Multiverse of Madness Reviw

Multiverse of Madness was a highly anticipated film for many reasons and so far the reviews have been very divisive, now we all know by now that I am a very opinionated person and I want to be very detailed in this review. This film had some really amazing moments and it was visually stunning, but the best scenes stuck out so much because they were put up against a backdrop of a messy plot, ill timed pacing and a lack of character development.

Let's start with the good; The Illuminati scene was so brilliant, the characters they chose paired with the casting of said characters (Krasinski as Reed Richards made me scream) was incredible. The following scene of Wanda absolutely demolishing them was also amazing.

Elizabeth Olsen’s acting was easily the best thing about this movie, hands down the way she conveyed sorrow, determination, evil, remorse and longing was what you want to study as an actor, she’s truly incredible.

Visually this film had some really incredible shots, the universe where they meet dark Strange was impeccable, the scene where Strange and America tumble through all the universes was very well done and comic book-esque. Stylistically the movie was very good, if you watched it without the sound so you couldn’t hear the dialogue or plot then it was a 10/10 but alas here we go…

I firmly believe that if you as a director and screenwriter don’t know where your characters last left off, you have already failed at your job. And Raimi full admits that he did not watch WandaVision and had to have things explained to him on the set, that is a level of incompetence that is simply inexcusable. Most of the problems with this movie are due to the people in charge not knowing where we just left off with Wanda and never picking up a comic book…or even googling what the Darkhold is.

First of all the pacing was a tad messy, it was action sequence after action sequence with absolutely no emotional depth or explaination. In a story that should have centered around Strange we instead focused on Wanda in absolutely the wrong way. Now for all of you that were also disappointed by Season 8 of Game of Thrones just know that watching this movie is exactly how that felt. They gave Wanda the Danaerys Targaryen treatment in which I mean, I genuinely don’t care that they made her the villain but the way they did it was absolutely abhorrent. If Wanda was going to be the villain they should have had her taken over by the Darkhold and actually possessed by Chthon (ya know the demon the Darkhold actually belongs to) and use her as his vessel to steal power from America and other multiverse beings. And the best part of that storyline is that it would change very, very little of the movie we got. In fact all it would do is make the film not suck.

As it was the film we got reused a character arc we’ve literally already seen Wanda go through. In fact we JUST saw her go through it in WandaVision and reusing her arc and making her evil with no one else driving that decision is utterly sexist. Now I have talked about this before but the entire trope of overpowered women being mentally and emotionally unstable is rooted and cemented in sexism. So not only did this movie focus on Wanda but it did it in the absolute worst way possible.

Doctor Strange didn’t have any character development in his own film, they tried to have it. They wanted really badly for his character development to be tied to reconciling with Christine but it really just didn’t feel natural or true to the character. He also kisses a Christine from another universe after warning Wanda about interfering with other universes, you know like a hypocrite does and he of course suffers no consequences for either that or using the Darkhold (exhibit of sexism #3).

Then we get to America who was really nothing more than a plot device in this movie, we got very little background and simply no development. The “just believe in yourself” trope is not only tired but it's comically cheesy and it didn’t do her character justice at all.

Finally we have the big gaping plot hole; Act 3, Wanda finally captures America and starts draining her powers (her entire goal of the 2 hour long film) and then she stops….because of the poor structure, underdeveloped story and weak pacing Wanda stops trying to kill America because the writers needed Strange to catch up with her. However if they had been true to the character and the narrative they laid out Wanda would have drained and killed America in the time it took Strange to get to them.

Anyway I really hated the film, if you are capable of watching things purely for entertainment value and have no capacity for analysis then I’m sure it was great but actually looking at the characters and how they were handled gave this film a 2/10 and it is in my bottom 3 Marvel projects….not just films but media as a whole really.