Doctor Strange offers a meandering, messy multiverse
Sam Raimi's return to the superhero genre offers too many expository speeches, too little emotion, and requires way too much homework
Film Reviews Doctor Strange
It’s long past time for Sam Raimi to make another superhero movie, but Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness isn’t the one he should have chosen for his return. Raimi has only directed a handful of television episodes since his last feature, 2013’s Oz The Great And Powerful, but he remains a first-tier filmmaker, and a Doctor Strange sequel is a second- or third-tier challenge—especially with this story. Working from a script by Michael Waldron, whose previous MCU experience was writing and executive producing the Disney+ series Loki, Raimi has inherited a mythology of madness which requires a lot of homework (most of it involving the Disney+ series Waldron didn’t work on, WandaVision) for moviegoers to be fully up to speed, and the tale translates poorly to the big screen, even with the filmmaker working overtime to inject his raucous appetite for horror into what still needs to be a PG-13 crowd-pleaser.
As protector of a protege who’s wrestling with their powers for the second consecutive movie, Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) settles uneasily into the mentor role previously occupied by his late know-it-all counterpart Tony Stark. After Strange’s alternate universe counterpart sends America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) into ours, the doctor and Wong (Benedict Wong) embark on a search for a mystical book that will allow them not only to defeat America’s pursuers but also reset the roiling “multiverse” that has been disrupted. Their search leads them to Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), whose witchcraft complements their sorcery, but she has other plans with America, who possesses the ability to travel freely across the multiverse, although she needs help from a seasoned hand to navigate it with a modicum of control.
When Wanda decides to recreate in an alternate dimension the maternal fantasy she has manufactured, Wanda finds herself at odds with Strange, Wong, and the disciples of their spiritual practice—especially when she decides that she will do anything, including kill America, in order to achieve her goal. In the meantime, Strange flees through the multiverse, encountering different and unexpected versions of himself—and other heroes and villains—which he hopes will unlock the secrets of America’s power, and eventually, return his own universe to normal.
Given how many cinematic multiverses filmmakers have created in recent years—from the animated Spider-Verse to the one that united three Spider-Men in No Way Home—the most baffling choice Doctor Strange makes is that its exploration of this idea has nothing to do with any of them. Essentially, in the MCU timeline, No Way Home happened, and shortly thereafter a person who can travel between universes coincidentally showed up to need Strange’s help. Meanwhile, what Strange is dealing with in the post-Endgame era is determining whether or not he’s “happy”—a quandary that never gets woven into the adventure that he goes on, except for the fact that in every and all universes, his ex-girlfriend Christine (Rachel McAdams, who you’d be forgiven for forgetting was a part of the first film) wants nothing to do with him, and it’s a bummer. Around that, America and Wanda navigate their own relationship ambitions and insecurities, a thematic binding agent that gets thoroughly watered down by nonstop exposition, not to mention (and I can’t believe I’m even saying this) too many Raimi-esque flourishes.
When Raimi directed Spider-Man in 2002, it felt like a Hollywood iconoclast getting to bring his manic creativity to a prestige property, a perfect pairing of artist and subject. Here, he feels like a director for hire, but one who’s been over-catered to by the powers that be in terms of letting him do his “thing”—transforming Raimi’s iconic style into a desperate act of marking his territory on something in which he somewhat obviously has no investment. It doesn’t help that the movie isn’t really about anything, but what makes the experience of watching it so much worse is that the MCU has now fully capitulated to multi-format storytelling that demands knowledge not just of previous films but of Disney+ series as well.
One supposes that WandaVision viewers will have a leg up on folks who are MCU movie-watchers only. But after Marvel’s brain trust navigated fan service so extraordinarily well in No Way Home, the choice to lean so heavily on not just canonical but emotional ideas from the films’ streaming counterparts hobbles it for anyone who doesn’t know them chapter and verse—even with the characters constantly explaining every single idea or concept over and over in the most boring way possible.
Consequently, the film feels like a collection of ideas that never add up. People “shadow walk,” there’s a “dark hold,” and there’s both a Book of the Damned and a swirling cloud comprised of the “souls of the cursed.” At one point, Strange fights himself using musical notes—cool, but why? “Doctor Strange wants to learn what it means to be happy versus Wanda Maximoff wants to be a mother” is not a coherent conflict. Despite a spirited performance by Gomez, America is surprisingly passive for long stretches of the film. And you have to wonder what sort of negotiations (creative or financial) must have gone on for the remarkably gifted McAdams to come back to this role; sure, they give her more screen time, but she isn’t really doing anything different, better or deeper than in the first film. It’s probably good that not every peripheral character in the MCU eventually becomes a superhero, but this is not the way to give Christine Palmer something to do.
The only consolation that comes from this meandering multiverse is that even if it isn’t very good, at least it got Raimi back in the moviemaking rotation. It’s less of an opportunity than he deserved, and maybe that’s why it’s less of an achievement than he’s capable of, but it’s destined to become a hit. All of which makes Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness feel more like a bit of lazy misdirection than anything truly magical. Still, if it was the only way to make Sam Raimi reappear, then it will have been worth it.
544 Comments
Jesus, I cannot wait until this Marvel thing dies down.
Personally, I can’t wait until scrotes like you realize they don’t have to comment on every thread of something they don’t like.
Not many threads left, then.
Never gonna happen. Every dominant cinema trend will be commented on by everyone. Public forums.
There’s that level of maturity, wit, and and intelligence we’ve come to expect from the comic book crowd. You’re a classy, classy fandom, you are.
LOL. Broad-brush much?! Douchebaggary of the finest order on display. My cools are waaaaaay more sophisticated than your cools……..
Fyi “douchebag” is a crude and sexist term
Meh. If the overgeneralized shoe fits…
* Fight Club User name? Check.* Middle school-level comeback? Check.* Proving the point I made without realising it? Double-check.
LMFAO. Edgelordy gatekeepers are the WORST. Enjoy your elitist mentality. I will enjoy the things I enjoy and feel great about it.
Sorry, but I’m not here as a representative of the comic book crowd, but as a representative of the “we don’t need every detail of every thing you don’t like” crowd. Adjust your priors accordingly.
But did this particular commenter offer “every detail” of their dislike? Or is it more that you see multiple varied criticisms (or quick flames, fair) and conflate them?
“we don’t need every detail of every thing you don’t like”“It’s OK for me to express my displeasure at people expressing displeasure of things, but it’s not OK for those same people to express that displeasure of things in the first place.”That, my pedigree chum, is called hypocrisy. You might claim you’re not here as member of the comic book crowd – but you’re doing a damn good impression of one.
lol pot kettle black
Get fucked and cry somewhere else.
Or, you could just try not coming into the comments section of a Marvel movie and posting about it since you supposedly dislike them so much.
Yay! Around and around she goes! Where she stops? No one knows!You could try ignoring the posts of people who come into the comments section of every Marvel blah blah you get it.
Public forum. Deal with it. I would say “I’m sorry you can’t handle opinions that don’t reinforce your own”, but I’m not sorry about that and I doubt you’d get the sarcasm.
These movies make billions of dollars. They’re not watched by the “comic book crowd” any more than Titanic was watched by the James Cameron crowd
Yours is literally the only thing that comes close to a defence of the actual movies in all these replies. And yet, all it is is just usual “IT MAKES LOTSA MONEY” defence. Yeah, so does sex trafficking, and Monsanto.
Lern 2 reedI didn’t defend the movies. The movies weren’t the subject of your post. I even quoted the subject for you in my post and you still screwed it up.That you so fantastically misread and misunderstood my post yet feel you’re the smart one is wonderful. Good pat on the head for trying your best!
Just wait till he starts stalking your other posts and insulting youhttps://www.avclub.com/1848890516But remember, they are not insulting anyone.
I don’t much care for Marvel movies or comic books either but insulting all comic book fans is peak asshole behavior
Show me, on the doll, where I insulted “all comic book fans”. For the record, here’s my original post: Jesus, I cannot wait until this Marvel thing dies down.
If anyone’s taken this as a personal insult against themselves, it’s their own fault for basing their entire identity off a fucking piece of Disney property.
That’s a weird post to reference when it should have been obvious I meant this one:There’s that level of maturity, wit, and and intelligence we’ve come to expect from the comic book crowd. You’re a classy, classy fandom, you are.
Every other comment after that has been a reply where you threw out every cliche nerd stereotype you could. Anyways you have a nice life. I’m done with your silliness
how dare you speak to Captain Splendid that way
“the comic book crowd” ok silent generation
And you’re a douchebag.
So do you wear the monocle and top hat every day or just for special occasions? Also what is the situation re those little garters for your socks?
You’re describing Mr. Peanut.
Nah, just because you rock a fedora doesn’t mean everyone wears hats. Be nice, and I’ll teach you how to shave underneath your chin.
Got it, so just the monocle then. I’m sure it pops out in disbelief when another comic book movie comes out. The fact is that yes, comic book movies are big now. So what. Other movies still get made. And the fact that big crazy stupid comic book blockbusters are the only thing keeping movie theaters alive. If they died tomorrow do you think thoughtful Oscar bait dramas will fill the void at theaters? It will be some other big dumb mass market appeal blockbuster that people like you will turn their nose up at.
You’re making a lot assumptions about my tastes. I like big dumb mass market appeal blockbusters. (Surprise, surprise: nerd creates strawman to win argument on internet. Film at eleven.)
Except you’re obviously too sheltered – well, more likely, too insulated in your experiences – to understand that comic book movies aren’t the only mass market appeal blockbusters.I’m just sick of comic book movies. Which is why I specified comic book movies. You know, in my original one-sentence post.Top Gun: Maverick looks fucking awesome. The other thing that’s fucking hilarious is despite your desperation, fawning defence of comic book movies, not a single one of you has actually mentioned the cinematic merits of comic book movies. Not one.Maybe that’s why you’re all so angry: you hate the fact that you like something you find indefensible.
Top Gun: Maverick looks like shit. Just another nostalgia circle jerk for Gen X nerds
…says the neckbeard defending movies based on IP that’s been regurgitated since before WWII.
Another insult? And a recycled one at that. You really are unable to get you point across without being a total asshole.
The fact that you think that the only possible alternatives to comic book movies are “Oscar bait dramas” tells me that your tastes are very, very limited.
I mean you reading my comment that way tells me that reading comprehension isn’t one of your strengths.
You’re a classy, classy fandom, you are.*rolls eyes*Ah yes, just like the classy people who hate the MCU and feel the need to go out of their way to complain about it. Hypocrites, all of you.
It’s keeping theatres open during a pandemic. They’re higher quality than most action movies. They’re making people happy and introducing actors and directors to a more mainstream audience.
What the fuck do you care? Nobody is allowed to not like something in your holy presence? Piss off, dickhead.
LMAO “scrotes”.
That just makes me think of Wayne from Wonder Years. I think that put down slipped past the 80s censors
Someone has a hard time when people don’t like the same things as them
Someone has a reading comprehension problem.
I regretted my post almost immediately once I read the person you were replying to’s posts. Sorry
I was thinking the same thing about the original poster.
why does it bother you so much when ppl don’t like marvel?
The same dipshit who bitches and moans on every article that mentions Marvel, asking why somebody cares so much about whether someone likes/dislikes something…. Talk about a complete and utter lack of self-awareness.
Getting a wee bit tired of a media franchise that has effectively dominated every single movie theater and streaming platform for over a decade now is fairly understandable, I’d say.
Ah, this merry-go-round.See, nobody HAS to comment on anything, really.They don’t have to comment on things they don’t like. You don’t have to comment on their dislike (which is probably, I’m guessing, something YOU don’t like?)Shall we go around again?
David Simon? Is that you??
And I can’t wait until even littler, more miserably unpleasant scrotes like you realize they don’t have to petty-bitter comment in reply.Go defend the asshole who bought Twitter or something.(What a “Joey Nickles” sort of asshole!)
I’m with you but I don’t see it happening.
I don’t get this take, does it annoy you that other people enjoy something? What does it’s existence do that burns you guys out so much?
Because it dominates far too much of the cultural discourse and film-making world. Just think of how many unique, new, creative movies, say, Warner Bros could’ve funded for the cost of the nth failed reboot of Batman.
i mean it hasnt failed….
It’s cute that you think there is any originality left in Hollywood.
There is. Genuinely! It exists, it just doesn’t get the green light. Trust me, I do freelance script reading (not as much lately, to be fair) and I see plenty of good specs. But the studios are *ridiculously* risk-averse. So even the original stuff that’s GOOD gets passed on. (And those writers often get offered a try at in-house IP)
I believe you, truly. It is just supremely annoying the amount of rehash and do overs and “reimagining’s” that come out again and again and again…it just gets so “stale”. But I get it.
Yeah, but they wouldn’t and won’t put that money toward a bunch of small budget passion projects and creatively daring masterpieces. Suddenly excising all superhero movies from existence won’t eliminate the structural pressures that made them so popular in the first place—studios like big dumb safe easily culturally translatable blockbusters because they sell equally well in the U.S., Europe, and China.
