The Madness has ended…or has it?

After months of waiting and so much hype, Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has come and gone just like everything else (crying internally). It feels almost impossible for another huge movie blockbuster from Marvel to have happened and we all are just forced to move on from it. It’s actually quite rude that they even ask us to. And now we might have to wait even longer for answers? Unacceptable Marvel, you’re killing me here. But I want to get into MoM right away because I actually can’t gush about it the way I thought I would. I mean, I gushed about it more going into it than coming out and that’s saying something. I will say, everything aside, this is, of course, our opinions on the films and you are as welcome to your own, whether they agree or disagree with ours. I say this because there seems to be quite a bit of disconnect on how people feel about this film, so for our fully explained thoughts, click the button below to find your listening platform of choice or follow the link to start listening.

For those who follow us regularly, you know I am a huge Wanda fan and that I was going into this film ready for destruction. Well, I would say I certainly got that from my girl Wanda. But overall, I have to say the film didn’t particularly do anything for me. As I was watching, I felt that I just was waiting and waiting for something more to happen and it just never did. Wanda was a scene-stealer, which I was fine with, but I just felt disconnected from the events of the film. I didn’t walk out shocked or on a high from the film, I walked out surprised that that is what I waited 5 months for. Trust me, it pains me to say it, but Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness simply didn’t do it for me. They sacrificed strong storytelling for the action and you could tell, as the pacing felt off the entire time. We had near to no exposition to lay it all out for us making the transition from the first act to the second wonky. But I won’t harp on my general feelings without giving a full explanation to all of you, so let’s get into it.

As I mentioned, I am a Wanda girl and was going to root for her no matter what. But unfortunately, while Elizabeth Olsen did an amazing job portraying the evil Scarlet Witch, the writing was still a little off. Once again, we have fallen victim to the people involved in the film not doing their homework, and lord could you tell. Wanda finished WandaVision doing the right thing and still being a hero, and while the Darkhold did get a hold of her, we only had 30 seconds to make assumptions that she was going down a dark path. Then suddenly she is pure evil, willing to kill a child to get to her own, even though they never really existed in our universe. WandaVision was about healing, especially from her grief over Vision, yet that was continuously a point for her in this film as well. I’m not saying I didn’t mind her being evil, but we never really saw the descent into it, so it felt jarring. The whole film I wanted to root for her but couldn’t feel my Wanda (see what I did there), yet it’s true, I didn’t feel her she felt like this random bad guy, no different than any other Marvel film. I won’t say she wasn’t still a sympathetic villain, but she didn’t for a second feel like the Wanda we know and love.

I will 100% get into the cameo business, but I want to address that many who liked the film a lot argue that those who don’t like it felt the way they did because people had too high of expectations, particularly in the cameo area. I want to say I had expectations related to NWH and I know Taylor can agree to this. Obviously, with this film coming out after NWH and Dr. Strange being in the film we all expected it to be a follow-up, directly coming after the events of NWH. Even the trailers (which I will also get to) portrayed that our universe was in jeopardy because of Strange’s actions in NWH. But then this factor felt extremely left out in this film and it seemed that everything Strange did in NWH didn’t affect just about anything. The Multiverse seemed fine and they used America essentially as a scapegoat for Strange traveling through the Multiverse. I will say, both Taylor and I expected our universe to be falling apart and for the stakes to feel a whole lot higher than they did in a film regarding the Multiverse.

I said I would address it and here it is. Simply put, the trailers completely ruined this film in my opinion. Far too much was released ahead of time, essentially giving us the entire plot. I knew at almost any given scene how it would play out because of the trailers. They also exposed way too many of the cameos and this is why I bring it up. For those of you who read the predictions post for MoM, you know I said almost verbatim that if they were giving us this much in the trailers, then the movie itself had to have so much more. I think that was a fair assumption to make, the only problem being that that wasn’t true at all. They gave us everything, including Captain Carter, Maria as Captain Marvel, and comic accurate Professor X all in the trailers, and then there were only two more genuinely shocking cameos. As I said, the plot became predictable as well because of what was released in the trailers, and honestly, it sort of just sucked because I was really only shocked a few times.

I will say, one of the biggest shocks for me was those kill scenes cause they were off the wall. I didn’t expect my girl Wanda to just go off like that, completely murdering the Illuminati as if it was no one’s business. Not to mention, Lizzie has come out and said that the Wanda whose body the Scarlet Witch was using actually held back her power slightly, so the actual Scarlet Witch could have done a whole lot more damage than what we already saw. And of course, I can’t not talk about how much I love the Captain Carter kill cause we all know I don’t like her for various reasons. I definitely rooted her on for that one specifically.

But now we wait for another Dr. Strange film, huh? I think what the end credit did was perfect for what it needed to, but it did make this film like a Part 1 to a very important Part 2. For those of you who have seen Harry Potter, it feels a lot like Deathly Hallows Part 1, when the entire film works to set up the second one, and yes there’s some action but it didn’t really solve anything because it is getting us to a second, more important film. But now we have it, the Incursion is happening, Clea is here, and our Strange is being corrupted by the Darkhold that he has stored in his photographic memory. But I won’t go too deeply into this thought just yet, as we have a whole episode coming to talk more about the Multiverse aspect of this episode, this very important end credit scene, and why we think Secret Wars is being set up.

With all this being said, make sure to keep an eye out for our upcoming episode and corresponding blog post. I want to reiterate that the movie isn’t hated, just certainly not one of my favorite films for various reasons, as just explained. I am really hoping Dr. Strange 3 can give us a lot more of that multiversal action, as I was really looking forward to it here and didn’t get as much as I hoped. But moving forward, we will continue to cover the Multiverse and MoM leading up to our one year of being a podcast! Tune it for that very exciting episode in early June as well, where we will do some looking back on the past year and talk about some of the cool things to come in year two. While I don’t know your thoughts on MoM, I will still say in some way or another, that Marvel just blew your mind, so let’s talk about it.

Image: “Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”, JenniferJoy, Bullfrag