'Doctor Strange 2' sucked, MCU hits slump in Phase 4

It's hard to be taken seriously as a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe because virtually every movie is good, if not great or even extraordinary. Those who are not die-hard MCU fans probably have learned to drown out that noise; if all the movies are the best, they all start to sound the same.

I preface what I'm about to say with that because I want people to understand I don't just say I love every MCU movie because I'm a fan. I look at them objectively and put real thought and analysis into how I feel about each one of these movies.

Hopefully this review will give merit to what I'm saying. The latest MCU movie, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, was not only one of the worst MCU movies, but it wasn't a good movie in general, and it continued a downward trend in the quality of MCU movies that has me worried.

A lot of the rhetoric out there has centered around the horror elements in the movie, but don't let that distract you from the fact that the rest of the movie mostly sucked, too, despite a few incredibly awesome action sequences and a scene that finally gave us the long-overdue debut of a couple of other mega franchises that will carry the MCU in the future.

But to go back to the horror elements of the movie, that was the absolute worst part for sure. I don't care if you didn't think it was a big deal because you've read the Doctor Strange comics and knew to expect that sort of stuff (I am well aware of the dark nature of some of his stories, as well). There is no justifying the pure evil that pervaded the final act. Watching demons literally flying around and tormenting a zombie version of Doctor Strange does not belong in a PG-13 Marvel movie that no doubt had millions of children watching because, oh yeah, these movies are supposed to be kid-friendly.

Wanda's actions weren't great, either. Yes, I'm aware that Wanda is an actual witch now, and witches use spells. But that doesn't mean we need to sit and watch close-up shots of her literally zapping what felt like the spirit life (it was just superpowers) out of America Chavez while her eyes were in a haze to signify how she's under a spell. We don't need to see Doctor Strange arranging candles in a seance-looking ritual while showing only the whites of his eyes, his body flailing around as he executes possession spells and actually uses demons to his advantage as he moves in to fight Scarlet Witch. I'm sorry, but that was way too much evil that did not need to be in there. We've seen evil creatures in the MCU before. We've even seen hell in Thor: Ragnarok, but the way it was presented was far lighter and more fantastical (and more comical). Doctor Strange 2 felt completely different in the worst way possible.

Having said all that, even if the evil stuff wasn't evil and felt more in line with the rest of the Marvel movies, the movie itself plain sucked.

Let's start with the complete waste of a storyline with Wanda. At the end of WandaVision (a show I absolutely adore), she has made peace with the fact that what she created in Westview (her children included) aren't real, and she finally learned to say goodbye to Vision. We got such a satisfying ending to an awesome show. In the post-credits scene, though, Wanda (now the Scarlet Witch) hears her children's voices as she started using the Darkhold.

Doctor Strange 2 explains what was going on there. Wanda is hearing other versions of her children from other universes because the Darkhold allows her to somewhat navigate the multiverse. So what does Wanda want to do? Why, she wants to spend an entire movie searching for her pretend children in another universe, of course! It completely undermines any progress she made toward getting closure and moving on at the end of WandaVision. What we see is Wanda go through the exact same motions of trying to keep her life and desires in a bubble (or hex, if you want to get technical) that isn't real.

The writers somehow try to convince us that this pathetic attempt at character motivation was enough to justify Scarlet Witch going postal, first by sending demon monsters after Chavez (which is her being reasonable), then by attacking Doctor Strange, Wong, and their entire Kamar-Taj fortress, then by performing spells at the Mount Wundagore temple to take control of the entire multiverse, all for the sake of being with her boys. Thanks in part to Chaves, Wanda finally sees the error of her ways (again) and realizes she is, in fact, a monster. What a wasteful narrative. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against a story that turns Wanda into the villain, but I hated how much it retread WandaVision's story beats.

Instead of dazzling me, the rest of the movie just left a lot to be desired. Doctor Strange and Chavez fly off into a grand multiversal journey...by staying in one other universe the entire time. Even the shot of them flying through Chavez's multiverse portal was too short-lived and felt more like a cartoon; seriously, what decisions in what reality could've been made to spawn an all-paint universe? It was literally riffing that one multiverse episode of Family Guy. Strange and Chavez land in a universe that really isn't all that different from their own. Sure, this is where the cool scene involving newcomers like the Illuminati, Professor Xavier and Fantastic Four's Reed Richard, along with alternate versions of returning characters, including Captain Carter (woohoo!), Black Bolt (ugh, I wish I wasn't even reminded of the awful Inhumans show's existence), and a different Captain Marvel (in this universe, Carol Danver's friend Maria Rambeau apparently is the one who got covered in the Tesseract's energy burst). All of this geeky goodness was short-lived because Wanda eventually shows up (Scarlet Witch possesses alternate-universe versions of herself) and kills every single one of them.