Totally, 100% fair.Aaaaas long as we don’t ignore that selling requires buyers. Blame the industry, yes. But blame ourselves too.
I’m pretty sure that’s implied by what I said, but yes! I feel like a greater variety of movies—comedies! remember those?—would probably get made if studios didn’t have their eyes perpetually set on the Chinese market, but for the most part they make superhero movies because people watch ’em.
The argument against that is that big tentpole movies subsidize the rest, and that Nolan got to make a number of his own films because of his success with Batman. Although I don’t watch the MCU because even keeping up with all the films (much less TV on a streaming service I’d never subscribe to) is too much for me.
The counterargument is that studio bookkeeping ensures that ain’t shit gittin subsidized by fuck-all. It is a fallacy to say that more “artistic” fare comes at the expense of populist money.
Studio bookkeeping is a way to avoid having to pay people more, but since it’s a gimmick it can still be used to subsidize whatever the studio feels like subsidizing (like a one-for-me for a director who’s done one-for-them).
And the argument against that is virtually every other filmmaker that isn’t Christopher Nolan, who HASN’T gotten to make big-budget original movies for a studio. Do you see the Russo Brothers or Jon Favreau out there making their Interstellar or Inception?
Jon Favreau’s passion project was “Chef”.
Chef had a budget of 11 million dollars. It’s hardly comparable to the kind of blank checks Nolan gets. The “one for them, one for me” thing was definitely how it worked in Hollywood for a long time, but I think it’s pretty much disappeared.
Just think of how many unique, new, creative movies, say, Warner Bros could’ve funded for the cost of the nth failed reboot of Batman.
I’m gonna guess between 0 and 1, because, you know, it’s Warner Bros.It’s gonna be a Batman, or it’s going up an exec’s nose. That’s your choice.
If WB execs were still doing coke we might *actually* get some interesting releases.
No, it’s just Flonase. That shit’s gotten mad expensive.
It’s by far not the worst offender, but I have always felt like Flonase is one of the laziest product names ever.
It’s gonna be a Batman, or it’s going up an exec’s nose. That’s your choice.Up the exec’s nose, then, please. * There’s a chance these dipshit execs might OD or get stuck in rehab and thus removed from the studio.* It what stop the endless whinging of Batman fans – who are never, ever satisfied with anything post-Nolan. (Comic book fans are rarely satisfied with anything other than comics.) * We’d have to hear about it less, in general.
I kinda agree with you. But also WB isn’t in the business of doing original things.Because the viewing public at large is too apathetic about original things. At least in film. I think there’s more room for it in TV.
I came across this essay bringing up similar points. We may think we’ve seen things like a genre dominating cinema before, but we really haven’t seen anything like this superhero craze. If you have the time, I recommend checking it out:
Thanks! I’ll watch it fully later, but I did watch a few minutes and a) he’s well-spoken, b) calm, c) doesn’t have a voice that that makes me want take a rotary hammer to my eardrums. (That’s not damning with faint praise – look, you know what YouTube’s like.)And, in return, here’s an article by Alex Papademus, a critic who’s regular publishes in GQ and The New Yorker, which explains a lot of the reaction to my post:The Decade Comic Book Nerds Became Our Cultural OverlordsWhy do they have to be such sore winners?https://gen.medium.com/the-decade-comic-book-nerds-became-our-cultural-overlords-f219b732a660It points out that no one’s saying comic book movies shouldn’t exist – and I’m not either – but their absolute dominance is worrying – and their die-hard fans are worrying. As Jesse Hassenger once said on this very site: “I think there’s that insecurity about Scorsese and others who don’t feel the need to genuflect”. You’ll note that most, actually pretty much all, of the negative replies to my post about the dominance of comic book movies has been taken as a personal insult – “Criticise comic book movies, you criticise me”. That’s problematic. Building your identity solely around the pop culture you consume is problematic. Despite CBMs absolutely dominating the cinematic world, the fans still feel the need to act the victim. They still need to act like they’re under threat, like their voices are being marginalised (see all those responses here telling people that non-comic book movie people Are Not Allowed To Comment.)
Nice! That was a good read. I like the point about how ardent fans are now doing what studios used to pay PR to do, when it comes to defending their products. And it is interesting to consider that in the landscape of cinema, we are witnessing:“…a populist groundswell in service of the status quo, of corporations, and of power.”-Thinking about it this way kinda has me shook. It is what it is, I guess. The responses you received aren’t so different from the ones this overall review is getting, though. The C- seems unthinkable for some Marvel fans. I won’t know if I agree with the grade or not until I see the movie, so I usually refrain from criticizing early reviews. We can (and should) be able to talk about how we like or dislike these movies all day, though. What it is concerning is how much ‘shut down’ there tends to be of this very discourse. Some people don’t want to hear it. They just want their echo chambers
From my days in marketing (*shudders* – look, I’m better now, I’m a journo) I used to do some demographic study. More a casual thing, nothing formal or anything, just thinks to better understand how to flog shit, mixed in with my humanities background.The nerd demographic is a rich one to tap: nerds are defined by being unable to generate their own cultural capital – they have no embodied cultural capital. The two forms of cultural capital available to them are institutionalised cultural capital (think university degrees, school certificates, Phds, qualifications, certificates, jobs) and the one relevant here: objectified cultural capital…which means, among other things, consumerism.And so, whatever company sells them this capital will do well, since without it they won’t have any socio-cultural value. They need to be able to purchase these objects to be able to engage with people, define their worth two them, and establish a hierarchy and social boundaries amongst people. And so the more you spend, buy, consume, the more cultural capital you have. “Oh, you say you’re gonna see Multiverse of Madness, Rob? Well, I saw it on opening night. The midnight screening. In IMAX. 4d. And I pre-ordered tickets two months ahead. And I wore the limited edition Dr. Strange Cape Marvel sold only for three weeks after the film. And I’ve seen it three more times since.”This isn’t just like the sort of consumerism we associate with yuppies, who spend money just to show you they can spend money (“What, you paid $2000 for those cufflinks at Jensen Brothers? You got ripped off – you could’ve paid twice as much for them at Armond’s across the plaza!”) It’s not even, necessarily, about spending money: pop-cultural references are the base currency. It’s holding up an established cultural toke (that someone else created…) and having others recognise and acknowledge it.What happens is that they tend to build their entire identities from what they consume. And that’s marketing gold. You have a market base who are deathly afraid that if they cease to consume your product they themselves will cease to exist.It may seem extreme, but it explains a lot about nerd culture. An attack on the objects they consume (real or perceived) is an attack on them. Hence why everyone made the instant leap from me saying I’m tired of hearing about the MCU to “You’re personally attacking me”. Getting sick of a brand’s media density is now bullying. They’ve internalised the corporatocracy. Video gaming is an entire industry that was pretty built around this phenomenon – and it’s more profitable than cinema, but it’s not just MCU stans, or even things we’d consider stereotypically “nerdy” (Ford vs GM definitely counts). This bring us to… The C- seems unthinkable for some Marvel fans. I won’t know if I agree with the grade or not until I see the movie, so I usually refrain from criticizing early reviews. We can (and should) be able to talk about how we like or dislike these movies all day, though. What it is concerning is how much ‘shut down’ there tends to be of this very discourse. Some people don’t want to hear it. They just want their echo chambersSomeone else in these comments (there’s over 300 now, so sorry I couldn’t find it) asked what the hell was the point of all the Marvel fans coming here since the review is utterly irrelevant to them as they’re gonna automatically see the movie anyway. They’re not here to make sure their opinions and tastes are being validated and thus to make sure they’re still valuable.They’re here to make sure Mr. Gilchrist hasn’t besmirched them.They’re here to defend their identity.
Just think of how many unique, new, creative movies, say, Warner Bros could’ve funded for the cost of the nth failed reboot of Batman.I’ve pretty much given up on this battle. I’ve just accepted that I’ve got 120 years of movies that already exist, and I can dig through those. I really don’t see the kind of movie I really enjoy getting made again.
I mean, only a complete imbecile would think that a movie, which not only made ~$764 million during a global pandemic but also loved by critics and fans alike, was a failure.
These movies are made for people who are smooth brained shut ins
How do they make a billion dollars at the box office if they’re made for shut ins?
I don’t recall mentioning being annoyed at what other people enjoyed. But I can see why you would…you know I’m right about it dominating far too much of the conversation, but you don’t want to admit that, so you’re trying to make it a personal insult.
I mean, this dude literally barged into a Percy Jackson thread praising the author, Rick Riordan, for being pretty cool about inclusivity, and started acting fucking incensed that a white guy was even attempting to display progressive bona fides in a positive cultural setting (they were also weirdly demeaning about the concept of progressivism in children’s literature, as if that’s not the perfect setting to try and impart a positive worldview)The sheer dominance of conglomerized superhero Product™ is definitely exhausting, but this dude’s also being a prick.
it’s been going on since the 30’s…
Thats what they said about McDonalds in the 60s. When a formula works, it doesn’t die.
Good luck with that. 🙂
The MCU has reached the point where the releases dates matter more than the content.And they’ll restructure whatever plot point they need to make the release date timeline work.It’s bubble will burst sooner than though it’ll still be bigger than most things.There’s too many spinning plates and nothing holding it together except the fact that it has to exist to exist.
i’m not rooting for any downfall, but in the past year and a half they’ve put out almost as much stuff as the first decade…i just can’t believe that’s sustainable in any way.
I’m over here shaking my cane as I tell my nephew about the old days, when there was one comic book movie a year, and it was usually released to line up with Free Comic Book Day. I was but a wee lass when I saw X2. Hugh Jackman was too tall and handsome to play Wolverine, but we loved him anyway…
i paid money to see spawn opening weekend! and i liked it! i remember coming home from batman & robin and telling my mom it was ‘good’ because ‘they air surfed’. i remember when val kilmer said ‘you’re halfway to metropolis’ and thinking that was the pinnacle of comic book world building!i’ve seen morbius!
i paid money to see spawn opening weekend! and i liked it!Jesus Christ.
I’m sorry for your loss
It was one thing when the big team up events were 3 years apart.This phase is going to have I don’t even want to count and it’s build up is going to be who knows when and what. And everything has to be constructed in a way that everything works for a first time viewer and someone who may have watched this but not that. It’s just I don’t know.
I think that’s the bigger issue – between the movies and TV shows it’s accelerated to the point where it’s a blur.
The MCU will be with us for another 15 years just from the X-Men and Fantastic Four rights returning to Marvel alone.
/guy from 2011
Funny, I’d marvel when this Jesus thing dies down. 😀
Yet here you are.
Why? Marvel/MCU makes its own money. So no other production is losing out just because of a Marvel movie.
No one is making you watch them. Do you comment on everything you don’t like or just Marvel films?
Why? Who’s forcing you to watch any of this Marvel stuff? God forbid other people enjoy something you don’t, even though that something literally has no effect whatsoever in your life should you choose just not to… watch… it…
Watching a couple of previous entries to understand a few references is hardly homework. Whoever is going will have already seen ‘em.
by most accounts Wandavision was a chore to get thru so no, not everyone will have seen “em”
Yeah I feel like this movie more than any other marvel movie so far will split a lot of the audience. This one requires seeing both the TV shows and almost every other MCU movie before it. Most people going to see this are fully caught up on everything
I’ve seen (nearly) all of the MCU movies, split between theatre and streaming viewing, but I’ve not been willing to pony up for Disney+. So, yes, this is the point where I’ll be part of that split that no longer bothers keeping up with the MCU.
Get a free trial and binge the whole lot! Its not that much content but not much of it is that good either
Just watch a Wandavision recap on youtube. I saw the movie last night with my buddy who has not seen Wandavision and all he did to catchup was watch one of those recap vids.
Keep in mind Disney+ is still unavailable in many, many countries that will be airing this movie in theatres, basically requiring people to pirate the shows to catch up.
Or people complaining can do the oh so hard act of searching for a 5 minute video on youtube showing scenes from the prior stories or read the wiki article. Do we wanna go back to the days of don’t trust the audience spoon feed plots that are too complex, tell them everything, don’t show, sad music que the fight go home. can we stop asking for anime like what happen last time in the beginning of movies but i guess that’s what people want so they can skip 4 movies and still understand the running plot while screaming that the 4 they skipped were pointless if they can understand it all.
it FEELS like homework, though. what is the mcu even about anymore? like what are we, as an audience, building towards? first phase was introduce the characters, put them all together in a movie to fight together, set up that thanos is gonna be a bigger bad guy later.second phase was introducing inter-character drama while still building towards thanos.third phase was blowing out the inter-character stuff further and fighting (and losing for the first time) to thanos, then undoing that and losing some fan faves.if you add the tv and movies together, the fourth phase has had almost as much content as all first 3 phases put together, but aside from ‘there are multiverses’…what am i supposed to be concerned about? its hard to care about the eternals and arishem when loki seems to be running between ‘sacred timeline’ systems that are just as powerful. it’s hard to care about hawkeye getting a special watch back when i know what loki is going through is ‘more important’. i know kang is meant to be important but he’s only been in one thing so far, and won’t be in another for a year. it’s hard to care too much about what’s happening to moon knight if dr strange is gonna be fucking up multiverses this weekend…like, the interconnectivity used to elevate every part, but now they all seem like they’re at odds with each other. characters like coulson and nick fury popping up all over used to go a long way to even things out, too. it’s starting to feel like comic books in a bad way.
