3 / 10
I’ve watched Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness twice. The 3 is for one of the most structurally compromised Phase Four entries and the film that most clearly showed the multiverse premise’s destructive effect on MCU storytelling discussed in How The Multiverse Destroyed The MCU. Sam Raimi brought specific horror-genre filmmaking sensibility to the production. Some sequences benefit considerably from Raimi’s approach.
The wider film is decorative fan service through the Illuminati sequence, character assassination of Wanda Maximoff through unmotivated heel turn, and violation of the magic system rules that the original Doctor Strange film had carefully established. The 3 stands that acknowledges Raimi’s specific contributions while honoring the structural failures of the wider film.
The Setup
Stephen Strange has been navigating the consequences of the multiverse opening that the Spider-Man: No Way Home spells produced. A young woman named America Chavez is pursued by demonic entities across multiple universes. She possesses the ability to travel between universes but can’t control the power. Strange and Wong rescue her in New York and bring her to Kamar-Taj for protection. Strange consults Wanda Maximoff, hoping her experience with reality-warping powers might help understand America’s abilities.
Wanda has been corrupted by the Darkhold, an evil book of magical knowledge introduced in the WandaVision Disney+ series. She’s the actual antagonist pursuing America to acquire her multiverse-traveling power. The middle act involves Strange and America escaping through multiple universes to evade Wanda’s pursuit, including the universe-616 where the Illuminati work. The third act features Strange’s confrontation with Wanda using forbidden necromantic magic, the destruction of the Darkhold across multiple universes, and Wanda’s apparent self-sacrifice while collapsing the magical mountain housing the original Darkhold.
Sam Raimi’s Direction
Sam Raimi had directed the original Spider-Man trilogy (2002-2007) and major horror genre work (Evil Dead franchise, Drag Me to Hell) before Multiverse of Madness. The hiring brought specific horror-genre filmmaking sensibility to the MCU’s mystical-arts dimension. The decision to apply real horror conventions to a mainstream MCU release was creatively ambitious and represented one of the franchise’s more interesting director-material pairings.
The Raimi sensibility shows in specific sequences. The Wanda hunting through Kamar-Taj attack sequence is real horror with sustained dread and physical violence. The Strange consultation with the corpses of dead Strange variants includes specific horror imagery. The multiverse travel sequences feature kaleidoscopic visual approaches that draw on Raimi’s broader visual style. The Mount Wundagore sequences involve real cosmic horror imagery.
The Raimi contribution also faces specific limitations within the MCU structure. Marvel Studios’ broader tonal requirements prevent Raimi from committing fully to horror tone. The film must remain accessible to family audiences who expect superhero entertainment. The trade between horror ambition and family accessibility produces sequences that work at neither full horror intensity nor full superhero entertainment tone. Raimi’s specific strengths are partially deployed and partially constrained. The result is a film that occasionally achieves horror moments embedded in superhero-genre conventions that the surrounding studio requirements prevent from sustained development.
The Illuminati Sequence
The film’s most-marketed element is the Illuminati sequence in Earth-838, a parallel universe where the Avengers were replaced by an organization called the Illuminati. The sequence features alternate-universe variants of major Marvel characters: Patrick Stewart returning as Professor X from the Fox X-Men franchise, John Krasinski as Reed Richards / Mr. Fantastic, Hayley Atwell as Captain Carter (Peggy Carter as Captain America from the What If…?
Disney+ series), Lashana Lynch as Maria Rambeau as Captain Marvel, Anson Mount returning as Captain Marvel’s Black Bolt from the failed Inhumans television series, and the Illuminati’s leader Karl Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor returning in a Mordo variant role).
The sequence is the multiverse premise’s clearest single fan-service deployment. The audience receives unexpected appearances by legacy characters who couldn’t have appeared in the MCU through normal continuity. Patrick Stewart’s return to the Professor X role was widely promoted and generated heavy audience anticipation. John Krasinski’s casting as Reed Richards was speculated about for years as fan casting before the actual deployment.
The Illuminati characters exist on screen for approximately ten minutes before being killed by Wanda Maximoff during her attack on the Illuminati’s headquarters. Each death is depicted with horror-influenced specificity. Mr. Fantastic’s body is shredded. Black Bolt’s head explodes. Captain Carter is bisected. Captain Marvel is crushed under a statue. Professor X’s neck is snapped. The sequence delivers the fan-service appearances and then immediately eliminates the characters in graphic combat that’s no broader narrative consequence within the film.