Instead of the movie focusing on the multiverse and taking a deep dive of creativity, the story turns into one long escort mission for Doctor Strange as he tries to protect Chavez from Scarlet Witch. Boring.

The best scenes in the movie are the action scenes with Strange. To this day, the exchange of blows between Thanos and Strange in Infinity War is my favorite action sequence in the entire MCU. One or two scenes in Doctor Strange 2 gave me similar vibes. After a noisy, destructive battle on the rooftops of the Kamar-Taj, Strange sets up an incredibly wild magic trap for Wanda where she gets lost in reflections and finds out she can't blast her way out. But she cleverly figures out how to use the reflections to her advantage. When she finally catches up with him, Strange unleashes multi-headed dragon chains that only multiply when Wanda shoots one down. She, of course, uses a multi-targeting attack that takes them all out at once.

This was the Stephen Strange I expected to see in Spider-Man: No Way Home, not the clumsy, stupid Strange who made silly mistakes while casting spells and who got bested by a simple move of Spider-Man's because of math. Yes, I'm still salty about that movie. Despite some cool fight scenes in Doctor Strange 2, there were a few dumb moments, too. Too many times was Strange trying to run or hide instead of use sling portals. Why did Strange need to hop around on floating debris in that weird "space between universes" when he probably could have, you know, portaled his way over there?

WHO IS TO BLAME?

So who is to blame for this debacle of a movie? On the surface, it's mostly director Sam Raimi, who's ego apparently is so bloated, he felt the need to leave way too much of his personality in the movie instead of carving his style into an already established and wildly successful franchise that doesn't need him. His take on the multiverse was nutty and pointless.

The real person to blame, though, is Kevin Fiege. Through the years, Marvel hasn't gotten along with a few directors who have left projects due to creative differences. Fans foolishly took the side of the creative directors, no matter how uninformed they were to the specifics of the project. What Fiege has tried to do to correct that issue in Phase 4 is give directors more creative freedom.

Yeah, how has that been working out? I'll tell you: it hasn't. We got The Eternals, which was a crappy movie with poor directing, but hey, at least we got Marvel's first sex scene (if you can even call it that) and a gay couple for political-agenda points (for the record, that's not why the movie sucked, but it was clearly shoe-horned in). We got Spider-Man: No Way Home, which duped many fans into thinking it was a great movie because Sony managed to convince actors from their old movies to come back for a pure nostalgia trip. And now we have Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which gave Raimi the chance to service himself more than the audience or the franchise as a whole, and we got another useless scene with lesbian moms that served no real purpose in the actual movie. At least Shang-Chi was decent. And I absolutely loved Black Widow, but that movie belonged in Phase 3.

What's lacking in Phase 4 is some sort of connective tissue that shows where everything is headed. The Secret Wars are supposedly coming soon, but that hasn't really been taken advantage of despite being on the table for years. There's a story line in the comics that covers the entire collapse of the multiverse, so that's a possibility. It was baffling that Kang didn't appear once in Doctor Strange 2, but maybe he'll still turn out to be the big bad; hopefully he isn't limited to appearing in Season 2 of Loki. There are a lot of directions the MCU could go to get Phase 4 back on track. I'm sure Marvel is going to look at the box office for Doctor Strange 2 and think there isn't even a problem. Hopefully they can convince me that the rest of Phase 4 will make it all worthwhile.

WIFE'S TWO CENTS

We already had an entire season about Wanda going through the grieving process, but we resolved that at the end of WandaVision. We didn't need an entire movie following a similar story line again.

The evil demonic stuff was completely unnecessary and ruined my experience for sure. It wasn't even a fun Marvel movie. They were trying to make this movie something that Marvel is not.

Also, I wish we got more of Loki instead of just Wanda. With Kang making such a big connection to the MCU at the end of Loki, I was surprised we got no mention of him at all.

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