I lost interest midway through Phase 3, when the movies lost any thematic connection to reality and became entirely about character conflicts that stretch across multiple movies. It became impossible to not give a shit about Bucky, for example, which was my cue to cut ties. Far From Home had the benefit of being about high school, which helped offset the intrusion of a second-string hero into a Spider-Man story.
you raise an interesting point, which is maybe phase 4 is all about the individual characters’ emotional stakes and relationships to each other…which i think has been a mistake. i only have so much gas in the tank.i can’t really give too much of a shit about echo’s journey if i’m simultaneously supposed to worry about duelling, insane, abstract cosmic ramifications in two separate franchises.straight up i don’t even know what year it is in the mcu right now. 2026?
Speaking of Moon Knight, that introduces Egyptian Gods and mythology, but they haven’t explained yet how that ties into the MCU universe. Are they Celestials/Eternals too?
And then there is the whole thing with X-Men/mutants, which it seems that Feige and company are struggling to figure out how to insert them into all of this mess and it shows. Not a plan or even a peep out of them as far as where they’re at with the X-Men or the Fantastic Four.
DC, for once, is kind of on the right idea as far as let some of them exist in their own universe instead of trying to maintain a shared universe with every single one of their characters.
well let’s not forget the greek gods are confirmed as real and are…aliens, i guess? also they’re not that powerful and just live on earth as refugees?were the greek gods also celestials? i remember kingo having a line about goofing around with thor as kids…but considering kingo is actually magical immortal robot clone i’m not sure that explains anything. so yeah, both greek gods and egyptian gods are real and also the afterlife 100% exists. wonder if they’re ever gonna address that gigantic dead celestial body that’s in the ocean.i think when we see deadpool folded into the mcu (ugh, shawn levy) next year we might get a little more mutant stuff, but i’m happy to wait a long time for them.
Well, according to that movie, all “gods” from every culture are really celestials and eternals, but my thing is that Moon Knight hasn’t yet made that connection or how this afterlife connects to all of that. And if it doesn’t, then there is a whole other can of worms the MCU just opened up that’ll have be explained in another TV show/movie, and that’s exhausting. And like you said, its interesting and funny how that massive Celestials/Eternals fight and that giant continent sized Celestial body and rock in the middle of the ocean didn’t upend human society like the way The Snap did given how it demonstrated that every religion they believed is a lie. And how are mutants and etc, and Loki, and Kang, fitting into all of this? Like I said, I think it would’ve been better if they’d just break up the universe and keep things separate and self-contained, because its getting too exhausted and too convoluted.
it’s also like…you’ve already opened up this multiverse can of worms so why do i even care what happens to this one universe? eternals made a big to-do about saving this world and humanity, but if there are infinity of them who cares? that’s been my biggest problem with this phase – the stakes have just become so big and abstract and i don’t care about the superheroes’ interpersonal relationships. the review even says a big part of the movie’s plot is that dr strange is sad. he’s been a massive sarcastic dickhead for 5 movies and now i’ve gotta care that he’s sad? get a grip.that being said, yes i have tickets for saturday and monday, and i will finish moon knight tomorrow alongside everyone else. i am trapped in this prison with you all.
It’s like you said in that its becoming more and more like the comic books which is funny because one of the ideas behind the MCU in the first place was to avoid it becoming convoluted like the comics.I maybe trapped in this prison too, but I aint spending any more money on it. I’ll wait for Dr. Strange and everything else to hit streaming and that’s it and will wait for bubble to burst.
You don’t want your superhero movies to be meditations on metaphysics??Yeah me either. I enjoyed watching RDJ beat up Jeff Bridges in a metal suit.
The Greek gods won’t be introduced until Thor LaT. Also, none of the gods are Celestials, or Eternals, they’re just super powerful races, like the Asgardians. In the MCU, they specifically changed the origin of the Eternals to make them arrive on earth from another planet and, aside from Thena, used the ones whose names were reflective of demigods and humans who had the favor of the gods in folklore, rather than actual gods.The Eternals are messy in the comics because Kirby created the New Gods (the Eternals) as a stand alone series, not connected to the rest of Marvel, where the Greek gods already existed. So he used names for them that were obvious variations of characters from the real life Greek legends and gods, because they were never meant to exist in the regular Marvel comics. Eventually the Eternals got wrapped into the proper Marvel universe anyway, so they basically made it so that the Greek gods had already left this plane for the plane of Olympia, but were friendly with the Eternals and didn’t mind that they were often mistaken as their namesakes on earth. It was messy. The MCU (mostly) sidestepped that by changing the Eternals origins and avoiding Eternals who were direct counterparts to gods. And, yes, some form of afterlife absolutely exists in Marvel in the form of different, but interconnected, planes of existence governed by the gods that control them and powered by the cultural beliefs of adherents. Taweret explains that a bit in Moon Knight. In the comics, much like the MCU, all these pantheons of gods are real but have pulled back to their own dimensions and just observe. I’m not sure how much the next Thor will stick to his origins, but the antagonist Gorr, goes on his god killing spree due to this revelation. His peaceful people are wiped out, despite their prayers, which leads him to believe his people’s gods don’t exist. Then he finds out they actually do exist, and they just watched it happen. He finds all gods’ hypocrisy so crushing that he seeks a way to kill them.
I mean… Black Panther mentioned Bast, who’s typically an Egyptian God, so it’s not like they’re coming out of no where for Moon Knight. We’ve had Asgardians handwaived as aliens by humanity in the MCU even though Ragnarok specifically established that the children of Odin have actual godly domains. Shang Chi established more Asian mythological creatures. The next Thor movie will be going into other pantheons considering both the villain and the cast listings. I’m assuming with mutants they’re either gonna make them another part of the multiverse that bleeds into the main MCU (like all the X-men movie stuff canonically happened elsewhere), or have it so that they’ve been hidden thanks to some powerful psychics. The MCU had the Inhumans do the same ‘hidden community of superpowers things’ but their TV division dropped the ball big time and Agents of Shield is likely in it’s own section of the multiverse given their time travel exploits.
DC’s TV division has been doing a multiverse for years. Their shows can interconnect when needed and split when needed because not everyone is in the same dimension but travel between is possible. It’s their movie division that can’t get it’s act together because they rushed it.
The point of ours that you’re missing with your first paragraph is that the more and more of these elements they add, the more confusing and convoluted it gets. The whole point of the MCU was to move away from the spiderweb of interconnectedness from the comics and make it more accessible and less homework.And only the CW DC shows had a multiverse which did not connect with Doom Patrol and Titans (and even though Titans had the same characters as Doom Patrol, they were separate universes) which in turn don’t connect with Peacemaker and the movie DCU. The new Batman and the Joker movie exist as standalones that will not connect with the greater film and TV universes which again is the point. Marvel should’ve done the same with Moon Knight, Echo, and all the other series for their side C/D level characters planned.
And now we’re at a point where you don’t particularly need to follow everything because they’re moving away from all the films being totally interconnected like they were for the Infinity Saga. The biggest issue is we’re at the initial setup so it is kind of overwhelming. Though I definitely would like it if Disney set up a deal with some major network or premium channel to air their Disney+ shows for more exposure. They seem to be having their own issues with specific execs being very controlling on what they air, what they cancel, and what they allow on D+ outside of Marvel and Star Wars. The Crisis event on the CW shows did crossover with the DCU, Titans, Doom Patrol, Smallville, The 90’s Flash show, Lois and Clark, Lucifer, and Superman Returns. DC essentially ensured all of their live action shows and films were part of the same multiverse through that, even if the new ones aren’t mentioned retroactively.
As for the new Batman and the Joker, they likely are a part of the established CW multiverse. They just have no reason to crossover now that WB canceled/ended most of the CW shows. We just have rumors that the Flash movie will be crossing over with the Tim Burton Batman films thanks to Keaton’s casting. I think part of it is that WB is having some severe financial problems. DC comics might end up being sold and rumor has it that their video game studios might wind up sold too if upcoming releases don’t make good profits by their already unrealistic estimates.
Except that as per this review, you still do need to follow everything which is the valid point that Adam and I were discussing. You can’t just jump into a movie like this, Black Widow, or the Hawkeye TV show without watching the previous movies and shows without understanding what they’re talking about, referencing, and why certain characters show. The Crisis event on the CW shows did crossover with the DCU, Titans, Doom Patrol This is absolutely not correct. Doom Patrol even though it was the same cast, exists as a standalone. As for the new Batman and the Joker, they likely are a part of the established CW multiverse. Nope. Its been established and made clear on this very AVClub that they will not be part of any of the existing universes and will exist as standalone. Furthermore, the WB technically no longer exists and hasn’t. Its all Discovery/Warner and they’re keeping the films, games, and comics divisions. Its only the scripted CW shows that are getting axed and they are.
This very review outright states that the stuff is explained, just that the reviewer finds said explanations as being executed in “the most boring way possible”. People didn’t need to see Loki to know about the multi-verse. The concept was introduced by the Ancient One in Endgame, and further explained in Spider-Man:NWH. At this point, it looks like missing the D+ shows will just result in missing some characterization in terms of introductions and behavorial changes… which the movies will summarize anyway.
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I hadn’t read up on the Discovery/Warner stuff but there are still new ‘reports’ about things like the studio NRS facing possible sale.
look whether you ‘have’ to watch the stuff is almost immaterial to my point as well – my point is that i AM watching everything and still NOT enjoying myself haha.like, i haven’t watched this stuff for years by accident. i WANT to like it and i get excited, but i’m not enjoying what i’m seeing because it’s just wheel-spinning and way more than ever before.watching everything and keeping up with everything has diluted my enjoyment of – everything. that’s what’s been so frustrating. it’s not that i ‘have’ to watch stuff to understand, it’s that understanding hasn’t led to much enjoyment this phase.
The second line of this article literally says “requires way too much homework.” He also says “the choice to lean so heavily on not just canonical but emotional ideas from the films’ streaming counterparts hobbles it for anyone who doesn’t know them chapter and verse—even with the characters constantly explaining every single idea or concept over and over in the most boring way possible” which is again, the point of contention Adam and I are making here. That you can’t just jump in if you’re completely new to the MCU. You have to do your “homework” by watching everything else prior to understand what’s happening. And that’s too much time invested.No, you don’t need to watch Loki to understand the multi-verse, because you have to watch Endgame and the first Dr. Strange instead. You also have to watch Endgame to understand why Loki is even there in the first place or even the past Avengers movies to understand why he’s such a bad guy to begin with. Again, the point here. So much backtracking and homework you have to do instead of just making Loki a standalone in the first place. The only thing that got sold from the merger is Playdemic. “NRS” has been folded into one company now called “Warner Bros. Discovery Global Streaming & Interactive Entertainment.”
there’s literally a montage of loki watching mcu movies to get himself up to speed in the show.
Doom Patrol still showed up in Crisis. Whatever you want to think, it’s a fact they showed up in this scene. Different world and timeline maybe. They won’t do anything with it, surely. But it still happened.
Its not what I think. Its literally what DC said: Everything You Need to Know About Doom Patrol, DC Universe’s New Show | DC (dccomics.com)The all-star cast and showrunners revealed new details about the highly anticipated spinoff of Titans, including why it’s actually not really a spinoff of Titans.But while Doom Patrol has long been called a spinoff to Titans, Carver says that may not be the best way to describe the new series, despite most of the same characters (and the same actors playing those characters) having first appeared on the earlier DC Universe series.“There are elements that were present in the Titans Doom Patrol ,” he says. “But I think everyone is best suited coming into this Doom Patrol understanding that we have our own continuity and our own story. And if you come in with a fresh perspective, I think that’s the best way to view this Doom Patrol.”
Why would they change what works for them? Maybe DC is getting it together a little but Marvel is still crushing it.
you uhh might wanna see this movie before you judge their plans for X-Men and F4 ahead of time lmao
You might wanna stick to Reddit with such irrelevant nonsensical posts.
there’s literally direct involvement from X-Men and F4 members in this movie, you manchild. you’re genuinely talking out of your ass with this whole spiel. go see the movie
Dismissing your shit from now on forever. Like I said, stick to Reddit, and leave us grown ups alone.
oh you a child child, gotcha. must be fun being you, getting this mad when someone explains a factual piece of information to you
Why would we give a shit about Bucky? Did they ever show him having a character?
I mean Far From Home is a movie about fake news so that a plus?
I agree with your first paragraph, except Bucky. No Loki or Bucky = the MCU is dead to me.Hell, they already ruined Capt. America’s (Steve Rogers) arc. MCU should have been dead to me after Endgame.
Haha you’re fun!
Just reading this gave me a massive headache.