The structural problem is severe. The audience receives the introduction of legacy characters they’ve been hoping to see in the MCU. The film then kills these characters in approximately the same scene where they appear. The deaths tone as weightless because the characters were introduced specifically to provide brief fan-service appearances before being eliminated. The audience can’t mourn characters they were introduced to in the same scene where they died. The sequence is nostalgia delivery system instead of as integrated narrative element.
The marketing positioned the Illuminati as significant additions to the MCU. The film positioned them as ten minutes of celebrity cameos before being killed for spectacle.
For Writers
The Multiverse of Madness Illuminati sequence shows the cost of character introduction without character development. The film introduces approximately six major legacy characters in a sequence lasting approximately ten minutes and kills all of them within the same sequence. The audience can’t form emotional investment in characters introduced and killed within the same scene. The deaths therefore generate no dramatic weight despite the elaborate combat depictions. The sequence is nostalgia delivery instead of as integrated narrative.
The lesson for writers is that character deaths require character establishment to generate emotional response. If your character hasn’t been on screen long enough for the audience to invest in their interior life, their death will tone as procedural information instead of as loss. The Illuminati characters in this film are introduced specifically to be killed. The audience reads this even when they enjoy the immediate fan-service surprise of seeing the actors return.
The dramatic impact of the deaths is effectively zero because the dramatic foundation for the deaths was never established. Character deaths require character lives. The Illuminati received cameos instead of lives. The deaths therefore generated entertainment value instead of dramatic value.
The Wanda Heel Turn
The film positions Wanda Maximoff as the actual antagonist who has been pursuing America Chavez throughout the runtime. The Wanda of this film has been corrupted by the Darkhold introduced in WandaVision. She’s willing to kill multiple universes’ worth of people, multiple MCU heroes, and multiple variants of herself to acquire America’s multiverse-traveling power. Her motivation is to reunite with her children who exist only in alternate-universe variants of herself.
The character development problems are severe. WandaVision had ended with Wanda accepting that her children weren’t real and committing to grow through the loss instead of through magical denial. The Multiverse of Madness Wanda has rejected this acceptance and returned to magical denial. The shift between WandaVision’s conclusion and Multiverse of Madness’s antagonist Wanda is unmotivated by anything depicted on screen. The character has been reframed for the new film’s purposes without sufficient narrative development to support the reframing.
Elizabeth Olsen plays the Wanda role with continued commitment. The performance is professionally executed within the limits of the material. The material itself doesn’t allow Wanda to function as either developed antagonist or as continued protagonist whose character arc audiences had been invested in across multiple previous appearances. The Multiverse of Madness Wanda is a different character than the WandaVision Wanda, with the difference left unjustified by anything the script establishes.
The pattern is the franchise’s broader Phase Four-Five issue of treating established characters as material to be reframed for current production needs instead of as accumulated capital to be respected. Wanda’s heel turn in Multiverse of Madness works similarly to the wider character degradation patterns discussed in the emasculation essay, though applied to a female character instead of to male characters. The franchise treats its established characters as flexible material instead of as fixed foundation. The audience response across multiple Phase Four-Five productions reflects this pattern.
The Magic System Violation
The original Doctor Strange film carefully established the magic system as a discipline with internal logic, as discussed in the Doctor Strange (2016) review. Spells required specific training, specific tools, specific time to cast, and specific consequences for misuse. The constraints gave the magic system the dramatic foundation that drama requires.
Multiverse of Madness violates these constraints repeatedly. Wanda Maximoff shows reality-manipulation capabilities that exceed what the original Doctor Strange film established as the boundaries of mystical-arts practice. Strange himself uses necromantic magic in the third act through the corpse of his Earth-838 variant, performing a “Dreamwalking” spell whose mechanics are introduced solely to enable the climactic sequence. The Darkhold provides Wanda with reality-warping capabilities that effectively make her unbeatable by ordinary means, requiring the script to invent specific weaknesses on demand to allow the resolution.
