s space-time continuity. It’s not possible for Wanda to assume the life of another, even if that other person is her variant, even if TVA won’t interfere, even if doing so won’t invite an incursion. It simply won’t work. This is actually a saddening and inspiring theme that worth digging deeper into, which the story unfortunately didn’t.
The reason to mention this cosmic force of space-time continuity is that our heroes are now bound by force much greater than morality and responsibility, or at least the scope of the examination has greatly expanded. Looking at Wanda’s story here and the history of what has happened in MCU, we couldn’t help agreeing with Ironman’s perspective in Civil War, that unbound power is a threat to humanity. Captain America used to be there to guide newbies such as Wanda, but now with him gone, the need for characters to grow and develop a moral sense that won’t end up destroying the worlds is ever more desperate.
Illuminati
Illuminati is cool. I mean the characters are cool, even though they were wiped out in minutes. Just as their screen appearance is so swift, we also didn’t have much time to really understand how these characters behave.
The members of Illuminati have experienced an incursion and know how terrible it is. Yet when Dr Strange arrived, they weren’t decisive in treating him one way or another. We heard them talking about the awful consequence of a past incursion, but it is unclear what measures they have taken to prevent another incursion from happening. You’d think with the experience of a past incursion, Illuminati would have policies and procedures to either send visitors from another universe back or simply killing them off. Yet they ended up not doing or able to do anything with either Dr Strange or Wanda.
It’s also a shame that incursion was only superficially explained. There could have been a visual demonstration of it, similar to how Celestials were portrayed in Eternals. With future stories such as Secret War, incursions could play a much larger role in the MCU, and the Illuminati chapter could have been a great place to leave audience with an impression of the terror of incursion. This could also have been the big bad thing that Dr Strange tries to prevent. Yet all we got was some anecdote told by characters that die in the very next scene.
What I wish had happened?
With great expectation comes great disappointment. What we see in Dr Strange 2 is a limited world settings somewhat disconnected from the very films and series that it should have connection to. As audience, we can sense that a lot was sacrificed in order to tell a complete and self-contained stories in 2 hours.
Some new characters and references were introduces, which setup further Marvel films and series, but these are not the ones that fan really expected. A lot of more could have happened in a way that builds up stronger connections. For example:
- Loki could have appeared, even if just as easter eggs or only in post credit scene
- TVA could have intervened, and Wanda could fight TVA to take their technology
- The story settings could have used existing settings in other films / series to give audience a consistent experience
- The story could go deeper on what magic could / should do in terms of the moral standard of the heroes with power
- There could very well be a universe where Billy and Tommy exist but Wanda died due to accidents, and it would be interesting to watch the journey to search for this universe which may or may not exist
- Another force besides Wanda could have been the antagonist if there is a fitting character whose story would also span over multiple films
- Having more variants of the same character appear to really demonstrate the madness of the multiverse