I can’t think of a better time to introduce Victor von Doom into the MCU.
if
you add the tv and movies together, the fourth phase has had almost as
much content as all first 3 phases put together, but aside from ‘there
are multiverses’…what am i supposed to be concerned about?
I’m sure Fiege has a plan, but we are well past the point where we need an end credit scene with the obvious BBEG for phase four (or five, or six) to show up and wink at the audience.So far, phase four is about multiverse stuff and maybe magic, but it doesn’t yet seem to be leading anywhere, collectively.
You’ve basically articulated why I thought Loki was terrible, and feared/suspected it would be damaging to the MCU at large. (I know I’m in the minority on this opinion.) It undermined everything to the point where nothing matters, while also making the MCU as convoluted as the comics it adapts. The two mediums are different for a reason.
i liked loki moment-to-moment but i also hated the implications for the same reasons and i HATED that it ended on a cliffhanger.
On the other hand I think Loki is one of the better Marvel outings. Definitely the best TV (non-Netflix) Marvel show.
Didn’t they say a while ago that there wasn’t going to be a single ‘event’ they were building towards anymore? It was going to be more like multiple branches each dealing with their own ‘events’. Like currently, Spider-Man, Wanda, Strange and Loki are dealing with the multiverse while Sam and Bucky are dealing with terrorism. Everyone’s split on different levels of events in terms of scale.
Multiverse = Strange, Wanda, Spider-Man (though MCU Peter likely done with that for now).
Galactic = Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain Marvel, Eternals
Mystic = Moon Knight, Black Panther, Strange, Wanda, Shang Chi, Wakanda
Technological: War Machine, Iron Heart, Ant-Man, Fantastic Four
Spy/Soldier stuff: Fury, Captain America (Falcon), Winter Soldier, Black Widow (Yelena)
Street Level = Spider-Man (presumably from this point on), Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, Echo, Hawkeye, Daredevil, Defenders, maybe X-men.
Essentially, they’ve got such a huge roster now and keep adding to it so there is no point on doing singular events like Infinity War/Endgame anymore. That doesn’t mean they can’t pull in multiple groups for 2-4 movie chains like if Galactus shows up and the Fantastic Four need the help of Wakanda and an alternate Iron Man to fend him off.
It seems pretty clear what they’re trying to do to me – they’re trying to build towards multiple event type movies / limited series at once. There are hints of Midnight Sons, Young Avengers, and Thunderbolts in what has been released and what we know is coming. Kang is definitely going to be a bigger threat. Eventually the FF and X-Men will join the mix.I can see how someone can get overwhelmed but I don’t really mind it personally. And I do think you can watch one project without needing to watch every single thing.
but the issue is that, because of this approach, i’m not enjoying any of it because it doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere. i’m picking up on the things you mentioned, but it’s not enough for me to care. it’s all canceling each other out in my mind. it’s not that it’s overwhelming, it’s that so much of it all the time feels UNDERWHELMING. it’s all set up for the sake up more set up. homework for the sake of understanding more homework.and you say you can watch one project here without needing to watch everything, but i don’t find any of the individual projects to be standouts. some are better than others, but nothing is exceptionally different. and even the ‘best’ shows (loki, moon knight) end on extremely frustrating cliffhangers. again – just a teaser for more homework. if they’re trying to do 7 different build-ups towards 7 different ‘avengers style events’ at once…that’s just diluting the pot. if everything is as important as everything else, then nothing is important. overall, i’m someone who really loved phases 1-3 and phase 4 has me hanging on by a thread. it’s either the mcu is giving me too much of a good thing, or the thing wasn’t that good to begin with and benefitted from being special and doled out a few times a year.
I watched this movie last night and absolutely hated it, but i basically completely disagree with your take about the other shows being homework. I feel like the only way to enjoy this movie is to know as little as came before otherwise you will be disappointed by how hard they fumbled pretty much all of the character beats. Maybe if I came in thinking Wizard = good, Witch = Bad (but also complicated due to something resembling sexism) it all might’ve gone down a little easier. Pre-Phase 4, I was vaguely annoyed any time Wanda or Wis were on screen in the movies because it meant less time for the 20 or so other characters I like more, but that changed with wandavision. Raimi dropped the ball so hard on her arc that it actually felt like an insult that I’d started to care about her character and her journey. I wont go into it because of spoilers but her whole motivation makes absolutely no sense considering what came before, America Chavez was a truly bizarre addition to this film, and Strange references Peter who he shouldn’t even remember any more. Being a fan and “doing my homework” hurt this more than any other marvel movie before this and is easily bottom 3 Marvel movies for me. That said, the fact that there are Egyptian gods, Eternals, norse gods, multiple afterlifes and all that just make this universe more fun for me and dont conflict with each other at all. In a world built on suspension of disbelief, all of our real world legends can be real races/civilizations/Gods and exist entirely independently of each other without me batting an eye. I like that there are multiple organized crime syndicates with assassins altering the history of the world with Hydra, the red room, and the Ten Rings because that feels like the fantasy version of real life where as soon as one Trump is out of office you learn about Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, and as soon as Democrats take the house and Senate we get Kyrsten sinema and Joe Manchin. It never ends and there’s always someone vying for the top spot, a new comer trying to go where the criminal before them couldn’t quite reach.
weird! i absolutely loved it. my fave mcu movie in years and probably in my top 5.
Wow! I would honestly love to hear more about what you liked about it. The themes and writing (and filmmaking) just seemed sooo all over the place to me. Not to mention this is the least exciting version of the multiverse we’ve gotten so far (and for what it’s worth it is extra annoying to me that none of the multiverse is playing together in any obvious way)
y’know it’s funny. when i don’t like something i can surgically dismantle it with ease, but sometimes when i like something all i can do is shrug and say ‘i dunno it was sick’.(spoilers for those who care)i dunno it was sick! i loved the pacing, every performer seemed to be having a blast, love that (much like x force in deadpool 2) after all this illuminati build-up wanda just tore them to shreds within 30 minutes. raimi once again feels like the only person in hollywood who actually enjoyed reading comic books, love that after 40 years he’s still making bruce campbell beat himself up. i also ABSOLUTELY LOVED that they just said ‘fuck it, wanda’s the bad guy’, which clearly was a big point of contention for you so obviously if you can’t get over that hurdle the whole movie is gonna suffer. i DO agree that despite all my belly-aching in the thread this one felt like it might be better if you know less about what’s going on, or learn it after the fact. i just really enjoyed watching it, i was hootin’ and hollerin’.
That’s interesting and totally valid! It is fun to uncritically like stuff!I just felt the whole illuminati bit has been a bit over done recently, and by the time we got there i was so checked out of the movie not only did I know they were going to die, but it wasn’t even exciting. You mention deadpool 2, but The Suicide Squad and Invincible have done similar things better in the past year. Actually a lot of this movie reminded me of things James Gunn has done better with the kaiju being stabbed in the eye, rocketing through different dimensions, and of course the illuminati. I think the worst part of all was it was just so poorly shot and staged. The illuminati scene in the chairs is bottom shelf comic book visuals with D- character work.
I’ll also say it’s not that I’m mad Wanda is bad, I am totally into that (in theory.) It’s more that she just all of a sudden WAS evil, and we were supposed to go along with it even though her reason felt really forced. She knows her kids weren’t real. The alternate timeline where she scares them? Not an issue because there are infinite timelines and versions. The lesson she learns should’ve been obvious to her from the start, or else explain immediately why she’s ok getting rid of an alternate version of herself. There aren’t timelines where Vision is alive? That would’ve been a more believable motivation honestly. How in the main reality is there already a statue of her in a temple? Her fate wasn’t forecasted anywhere. None of it makes any sense! Which is extra annoying because that’s usually the stuff that Marvel is so good at, even if it comes at the expense of a longer movie but not only did this not do that but it was still mostly exposition! I feel like they whiffed extra hard on this one and it hurts because I (incorrectly) felt like this is what the multiverse stuff that started in Spider-Man Far From Home was building up to, but they don’t even mention it and it’s barely even important to the plot.
what is the mcu even about anymore? like what are we, as an audience, building towards?That’s the whole idea. The MCU has shifted away from building towards any one thing and is now a series of things that are happening where you can pick the thread you want to follow.
Marvel’s/Disney’s fervent desire to the contrary, a movie should be self-contained and capable of telling its own story. If it’s a sequel, sure you can expect your viewers to have seen the previous entry or entries, but expecting them to also watch through a bunch of (paywalled) limited TV series is a bridge too far for me. I get the financial motives behind it, but I think it’s a valid criticism.
they’ve also released 6 entire tv shows and 4 movies since wandavision came out almost a year and a half ago. i watched it, but it’s not exactly fresh.
I thought you were joking or exaggerating, but you’re right. While WandaVision feels recent, there has been a shit ton of MCU content since it came out. (though technically only 5 TV series, not 6. Still, close enough!)
Isn’t the movie itself a paywall though? I mean, the cost of a Disney+ subscription for two months still can wind up cheaper than a single movie ticket or buying physical copies of a film.
People expect to pay the cost of a movie ticket. They do not expect to pay the cost of a movie ticket plus the cost of a D+ subscription.
They don’t have to. So far, all the shows have been supplementary stuff that introduces new ideas that are explained in films, introduce new characters (that’ll probably be explained in films), and do costume/name changes (which… again are explained in films).
The article here even says that the movie repeatedly explains things (in a boring way). Which means the D+ show is only necessary if you want to actually see the events. Which is honestly true for all the shows so far except maybe Loki (depending on how season 2 and Ant-Man 3 go).
I really think this is a turning point in leaning in on the interdependence between previous work. Not only did the core motivations 100% depend on a Disney+ show, but they did not spend one second recapping it for people that hadn’t watched it. I watched WandaVision, so it wasn’t a big issue for me, but someone that came from this just watching End Game would have absolutely no idea what the hell was going on. That either shows a huge amount of confidence, or (in my opinion) was a big mistake to not spending 2 minutes somehow explaining what happened to Wanda – since it is her complete motivation from doing a huge 180 from hero to villain.
Like you can’t start with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix say that you don’t know what’s going on and then declare the entire franchise to be garbage and meandering.
I think they’ve been pretty clear that you need to watch the shows, to be honest. Those aren’t designed to be an “if you’d like…” situation. Those are canon and part of the continuity. Whether or not that’s a good decision is probably open for debate, but I think it isn’t as if those are as obscure as saying “you had to watch these other non-MCU movies.”
My point of distinction would be if I can watch a movie and understand what’s happening (unless it’s a sequel like this one, in which case I should be expected to have seen the first Dr. Strange movie) even if I miss certain references. But if it’s a 2 1/2 hour installation of a 200 hour saga, fucking forget it.
It’s a 200 hour saga that’s coming out in pretty bite-sized chunks. I mean you would have had over a year to watch Wandavision. By the time, Ant Man comes out just as long to watch Loki. There’s plenty of recap videos online for those who don’t want to watch, but I guess I wonder why someone would want to see a movie centered around Wanda and her fake kids if they didn’t watch the show about Wanda and her fake kids?
In total fairness, perhaps because it’s called Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, not The Scarlet Witch and Her Fake Kids. If you were someone who wasn’t breathlessly following every update about the MCU in its film and TV forms, you could surely be forgiven for thinking that the film that it turned out was “centered around Wanda and her fake kids” was actually going to be centered around Doctor Strange going by, well, the title.
This is where the piss-taking aspect starts to creep in; it’s not just a continuation of Doctor Strange’s story, it’s a continuation of the story of a character who, up to this point, has barely interacted with Doctor Strange in previous stories, and certainly hasn’t interacted with him in such a way that it would be immediately clear that to follow a Doctor Strange movie you’d also need to be up on on what’s been going down with Scarlet Witch (she doesn’t, for example, appear in the previous Doctor Strange movie). Unless you’d been following all the news and updates about the MCU and this film, you’d be forgiven for having little reason to suspect the movie was going to heavily revolve around Wanda. Which, sure, the people who follow everything to do with the MCU will have no problem, but the people who are more interested in Doctor Strange and don’t particularly care about Scarlet Witch are kind of shit out of luck here.
I get what you’re saying and I said previously that whether it’s a good idea or not is up for debate.But Wanda was extremely central to every trailer. Her children were shown in most trailers. The first teaser was literally Strange talking to Wanda. Plus, Feige said as much pretty publicly.I think there were enough cues that you probably needed some more Wanda knowledge.Now in 2022, that still doesn’t mean you have to watch the show – there are 9,000 wikis.
Fair enough, it’s not an insurmountable problem, I’ll give you that. But trailers count as part of what I said about “following every update” — even in these halcyon days of having instant information at our fingertips, not everyone obsessively follows the trailers or Kevin Feige’s every public statement about the MCU. Heck, some people actively avoid that kind of thing out of a desire to not getting spoiled; to be honest, I’m not that extreme either, but it’s still a valid way of engaging with media, and it still means that those people are more likely to have a frustrating and confusing time if they haven’t made sure to catch up on everything MCU related just in case. Either way, following this story and understanding how and why a character from a different part of the franchise who has never had any meaningful interaction with the protagonist is now front and centre to events still kind of depends on you being willing and able to follow all the behind-the-scenes announcements and promos to get why she’s suddenly a central part of events and why her character’s issues are vitally important — in other words, it’s sort of making people do their homework.And while wikis are also a fairish point, I can’t help but get bemused whenever someone trots out the “you can just look up what you don’t know on a wiki!” defence. Like, that just makes it sound more like homework. It’s literally making people do the kind of wider research they’d do if they had an essay to write.