The pattern of expanding capabilities to meet plot needs is one of the franchise’s structural problems. The original Doctor Strange handled magic system constraints correctly. Multiverse of Madness expanded those constraints whenever the plot required expansion, generating a magic system that works flexibly instead of with the consistent rules drama requires. The audience reads the pattern. The dramatic stakes deflate because the magical capabilities are no longer constrained in ways the audience can track.
Benedict Cumberbatch’s Performance
Benedict Cumberbatch continues as Stephen Strange with sustained professional commitment. The performance is one of the film’s more consistent elements. Strange works with the specific arrogant intellectual tone Cumberbatch had established in the original film, modified slightly by the experiences of Infinity War and Endgame. The character has developed enough across previous appearances to support continued screen time without requiring real new character work in this specific film.
The script doesn’t give Strange particularly demanding material despite the film’s title positioning him as central protagonist. Strange functions primarily as audience perspective character traveling through multiverse environments and witnessing other characters’ actions. The actual dramatic engine of the film works through Wanda’s antagonist arc and America Chavez’s coming-of-age subplot. Strange’s specific character development is minimal across the runtime despite the film bearing his name.
Cumberbatch’s professional execution prevents the limited material from being more visibly problematic. A weaker leading actor would have struggled with the role’s reduced agency. Cumberbatch maintains audience engagement through specific verbal cadence and physical presence even when the script gives him less to work with than the original film provided.
Craft: The Multiverse Premise’s Most Visible Failure
Craft Note
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is the film at which the multiverse premise’s destructive effect on MCU storytelling became most visible to general audiences. The Illuminati sequence delivered the multiverse premise’s most extreme fan-service deployment alongside the premise’s most explicit demonstration of why such deployment damages serialized drama. The audience received legacy characters they had been hoping to see in the MCU and watched those characters die within minutes of their introduction. The combination of immediate satisfaction and immediate disappointment captured what the multiverse premise delivers across the wider franchise.
The film also violated the magic system rules the original Doctor Strange film had carefully established. The expansion of capabilities to meet plot needs is the wider pattern across multiverse-era productions. Each film expands what the magical characters can do to meet current narrative requirements, with cumulative effect that the magic system loses the constraints that drama requires. Multiverse of Madness represents the pattern operating at high intensity within a single film.
The Wanda heel turn represents the wider Phase Four-Five pattern of treating established characters as material for current-production reframing instead of as accumulated capital to respect. WandaVision had ended with Wanda accepting loss and committing to growth. Multiverse of Madness rejected this conclusion and returned her to antagonist function. The shift was unmotivated by anything depicted on screen. The franchise prioritized current-production antagonist needs over established character continuity.
The 3 ratings are for the cumulative structural failures despite Sam Raimi’s specific directorial contributions. The horror-influenced sequences work at higher craft level than the wider production but can’t save the film from its structural problems. The Illuminati sequence delivers fan service at the cost of character development. The magic system expansion destroys the constraints that made the original Doctor Strange function. The Wanda heel turn dismantles WandaVision’s conclusion. Each problem compounds the others. The result is a film that fails despite individual strengths.
For analysis of the wider multiverse problem, see How The Multiverse Destroyed The MCU. For analysis of the wider character-degradation pattern this film exemplifies, see The Emasculation Of The MCU.
Should you skip Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness?
A 3. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is one of the most structurally compromised Phase Four entries and the film that most clearly showed the multiverse premise’s destructive effect on MCU storytelling. Sam Raimi’s horror-genre direction produces specific successful sequences. The Illuminati sequence delivers fan service while killing the characters it introduces within minutes. Wanda Maximoff’s heel turn dismantles WandaVision’s character conclusion without sufficient narrative justification. The magic system constraints the original Doctor Strange film established are violated repeatedly. Benedict Cumberbatch’s performance maintains audience engagement despite reduced material.
The wider film is franchise expansion through multiverse mechanics instead of as integrated standalone narrative.
I’ve watched it twice. The 3 stands. The second viewing made the structural problems more visible than the first viewing’s immediate fan-service satisfaction had allowed. Other viewers may rate the film higher based on appreciation for Raimi’s specific contributions or for the Illuminati nostalgia. The 3 reflects the cumulative production failures and the wider franchise damage the film exemplifies. The MCU’s multiverse problem became unmistakable through this film’s release.
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