But again, if you’re not a minimum interested in Doctor Strange enough to watch the main trailer for the movie, I don’t know that you’re actually going to see it anyhow. Wanda was in every single trailer. Her kids were in more than half of them. In the teaser trailer, she was literally the first thing you saw.I get your points, but I’m skeptical of someone being so engaged as to be spoiler adverse that they won’t watch a trailer, but that they also didn’t watch Wandavision. Those two things don’t quite jive with me.Marvel has made the decision for better or worse that every property is a continuation of a larger continuity. 20 years in, that’s not a secret. So if you don’t want to have to do homework and you don’t want to watch the properties, I’m kind of surprised that you care enough to actually see it. We can argue if that’s a good model or not, but both D+ subs and the Doctor Strange 2 preview box office seems to suggest otherwise.
It’s not just the spoiler-adverse, though; there’s also those souls who for whatever reason just don’t care about Wanda as much as they care about Doctor Strange, or vice versa, and don’t really feel like watching a paywalled TV show or movie about the character they aren’t interested in just to follow the story of the ones they are interested in. That’s particularly when it starts to feel like homework; you’re having to follow something you don’t care about (whether trailers, behind the scenes news, or a TV show / movie you’re not interested in) just to follow the one you care about. Those people exist, and while they might be willing (if maybe reluctantly) to go along with it for now, there’ll likely come a point where they won’t. Because on the whole, people don’t like feeling forced to do homework, and there’s a case to be made that even if Marvel haven’t reached that point yet, they’re getting there. It’s all very well to say “well Marvel don’t make a secret of it so if you’re not interested in it don’t watch it!”, which is fine — the long-term problem for Marvel is that eventually people likely will start doing that, in large numbers, especially if some of the things they’re asked to follow are paywalled away (and especially if they don’t seem to be building up to anything beyond “Hey, keep watching everything so you can follow everything else!”). My point isn’t that Marvel are going to collapse tomorrow because the new Doctor Strange movie is a sequel to a Scarlet Witch TV show on D+, it’s that it’s representative of a pattern which is almost certainly not sustainable in the long term beyond a hardcore minority. Just ask superhero comics, which overconfidently started releasing endless tie-in stories requiring readers to buy not just the comics they were already following but the comics of characters they didn’t care about just to follow the story… and the result from a large bulk of readers ended up being “Yeah, nah, fuck that shit, we actually don’t care,” and not buying them at all.(Also, not trying to be petty, but it’s actually closer to fifteen years; Iron Man was 2008. Ten if we argue that the shared universe aspect really began to kick off in earnest with The Avengers.)
If Dr. Strange hadn’t just took in the third most Thursday night preview money of all time, I would absolutely agree that their model isn’t working, but it clearly is.But again – If Dr. Strange is your absolute favorite Marvel character and the only one you’re interested in and you don’t like Wanda, surely you would have seen the trailer and said “It looks like Wanda is pretty important here. Let me read a wiki on Wandavision” And again, surely you’d at least know that the show exists. It isn’t like it’s an obscure property that hasn’t been reported on. But in all honesty even most casual fans that I know have been watching the D+ shows. Maybe it’s just cos they had to come out during a hellish time when people were looking for an escape, but they are popular.I think you also have to remember that it goes the other way. Wandavision was very popular. Wanda is generally popular with comics readers and movie/show viewers. Throwing Wanda into a Dr. Strange movie can arguably help it over perform.I’m sure the Marvel bubble is going to burst because everything eventually does. But right now, the D+ ratings and the box-office isn’t really panning out for that. There are also an excessive number of torrents of all the D+ content for those who can’t afford or don’t want a subscription. It’s a business. So yeah, they are going to milk every paywall possible while they can.
If Dr. Strange hadn’t just took in the third most Thursday night preview money of all time, I would absolutely agree that their model isn’t working, but it clearly is.And if I’d said that that Doctor Strange had failed at the box office because of all this, I’d clearly be wrong. But I didn’t say the model wasn’t working. I said it wasn’t sustainable. And again — my broader point isn’t that the information that Scarlet Witch is going to be in Doctor Strange is some kind of hidden secret that only the Illuminati know. It’s that Marvel is increasingly relying on their audiences being aware of external information outside of the film itself in order for their films to actually function as coherent narratives — be it marketing content, behind the scenes interviews, or other films and TV shows which may or may not be immediately connected or readily available — rather than these narratives acting as self-contained stories where these little nods to the wider universe were fun little nuggets like they used to. And there are plenty of examples (including the medium they’re heavily inspired by) that clearly demonstrate that this is not, long term, a healthy state of affairs to be in.And sure, it’s working for now. But there’s going to come a point where the broader audience gets sick of having to keep up with everything, or doesn’t have time to keep up with everything, or just aren’t interested in seeing a story about a character they don’t care about just to follow the narrative of a character they do care about, or they just don’t think the end result is worth it, or whatever. People generally don’t like doing extra work, especially if the extra work they’re doing is just to make what’s nominally the entertainment they use to relax make sense. And especially if it increasingly seems like the only reason they have to is just because of synergy and the studio’s business model rather than because there’s any kind of artistic or narrative payoff to all of it coming.
Arguably, no model is sustainable. They’re going to ride the bubble as long as they can. It’ll be like Disney animation. High highs and then low lows and then all of a sudden high highs again.I will say that Disney is very smart about now creating kids properties that get them looped in early. My nieces are 5 years old and OBSESSED with some Disney Jr. show that has introduced them to Peter Parker, Gwen Stacey, Miles Morales, a bunch of Spidey Villains and Black Panther. They know in 5 – 7 more years they’ll be seeing some of the movies for the first time. The bubble can burst and they can keep making money on the properties that exist.I do also think that post Infinity War, they do seem to be compartmentalizing some of the crossovers – Moon Knight, Blade, Werewolf by Night and potential Midnight Sons event exist in their little corner. The magic crew exists in theirs. The cosmic ones seem to have their little corner. I’m sure that will eventually build, but they are creating new space for people to have their “faves” which for me feels very comic-y. If they throw in mutants and do it well that will be another group. Having seen Dr. Strange, I don’t necessarily think you had to know every detail of WandaVision. They gave you the broadstrokes. I just still think that if the Dr Strange magic corner of the MCU is your fave it seems unlikely you wouldn’t have seen WandaVision. Similarly, if the space/cosmic side is your fave, I think it’s unlikely you wouldn’t have seen Loki. Falcon and the Winter Soldier hasn’t really impacted anything substantially outside of what it will likely mean for Captain America 4. But if Captain America 4 is the movie you’re most looking forward too, I can’t imagine you wouldn’t watch Falcon.
They may be canon, but my understanding is they are skippable. Scarlet Witch’s story may have greater impact if you have seen the show, but I do not believe it is meant to be necessary viewing.
2 years ago, Kevin Feige said this: “If you want to understand everything in future Marvel movies, he says, you’ll probably need a Disney+ subscription, because events from the new shows will factor into forthcoming films such as Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The Scarlet Witch will be a key character in that movie, and Feige points out that the Loki series will tie in, too. “I’m not sure we’ve actually acknowledged that before.” Now, I think a quick jump around wikipedia can probably get you where you need to go, but given Loki also seemingly launched a major villain, it doesn’t seem skippable.
I had not read that before. That’s dumb of them. Interconnected is great as long as it’s modular.
Sure, and I do think there are enough wikis out there that you can skip them as long as you’re up for reading a few articles, but it’s also a business and they need to sell those Disney+ subscriptions.Loki even more so than Wandavision seemed to be where they through the gauntlet down on you have to watch by setting up who appears to be a substantial villain.
I am still not convinced you have to see either WV or Loki for the movie, but I can see how they help.
I wasn’t expecting Loki to be relevant to this, but I assume it will be to Ant Man with the Kang stuff.
Loki introduced a new villain, but in such a way that I doubt you’ll really need to have seen Loki to understand what is going on when he shows up in Ant-Man 3. That character is obviously going to re-explain his origin and motivations when he shows up to fight an entirely different set of characters
Except that is presumably a different variant so the backstory of the multiverse and the number of variants probably won’t be expressed in the same way.
Someone told me there were references to “What If” and I was like, “Shit, I have to finish that before I see this movie.”That’s homework.
Or you could just read a summary on the internet. Still homework. Less hassle.
Why? What if? Is pretty good.
Yeah, I stopped watching the (boring!) “What If” three episodes in. I briefly considered catching up before this movie and then thought, nah, I have better things to do.Turns out I should have skipped this movie, too! Zzzzzz
You really don’t have to watch What if… It adds some nice flavor, but it isn’t necessary at all.You 100% have to watch WandaVision or you will be completely lost – more so than any other MCU movie before. I would go so far to say you’d have an easier time watching any other MCU movie in isolation (with the possible exception of Endgame – and even that might not be the case!!!). Absolutely no time is spent explained what is going on with Wanda and her “children.” I was frankly shocked how much they counted on people watching WandaVision.
i hate that i’m going so ham on this thread, but it’s also important to recognize that this movie itself is homework for whatever happens next. so i’m doing homework for the sake of understanding homework.
Man, I hope you never do anything like, read comic books (or consume any serialized content ever)! Mostly teasing, but it sounds like you don’t Want to watch these things…so then maybe don’t! I’m absolutely glad we’re getting connected superhero movies at a faster rate than some comic book storylines – it’s part of the fun for me. It’s kind of the DNA of the material to begin with – and I still get to choose to Never watch the 2nd Thor movie (yet thoroughly love the Loki series), you know?
there’s lots that i like about these, too! i’m not watching them through gritted teeth or anything (yet), but whereas the first 3 phases felt very well organized and orchestrated the last 4 movies and 6 series…haven’t felt that great.i’m just not getting out of it what i’m putting into it anymore. i want to watch them and i want to like them, but i don’t know i don’t like something until after i watch it, either. and there’s just been soooo much of it over the last year and a half.and i mean, yeah – part of the reason i STOPPED collecting comics was because the clone saga became so unwieldy and went on for like 3 years. it became so expensive and complicated i stopped caring. since then i’ve only picked up trades.so there we go, maybe i’ve hit the ‘wait for the TPB’ wall of the MCU.
Hah, I absolutely get that – that ‘superfluous’ feeling of the Clone Saga stuff – but yeah! Maybe you’re a TPB MCU VIP…TBD! Stuff like WandaVision felt like a fan/critically acclaimed series that I Hated (maybe same for Hawkeye 😬), and Falcon/Winter Soldier felt like…mostly nothing? But yeah – All of that feels like the issues in-between the hits, so I still enjoy them, more passively? (Like, probably not going to do monthly streaming service stop/starts, you know?)Hope the next run of stuff is more enjoyable for you!
Surely you understand the observation that if you’re not already fully up to speed on all this, you are NEVER going to catch up so what’s the point?
Like…I understand that perspective/feeling exists, but it never Actually bothered me – none of this is beyond Most ‘narrative fiction’, you know? Whenever I watch an episode of a series a friend has already been watching, I might have some questions, but we’ve all seen Some variation of ‘make ‘em ups’, so I usually can enjoy them, regardlessI think the MCU is just a much larger scale version of that, involving like, one to three of my favorite characters, and a bunch of others that I’m fine with (but can still enjoy)
It’s cool, you’re allowed to have a shallow, uncritical good time!(That’s my very passive aggressive response. Which is only 25% more hyperbolic than my real response.)
I think what Adam’s getting at is that this is starting to feel like the late 90s, when you were reading Batman comics, but you had to buy Batman, Detective Comics, Legends of the Dark Knight, Nightwing, Robin, and Catwoman in order to follow the story at all. It got expensive and exhausting, and I think it’s part of what killed comics.
In a word, it’s greed. Both for money, and for the audience’s time. If you ask your audience to devote the entirety of their entertainment time to you, you’ll get a few diehards who do, but you’ll erode the wider base of people who want to watch other stuff too.
The thing about serialised narrative, though, is that while it’s valid to expect the audience to have read / watched the previous installment, it’s getting a little rich to expect them to have read / watched other ongoing serialised narratives which are vaguely connected (especially multiple ones at once), and then proceeding to shunt some of those behind a paywall is getting a bit ridiculous. I’ve no problem with the idea that I should have seen the previous Doctor Strange movie to follow this one, and I don’t even mind a few cute little nods to other films in the MCU that I may not have seen, maybe even a character or two showing up. But knowing I have to see not only those films, but a limited TV series that’s exclusively available on a pay-to-view streaming service, to properly follow this movie? That’s going beyond serialisation into taking the piss. For equivalency sake, Victorian readers were probably fine with the expectation that they’d have to have read the previous chapters of Bleak House before the current one was released in order to follow the story. But if they’d also had to have read all of The Old Curiosity Shop, Little Dorrit and A Christmas Carol they’d have probably gotten more frustrated, especially if Little Dorrit and A Christmas Carol could only be read if you went to a special shop that you had to pay just to get inside and you could only read it there.
I mean really… I *imagine* all you need to know is…
+Dr. Strange was a surgeon who became a sorcerer.
+Wanda took a whole city captive with her incredible powers and created a happy family for herself, lost it and she wants it back.
From the SOUNDS of things, there’s probably a ton of other cameos and stuff, but I doubt you need to be intimately familiar with every detail of every movie or TV show to “get it”.
Every AV Club article blog post must troll readers at least once.
If the objective is catering to the same fanbase forevermore (and hoping it doesn’t dwindle over time as it ages), then you’re right. The issue is appealing to new viewers as well, and the MCU is now straight-up impenetrable for someone who isn’t willing to put 100+ hours into getting to know the various characters, storylines and general themes, assuming they are able to process and retain all that happens at first watch anyway.“…the choice to lean so heavily on not just canonical but emotional ideas from the films’ streaming counterparts hobbles it for anyone who doesn’t know them chapter and verse” sounds pretty spot-on from where I sit.
Watching a couple of previous entries to understand a few references is hardly homework. Whoever is going will have already seen ‘em. That doesn’t excuse bad filmmaking.
A sequel (or installment of a series) that does not work without knowledge of what’s come before — and girding myself for the response here — is an inherently bad film, even if it’s enjoyable by some or all of its audience.
A sequel (or installment of a series) that does not work without
knowledge of what’s come before — and girding myself for the response
here — is an inherently bad film, even if it’s enjoyable by some or all of its audience.
*cough* Infinity War *cough*Not that I didn’t enjoy it, but outside the hype, it was one relatively disconnected action sequence after another—and the emotional payoffs weren’t well set-off within the film itself. (Peter-Stark, Wanda-Vision, Bucky-Cap).I suppose the broader question you touched up is whether it’s an inherently bad film series. I don’t think that it is, but there’s room for different kinds of film series.From a television side, I’ve always been partial to shows that have a more episodic/monster-of-the-week format and save the long-form B-plot storytelling for a finale (which I think is largely how Infinity War/Endgame worked). The modern, binge-watch streaming series, where each episode isn’t really much of an episode in itself… is fine, but personally exhausting. The thing to note about those is that, they are designed to drop all at once, which the MCU is not.Film serials are not new (early silent films were often serials), but we’ll see how well the MCU figures out how to pull off a modern version. They did a pretty bang-up job for a bit, but it’s starting to show it’s wear for some of us.
It is anathema to watching film. If a film narrative requires knowledge outside of itself to work? Then it doesn’t. Franchises and sequels have strained this for a long time. This new TV synergy shit is over the line.
On this note, I might bring up examples like seeing Uncle Ben die or Bruce Wayne’s parents murdered. When a movie skips this, they are precisely requiring outside knowledge of itself to work. People love this, but I’ve never have, and we are seeing the road this takes us down. I understand how tedious it is to see these things over and over, but that’s not a storytelling problem, that is a ‘Too many reboots!’ problem. A film itself still needs to have its own context. A viewer shouldn’t have to think about someone else’s version of events, when reconciling a current version’s backstory.
My counterargument to this would be that unless the story is going to revolve around Uncle Ben’s death or the murder of the Waynes, those moments are just backstory. They’re important events in shaping those characters but everyone has potentially hundreds or thousands of hugely influential moments in their lives.
I think the stories don’t have to revolve around the incidents, but seeing (or just talking about) the why and how of it can give a better understanding for who this hero is in a reboot’s new context. To be specific, I think Spider-Man: Homecoming was bad at this, and The Batman was good at this.By excising Uncle Ben’s death in Homecoming, Peter comes off very differently for me. He never feels marked by tragedy, so for all intents and purposes, Ben’s death wasn’t an influential moment in is life. (And we’re talking about a new crime-fighting career!) He web-slings for the social media, and his heroics are less about power and responsibility, and more about impressing Tony and auditioning for the Avengers. His values are unclear. And they don’t fix this until the 3rd film.Meanwhile even though The Batman never shows the murder of the Waynes, the event still has influence, getting a lot of mentions, and informing both Bruce as a character, and key plot points itself. I can’t just carry over memories of Nolan’s version or Burton’s version, because this version has some changes of its own, and that’s important. This hero is shaped by what he remembers, vs what he learns, and it actually has an effect on his values. They skipped the backstory, but they don’t skip what it means.
I’d say this one is a but ‘yes with an if’ and ‘no with a but’. Things like that are important to the characters, true, but they’re also backstory; we don’t really need to see them (especially if, arguably, they are pretty well-known by this point), but if they’re that important we do need to see the impact they have on the characters.The new Batman does this quite well IMO; we don’t see Thomas and Martha Wayne get murdered again, but at no point is it not made abundantly clear that their deaths have had a profound effect on Bruce Wayne regardless. ETA: Just seen your later comment along these lines. Carry on!
I tried Wandavision and Loki, but quickly got bored by both. Marvel movies are quippy, dumb fun, just right for a couple hours out of my life a few times a year. Those series were trying for something other than dumb fun and failed miserably, we’re too long and now feel, to me, exactly like homework. I probably would’ve gone to see this Strange movie (tho the title was really putting me off – it does not sound like the title of a good movie), but now I probably won’t.
This should never be a requirement in watching a film. IMHO, this does not bode well for the future of the MCU – as the requirement for each film increases with “homework,” more and more folks won’t give a rats ass.Making any film with “homework” as a requirement is piss poor filmmaking.
I’ve done all the homework. My partner has slept through class. I’ll watch this on Disney+ without her.
I just watched it and this reviewer can go to hell for trying their to sap the fun out of it. I never knew it was possible for a director to do a self homage…but damn if it wasn’t wonderful to watch it.
I feel like this review was just trying to go for the most contrarian post possible without actually looking at the product in question:
“Yes, it’s Ice Cream…but look at the napkin used, it totally ruins the experience!”
I haven’t seen a Marvel thing since Infinity War. Should I just fully rule out buying a ticket to see this? Should Disney have given up on me as a customer?
Having finally had the chance to see it…if you’ve watched the Avengers movies and the first Dr. Strange you know everything you need to.There are references to WandaVision and No Way Home, but all of that feels more like winks to the audience who cares.
I’m trying not to read all of the review just in case something slips, but if the grade holds up when I see it, I’ll be disappointed. I was moved by Wandavision; I enjoyed the first Strange movie.On the other hand, I am fatigued and have missed Moon Knight, The Eternals, Spider-Man, and I think there’s another show or movie unseen and out there somewhere. With a dip in quality I won’t see much need to expend more energy on catching up.
Moon Knight has been very good so far. Feels completely different than any other MCU show so far.
I like how the superhero part of it takes a back seat to character development. That sounds bad, but they do it very well.
Moon Knight is presumably setting up the horror branch further – Werewolf by Night is coming. Blade is coming. I assume some of the multiverse stuff may bleed over into that especially the monsters etc.
If that’s true then I wish to fucking hell they had started with a character that requires far, FAR fewer goddam hoops to jump through than Moon Knight, which I have found infuriatingly and unnecessarily convoluted in an effort to “derp we’re different derp” the show.
That’s fair. I’m guessing we’re getting at least a credit scene of Jack Russell. I also suspect despite the rumors to the contrary, we’re going to get a Marc Spector will return in Werewolf by Night mention.
Moon Knight is different enough from the rest of the MCU that it feels fresh and is worth checking out. It took a few weeks for me to get around to catching it and I was glad when I did.
Personally, I enjoyed The Eternals, but I recognize I’m in the minority. I dig Chloé Zhao’s sensibilities and was a fan of Chariot of the Gods when I was a kid.No Way Home was fun, but I only went because my family wanted to go. I’d be OK with waiting for streaming.
I mean, you can miss Eternals and it makes basically no difference whatsoever. But why would you miss as big a Marvel keystone as the latest Spider-Man, yet still be interested in DS2?
It is entirely possible that someone likes the character of Doctor Strange more than Spider-Man, right? To that person, it being a Marvel keystone is irrelevant and subjective. And neither party is wrong, people just care about different stuff and it’s great.
Yeah but Doctor Strange was in Spider-Man so if you’re such a big Doctor Strange fan why didn’t you see it? It presumably is the immediate thing that character does before star in this film.
As another commenter pointed out, the main thrust of my comment is that if one was going to see Dr. Strange 2, it seems like one of the two primary movies you would make sure you’d seen first would be DS1 and the Spider-man film that just dropped.
Moon Knight is a bit clunky, it took 5 episodes out of 6 to make any sort of sense, but Oscar Issac is the best actor I can recall in ANY MCU Disney+ franchise I have seen.
best actor or is giving the best performance?i’d say ruffalo, downey jr, cate blanchett, samuel l jackson, jeff bridges, anthony hopkins, don cheadle, josh brolin, natalie portman, ben kingsley, robert redford, benedict cumberbatch and maria tomei are all pretty good too!
Yeah, Moon Knight doesn’t seem to really go anywhere and by the time we start getting some answers, it’s gonna be finished after tomorrow.
And the answers we’ve had in the last episode or two were NOT worth holding off. The show went nonlinear just because it was too scared to try a straightforward narrative. God forbid the audience fucking understands their protagonist…
Don’t worry, there is no chance in the universe that MoM is only a C- for an MCU fan. This was basically written by poor man’s Scorsese as an MCU tirade.
but if the grade holds up when I see it, I’ll be disappointed.Fair, but at the moment the RT score is in the low to mid 80’s. I know RT is not the end all, but it DOES indicate that the vast majority of the reviewers, and not just geek sites, are positive on the film.
My wife and I joke every week that this is the week that we finish Eternals. There just doesn’t seem to be any reason to give a shit about it, which is something that the cast radiates in every frame of the movie.
Shang Chi. The one you’re forgetting is Shang Chi.
Or Black Widow? Or Hawkeye? Or Falcon and… (man, there really are a lot of these)
Has this reviewer seen WandaVision tho? Would it have been so hard to have a reviewer for this film that was initiated so that we can get that perspective as well. Obviously someone who hasn’t seen the things this connects to is going to feel alienated. They didn’t even mention “What If” so I assume they weren’t even aware of those connections either.
Or maybe they just aren’t really important beyond being fanservice. Todd seems pretty focused on whether or not the central story works for him, and it sounds like it just doesn’t, with none of the fanservice really linking in to elevate it.Which makes total sense to me. Like, the reason No Way Home worked wasn’t because ‘more Spider-Man equals more better’, but because they use these different Spiders-Man in ways that explore the central characters. I think it’s entirely possible that the multiverse stuff ultimately just becomes fanservice and doesn’t manage to explore the story and characters that it’s supposed to be about.
As much as the MCU and this flick obviously aren’t meant for the full neophyte at this point: the movie should nonetheless be able to largely standalone. I doubt seeing WHAT IF would add that much to Strange2, honestly. WandaVision obviously would shade Wanda in more —- but the film still can’t assume every viewer (and the movie will no doubt have a bigger audience) will have seen WV. So if the movie depends so heavily ON a fan having seen those movies (and NWH?), then frankly, that is a failure of THIS film.But Todd Gilchrist has reviewed like, barely any movies for this site so I’m not actually read his review, cos I don’t really care.
Sounds like you haven’t seen What If?, either because what happens on that show obviously has a HUGE impact on this movie.
Yeah, I highly doubt it besides Carter showing up. Which really doesn’t need a major explanation. It’s a multiverse. Good enough. What exactly about what if do you think has a HUGE impact on this movie?
The entire story, particularly the last two episodes. Zombies. Pretty much all of that seemed designed to lead into this movie. Did you watch What If?I doubt it’s required viewing but even just from the trailers you can see a lot of the impact What If? has on the movie.
So? I watched What If. I doubt watching it will add any real context or additional depth to Strange2. Outside of Carter, who likely will get a mini-intro anyway. ZOMBIES WHAT HOW WILL I EVER UNDERSTANNNND
An overwhelming majority of people haven’t seen what if, most of those who have only saw the first episode. If the movie requires being up to date on what if then it’s a huge failure
I don’t think it will be required.
Spoilers: It has nothing to do with What If.
the movie should nonetheless be able to largely standalone
Why should it do that?
Because as much as the MCU is a connected set of films, it also needs to function — outside of specific major event films — as standalone movies.
All you’ve done is restate that they need to stand alone. Still not an answer to why.
Basic logic
Because it’s stupid, dummy.
Because it’s a basic measurement of successful storytelling, going all the way back to the Greek playwrights.
Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy bad films — lots of bad stuff is enjoyable; that’s the entire business model of Hostess Cakes — but enjoy-ability doesn’t equate to quality.
They all should. That’s why movies are movies and not TV shows.
I thought No Way Home was kind of bad outside of the fan service. plot-wise.
I liked it even though it was a giant fan service wank off. It felt like Spider-man. Considering I watched it and Ghostbusters Afterlife the same day and it was a sharp contrast on how you do a wank fest right and wrong.
This is controversial but I don’t really like the Spider-Man movies all that much in the context of the MCU. I mean I like them better than Eternals. But they aren’t my go-to. They feel like movies based on the MCU in the way the MCU is movies based on the comics.
Talk about exposition though: No Way Home did stop approxinately every 10 minutes to have a Spiderman say, “i did THIS thing in MY movie”.
I saw No Way Home on an airplane recently, having seen exactly zero other Marvel movies or shows in my life. I think I saw some of the first Tobey Maguire Spiderman when I was a small child. And you know what, I kinda enjoyed it! I certainly didn’t know who many of the characters were, but it had a lot more heart and drama than I had expected from a genre that I’d been led to believe was just explosions punch-em-ups and adorkable quips.
On the other hand, if people are going to see the movie based on brand recognition, why would they bother reading a review?
I’ve never seen the point of these takes. “Why didn’t they get someone who was more predisposed to like the movie I want to like to review the movie so I can feel justified in liking it?”
it’s always weird when people look at a negative movie review like it’s some cypher they need to solve to understand the reason this could possibly happen and it’s actually not correct and if the reviewer had approached it differently they’d give it an a+.
You don’t understand the conflict of interest in having a reviewer state outright in the first paragraph that they are biased against the whole property?
“conflict of interest”*snorts* It’s a movie review, not a trial.
A conflict of interest occurs when there is financial incentive for someone to reach a specific conclusion. A movie reviewer stating that they don’t care for a genre is an acknowledgement that they’re going to grade hard, and fans of the genre will probably disagree. Since movie reviewers are purely for the entertainment and edification of people reading them, there’s no interest to be in conflict.
A *financial* conflict of interest is one type, it’s not the only type or a requirement.
That’s technically true, although it doesn’t address what the interests in a movie review are or what the conflict is. I suppose if the interest of a movie review were to be positive, the reviewer’s bias against a genre would be a conflict. But since the point of a movie review is to give the reviewer’s opinion of the movie, bias against a particular genre is simply background information.
Movies don’t have to have internal consistency and conflict of interest is not liking something enough.You are a parody that breathes.
You are incredibly stupid in a bizarre way.
Jesus Christ, now I gotta watch 10 hours of boring superhero shit just to understand this two hours of boring superhero shit?Some people are REALLY into comic book movies. I’m a grown nerd, the target demographic, but this shit has become Jurassic World, the same fucking plots and CGI mashups over and over and over and over
With the MCU it’s almost like you need two reviewers, like when they used to the the “pro” TV reviews for shows that required a deeper knowledge of the material. One who reviews the movie as stand-alone entertainment, and one who has seen all of the movies and shows (and possibly read the comic books) to evaluate it within the context of the multiverse.
Yeah, we can read the “people unfamiliar with the mcu may be confused” take in literally every movie review in every newspaper across the country. One would assume that AV club readers are at least familiar with the mcu and could benefit from a review that reflects that perspective. That is not the same thing as saying the review should be gushing praise from an mcu stan, more just that we don’t really need “hey if you haven’t seen Wandavision you won’t understand plot point x”.Feels like the whole question of whether D+ should tie into movies to the degree that they are required watching should be a separate thinkpiece.
You don’t need to see WandaVision to understand this. As I suspected, Wanda’s motivations are still quite clear if all you know is she was happy with Vision and Thanos took that from her.If anything, watching WandaVision may make this a bit harder to really get behind. Because Wanda was such an interesting character in that show and here she’s reduced to a raging mother. I simultaneously get what they’re going for but at the same time it feels like a VERY sudden shift.
It’s nice that Raimi is back. But I’m so burnt out on Marvel. I’ll probably watch it on Disney+ in a few months.
“requires way too much homework”
Welcome to the MCU. I hope you enjoyed your stay.
I’ll echo other commenters in wondering how this movie would be received by viewers well-versed in mcu and D+. I don’t really care much about McAdam’s character but since they made her the focus of Strange’s What If episode, I suppose her presence is necessary here. Anyhow guess i’ll try and keep my expectations low… hopefully lots of trippy effects and some fun cameos/character interactions.
I’d give it a B+.
God damn C-. Like that is Venom 2 bad (I didn’t See Morbius) or say Justice League bad. I haven’t seen the last 3 Marvel movies (and don’t plan on seeing them) but hopefully I won’t be lost as I saw all the movies prior to Endgame (and Spidey Sony movies) also didn’t watch the TV shows.I hated Strange in the comics as a kid but Cumberbatch has made him fun to me so far.
Based on a quick skimming of this, the reviewer isn’t really in to Marvel movies.
I tried my hardest not to read too much as I don’t want to be spoiled but I figure as much.
But to be fair, I don’t “love” everything Marvel like alot of the posters here. As I think Endgame was okay but the time travel shit was laughable and I skip during rewatches on TV to get the Cap picking up the Hammer. So I’m not the biggest Marvel is the best at everything person but I do enjoy most of their movies.
I basically like almost all the stuff but don’t ‘love’ it exactly. Endgame was overlong and Thanos’s whole plan was amazingly stupid compared to the Infinity Gauntlet comics.
On the other hand, seeing all this shit on TV and the big screen makes 10 year old me immensely happy, so I’m good with it.
I prefered the Gauntlet 1st series as well to the movies. But I can always rewatch Infinity War as a movie because seeing him win was awesome! And nothing is better than Cap saying “oh God” at the end when he finally realizes he lost. It was a crushing moment.
Yeah somehow Thanos being in love with the anthropomorphic personification of Death actually makes more sense than his movie plan.
I have the original Infinity Gauntlet run that I bought in the supermarket when I was like 11 in comic frames on my wall though, so seeing it on the big screen in any form was just super awesome 🙂
I’m a little older and I have them on my comics wall, I use to walk from my college on the westside of NYC to the east side comic store to buy them inbetween periods. I sat in the park and read them. I loved that series so much as to me it was Marvel’s best mini series large event.
Yeah it was!
His movie plan :“if I magically remove half of all people , there would be be enough resources all round “ was a bit dumb considering it would be easier for everyone if he’d: “magically doubled all resources , so there was enough to go around all people”
Especially considering all of those living things would just make more living things eventually, meaning at some point in the future the universe would be right back where it started. He literally didn’t know how living things are made.
seeing all this shit on TV and the big screen makes 10 year old me immensely happy, so I’m good with itIt’s the same for me, and that’s pretty much been Marvel’s real overarching strategy: appeal to the inner 10-12 year old, while keeping all of the non-nerds on board who liked Iron Man.
More like C.C. Dowd, amiri—wait, what are we supposed to do with this guy?
Complain in the comments!
aha , the AA Dowd school of “I dont watch frivolous movies made for the hoi polloi ..you’ll take your C-/D+ and be happy about it you cinematic trollop you”I’m no Marvel fanboy , but hey ! they’re fun , and there’s always been dumb action movies being made . The difference is now rather than being an R rated generic movie about a cop/ex soldier/current marine on the edge , avenging his wife/family/sergeant/pet’s murder , they’re a series of interconnected PG13 movies about people with colourful CGI generated powers!.
*shrug* C- from Todd Gilchrist. Do you agree with his other reviews on this site? Do you care? It ain’t one of the stellar top-notch AVC reviewers of old.
I haven’t really noticed Todd’s name around these parts. But seeing a C- was a bit shocking. Like I said I will still see the movie as I get that Strange will lead into the next set of movies.
Eh, see it and judge for yourself, not some no-name on Shell Club.
And I said I will see it myself. I’m not here to bury the reviewers, if I thought they all were awful I wouldn’t stick around.If I don’t see Professor X in it I am gonna laugh at everyone who was “sure” he was in it and that we are getting the FF in it as well. Because as bad as the people who review these movies and don’t want to see them are, the people who scream that everything will have everyone in it and will be great are worse.
Right, but the AV Club has basically lost all of its excellent writers and movie reviewers and has replaced them with no-name hacks. They are not all equal nor do their reviews carry the same weight.As for Professor X, not sure what to tell you, they literally showed the yellow hoverchair and had a clear Stewart voice in the most recent tv spot, covered everywhere. Albeit I do appreciate that point especially after all the MEPHISTO!!!!1 of Wandavision and NWH.
Okay see now that will make me happy because the Mephisto stuff drove me crazy! Yeah I’m trying to give the new reviewers a break but in general seems like most people on the message forum don’t seem to care for them.
I loathed every episode of WV discussion being consumed by “MEPHISTO!!!!1″and “IN THE COMICS!!!1″I mean comics Wanda is so much stupid shit that I can’t believe anybody expected them to do that stupidbut mainly just couldn’t appreciate the story in front of them for sake of AHHHH WHO APPEAR
Ha! In the comics would be a mess for every movie or every show!
I’m trying to give the new writers time to establish their voices. It’s not their fault what happened in the before times. I thought this was a well-constructed review and free of unnecessary snark, which was much appreciated.
That is a fair and valid point. He’s not a full on snarkdick like barsanti and shimkowitz
I just don’t get what’s up with Barsanti. Snark is fine, it’s the AV Club’s long-term stock in trade, but jesus his is typically so off the mark.
Jokes on us , it wasnt Professor X , It was Jean Luc Picard!
Yeah, the net average of most other reviews I’ve seen has been at least in the B-to-B+ range, so far.
Maybe he saw the opportunity to fill Dowd’s vacated role?
This isn’t a “c-” movie, don’t worry.
Ignore AV Club grades.
They rarely contribute anything to a review and often don’t make sense.
The AV Club doesn’t have any sort of consensus what their ratings mean, so you can’t really compare across reviewers. If the organization hadn’t been gutted by the owners, they could have an editor who could make all the grades use the same scale, but that’s not realistically going to happen any time this decade.
From the moment The Avengers hit, every single MCU movie and TV show from that one on has required “homework.” All of them. It’s the fundamental raison d’etre of the MCU.
Honestly, not really. I watched through all the MCU through to Infinity War—after starting with Doctor Strange, in fact. Some of them absolutely needed that homework; the Captain America sequels, naturally most of the Avengers movies. And there’s definitely a category of ‘you’ll be a little lost if you aren’t watching them all but you can pick it up’; the original Avengers, the first Spider-Man, Thor Ragnarok. But I think the biggest basket are the ones that work just fine as entry points; all the Iron Men, the first Ant-Man, both Guardians, the first Thor and Captain America, Black Panther… and, hell, even the first Doctor Strange.Watching all of it in sequence isn’t as essential as you think it is. And it sounds like here might be where it starts getting some stretch cramps in the angle of ‘everything has been required reading’; it’s not just one where watching previous movies is essential to understanding it, but also two different shows exclusive to a single streaming service. That’s a step too far for some people, myself included.
avengers only had 4 or 5 main characters to keep track of, too, and those characters were already well established in popular culture. you didn’t need to see the hulk movie to know who hulk is, most people know who hulk or thor or iron man is generally speaking.like, even if you didn’t understand the nuances of everything, avengers works on its own. that’s why it was such a big hit.
I think the only member of the core Avengers that wasn’t a big part of pop culture beforehand was Iron Man. And not only was he pretty recently and strongly defined, people were primed to understand ‘billionaire tech-based superhero’.Weirdly, I’d say the most difficult characters to immediately ‘get’ were the ones that DIDN’T have their own movies beforehand, Hawkeye and Black Widow. Even then, once you get ‘secret agent’ you’re mostly okay for the duration of the movie with both.
Hulk yes, thor *maybe* but for many of these characters, especially ironman, they weren’t all that popular before the MCULike, never forget that the reason we have the MCU as it exists is that its all the characters Fox and Sony didn’t feel like buying on the cheap when Marvel was broke in the 90s
I only watched The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy & Black Panther. With Avengers I felt like there was stuff I missed out on, and I know Black Panther had been introduced in an earlier movie (where I think his dad died and a recurring villain appeared), but did Guardians really require homework? I thought they were entirely new characters who weren’t even on Earth.
I’ll use myself as an example. Guardians of the Galaxy is one of the few MCU movies I have seen in its entirety (I think Iron Man is the only other), and I found it a pretty self-contained movie, although obviously setting itself up for sequels. It obviously made references to events and characters from other films, but following the basic plot of Guardians didn’t depend on any prior knowledge of this. I didn’t particularly enjoy the movie, but not because I didn’t know how exactly it fit in the wider MCU.
Why are you here spending your precious minutes of life on this planet commenting on this
To tell us all how virtuous he is for not watching MCU movies. Thank heaven we all know not to include him in the unwashed masses who watch such things!
What’s even weirder about that impulse is that he’s anonymous. We don’t even know who he is so coming here to post how much he doesn’t like what MAINSTREAM PEOPLE like doesn’t even give him any cred. It’s so weird.
Or, you know, to offer a very relevant perspective on the question being debated.
I’m glad you were enlightened by his humblebrag.
I find reading comments and perspectives on the MCU more interesting than the movies themselves. And it certainly consumes far less time than watching the films.
Hey, we’ve all got our hobbies
I honestly found Black Panther more compelling in Civil War than in his own movie.
Or as I call it, Fartwork.
Agreed – I don’t understand all these people whining about consuming more serialized/connected content, as if that’s a brand new concept that is Impossible to enjoy.The fact that they even Made it happen across a decade+ of movies/tv shows is amazing! If people aren’t enjoying it, they should stop watching
It’s not always the same amount of homework though, and it’s cumulative. The first two GotGs and Ant Men were kind of like auditing a college course. It was better if you’ve done the reading, but not doing it wasn’t going to affect your grade. Plenty of time to catch up at your own pace, if you want.On the other end of the spectrum, Infinity War and EndGame were homework intensive experiences, culminating in a final exam on MCU history. If you didn’t know the preceding movies, there may have been enough left to entertain you, but you’d definitely have stretches of not knowing what was going on. Weirdly, all three MCU Spider-Man movies wound up being more on the EndGame side of the spectrum. For the third one, you even had to take prerequisite courses at a different school!For me, part of the fun of the MCU from Iron Man 2 on was seeing how high they could build this house of cards before it collapsed. At one point, people doubted that Avengers could succeed because watching it required seeing (and liking!) four or five previous movies. By the time we got to Infinity War, the rewatch marathon to catch up was more than a day of continuous viewing, and people started to worry it was getting unwieldy. My math might be off, but since the pandemic started, the MCU has released almost as many hours of canon content as it did in 9 years between IM2 and Infinity War (at the time, we knew stuff from Agents of SHIELD and the Netflix shows would almost certainly not be on the EndGame exam). If you stopped going to theaters during the pandemic and never signed up for D+, that’s a big (and constantly growing) commitment of time to get current. The house of cards still stands, but it’s teetering a bit.
None until now though have required you to sign up for a streaming service and watch a whole TV show. The rest you could watch in theaters and more or less get it. To draw a comics metaphor, since naturally the MCU’s rollout has resembled comics, I’d say since… Civil War, give or take a few entries, they’ve been more akin to one ongoing series with different leads in each issue rather than different series with their own ongoing plots. And that’s fine! But this is (according to the review at least, I haven’t seen it) the first one that’s more akin to the modern day event comic, where there’s one series that bills itself as the only thing you need to read, but in actuality if you don’t buy a side-series, there’s definitely going to be plot developments you totally don’t get. And again, like the review points out, the vast majority of MCU fans these days are the True Believers who have watched everything. Buuuut there’s going to be people going to this movie who don’t give a crap about Wanda or the Vision and didn’t watch their show and it’s a fair POV to say that it’s homework.
Not really. Many of the movies can be watched and enjoyed without knowing everything that happened before. Our family saw No Way Home last weekend without having seen the previous two Spiderman movies. It was still enjoyable and fun.
Super. Except that’s not MCU.
Thank you for splitting hairs.
No Way Home? That’s part of the MCU.
Consumerism! It’s the one class every American was born to ace!
Not really, I never saw Dr. Strange part 1 and I saw all the others and followed along and didn’t see ant man till after Infinity war and I followed along.The wanting people to watch your shitty TV shows on your Shitty network run by the old school assholes from Disney (hey we aren’t supposed to like giant corps.) isn’t for me. Back in the day I hated when comics went from a 12 part mini series, to you needed to buy 10 other titles for follow said mini series.That shouldn’t be the norm and the fact that they are trying to make it the norm, shows how easily as consumers we are sucked into doing what they want.Can’t wait till DC makes me have to watch that fucking Gotham police show to understand Batman 2! (I know it’s canceled but was just using it as an example).
>> “…. requires too much homework… “lol. Have you MET Marvel fans? >> “not to mention (and I can’t believe I’m even saying this) too many Raimi-esque flourishes.”Yeah, I can’t believe you said it, either.
There’s just too much Cumberbatchness!
“too many Raimi-esque flourishes”Yeah, this is a good thing. Love me some plank cam.
I’m going to need some disorienting facial close-ups as well.
There’s a bit in this movie where someone’s about to be possessed, and it straight up looks like they’re being stalked by the floaty POV cam from the Evil Dead movies.It’s a simple thing, but it made me smile.
And! Both McAdams and Gomez do excellent screamwork, in the classic Raimi mould.
That was by far the best part of the film, Raimi’s touch remained and it had a ton of great horror moments, coupled with sincere speeches that would be corny anywhere else, and of course Bruce Campbell. The Raimi corny speeches work here without leaning too much into Spider-Man territory. Strange (spoilers)*** takes a leap of faith and tells the girl to believe in herself, and she figures out a way to stop Wanda without directly killing her. Lesser directors would’ve just ended it with a beam struggle and Wanda getting punched out.
That’s like saying Thor: Ragnorak had too many Taiki Waititi flourishes.
No such thing as too many Raimi-esque flourishes. Wait. if it’s literally SAM RAIMI, how arethey Raimi… esque? They’re not esque, they’re Raimi!!!
It’s like The Squid and the Whale where Eisenberg describes Metamorphosis as Kafka-esque
What a weird think to bitch about when so many of the MCU films seem rather same-y. It’s a good thing Raimi got to be Raimi.
I fucking loved the Raimi-ness of this. You can tell he was testing how much Marvel would let him do, and after seeing this I would hope they let him make another Strange that has just as much free reign as Waititi has been given with Thor.
Looking at other reviews it appears your potential enjoyment of this movie may hinge on having seen prior Marvel properties more than any other Marvel movie to date. The extremely positive reviews praise how it pulls together existing storylines, particularly the continuation of Wanda’s arc (going so far as to say Olsen’s performance is Oscar-worthy). The more middling reviews tend to note their frustration that the movie can be confusing. Particularly if you haven’t seen WandaVision.
I actually watched both seasons of “Sorry for Your Loss” (in an anonymous browser window, which I’m sure Facebook hates), and don’t feel any need to see Olsen be sad but in a cape this time.
Disney should put Wanda Vision on DVD, I’d check it out.
It is available on DVD.
Or just get Disney+ for a month and cancel it when you finish the shows you wanted to watch.
WandaVision is on DVD. All the D+ Marvel shows end up on DVD.
I mean we all know you are trying to be edgy and counter evil mouse empire but they did WandaVision : The Complete First Season (DVD)
https://www.walmart.com/ip/227676532
I know that it looks real but it’s a knockoff. “WandaVision and Other Marvel Disney+ TV Shows Reportedly Not Coming to Blu-Ray. Disney and Marvel Studios, as it stands, have no plans to release the live-action MCU shows on Blu-ray in the future. Fans of physical media who also happen to like shows such as WandaVision may be out of luck.”Netflix, my local library, etc, they don’t have it, which means it’s not official since this title is insanely popular. They totally look legit though, probably a Chinese copy.
I made the observation upthread and saw that others have as well – they need a resident MCU expert on staff to either handle these reviews outright or pen separate ones for the well-initiated. The latter might actually attract clicks in a positive way for a change.
No. Fuck no.I’m sorry but should they have a fucking Scorsese critic for every movie he directs? Or how about an A24 critic who only reviews movies put out by that company? Hey, let’s have a guest review column written by a roundtable of studio marketing department heads!Pay for play is good, right?!? It’s not a plant, it’s a Chia pet!(foams at mouth and falls over backwards)
Take it easy man, I’ll grab you some water.A Scorsese film doesn’t require encyclopedic knowledge of his other films to fully appreciate.
I know that genre movies don’t get the respect they deserve by the Academy, and I am a weak defender of Black Panther getting an Oscar nod – but I can’t help but roll my eyes whenever someone rolls out the “superhero actor deserves an Oscar for their performance” chestnut.
I have to admit that I think watching WandaVision makes it *harder* to really get my arms around Wanda’s motivations in this film. I get what they’re going for but it feels like a significant heel turn after WandaVision built her up as a big damn (while still flawed) hero.If you skip WandaVision and just watch the Avengers movies, it works a little better. She comes back pissed at Thanos and nearly kills him, which carries straight through to this. And there’s an added bonus of not wondering “Where the fuck is Vision during all of this?” because you didn’t see him come back in his White Body during WandaVision.
So after Wanda harms other people to create a fantasy where she can be happy and is ultimately persuaded that this is wrong, she’s going to do it again?
Sounds pretty realistically human.
Wanda being given a pass each time she does progressively more horrible things due to past trauma is pretty much her entire story in the comics.
She’s cute, though.
It’s pretty much the story of any abusive person. Except this time she commits mass murder for some imaginary kids.
Not really bagging on this movie. But Everything Everywhere All At Once is out there, has a multiverse storyline and it’s fucking good. So instead of helping DS:MOM make $50 million this weekend maybe help EEAAO make another $5 million or so.
i would also encourage you to not look at the activity of going to the movies as ‘helping a movie make money’! that’s weird!
Sorry, teach! Next time I’ll PM you for proper verb choice.
Wanting to support smaller films in theaters isn’t weird. Like at all.
i think it’s a little off to view going to the movies as financial support and not simply seeing a movie you want to see.you’re just doing something you were gonna do anyway! framing it as some altruistic support or like you’re cheering a sports team is weird, to me, is all.
I think it’s a little off telling people why they should go see movies or not but what do I know
yeah i’m definitely just being a dick on the internet for no reason. sorry if i bummed anyone out!
No need to be sorry. I did want to say that I’m equally dying to see EEAAO, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent and The Northman and I’m seeing The Northman first because it performed so poorly
C’mon. The point is if it’s something you have at least minor interest in seeing and want smaller filmmakers to keep getting funding to make movies, then choosing go instead of no go is doing what you can to support that part of the system.
Tell that to anyone who bitches about “Hollywood is unoriginal!” or whatever.It’s important to support original material with box office numbers so that studios understand that original material can make them money.
It’s only important to the people who bitch about that kind of shit.If you want the types of movies you like to be financially successful so that they beget more of the same types of movie you like, you need to convince other people that they’re good movies, not that they should be donating to your hobbies.
There is no convincing someone to do something in which they have no interest. Which is why I specifically addressed people who complain about originality. This is especially true of the horror community, where you routinely see people slag off sequels or remakes in one moment but then immediately whine about the Friday the 13th legal battle. Or they’ll mock sequels for being unoriginal and then hate on any given A24 slow burn original.Like… How the fuck am *I* supposed to motivate the average filmgoer to do *anything* when 85% of the comments on any given film review are armchair movie critic dipshits who just antagonize the entire field of film criticism?
EEAAO isnt out until much, much later in the month where I live , so I’m guilt free!!
I loved Everything Everywhere, and have and do encourage everyone to see it. It’s both weirder and more heartfelt than anything I can remember seeing in recent history, and I hope it wins every award.But if someone wants to see Doctor Strange, I don’t think it’s really a substitute. People aren’t going to see it because they’re wildly thirsty for an interesting take on the multiverse and there’s a huge demand for infinity possibilities. They’re going because they want some fun comic book nonsense (I also say as a lover of fun comic book nonsense).This feels like telling people who want to see Air Bud to go see Cujo instead because it also has a dog.
Yes, but no. Cujo and Air Bud weren’t in theaters at the same time. And if they were, “movie with dog” is as specifically close as those two plots got. This is more of a “Antz and A Bug’s Life” or “Deep Impact and Armageddon” kind of similarity.
Except Antz and A Bug’s Life are SOLIDLY in the same genre and generally speaking fill the same niche. At least as far as I remember either of them, which is pretty vague.My point is that Everything Everywhere is a much heavier movie than I presume Multiverse of Madness will be. I actually engages with some real meat. There’s so much to unpack with generation trauma and immigrant experiences and expectations we have about our lives, the appeal of nihilism and how we fight it.If someone wants to turn their brain off for two hours and watch some fun comic book nonsense, they’re probably not looking for all of that.I happen to love both, generally speaking. But if I’m in the mood for one, the other isn’t going to scratch the itch.
Also, now you’ve got me trapped in a loop thinking about the challenges of making Air Bud where he’s trying to play basketball while rabid. AND Cujo terrorizing a mother and son stranded in a car although he’s really just an affable sports hound.
I’d like to remind people that they can see BOTH films. I hope that doesn’t make me sound insane. Because almost all of the MCU critics seem to believe it’s an either/or situation with comic book vs non-comic book movies…
Of course of the mind you can see both. But one’s not going anywhere for a while and the other I can vouch for as deserving all the support it can get while it’s still out.
I hear that. Just nitpicking on the “instead of” when it could have been “you can also support” etc. I guess I’ve just seen too many people shit on comic book movies like they’re the scourge of the earth when that’s not the case. I do look forward to seeing EEAAO this weekend. (What a weird acronym lol but cool title.)
Judging by literally every other review I’m seeing online, and people I know personally that have seen it; you just don’t seem to like marvel movies.
but he remains a first-tier filmmakerlol wut.Raimi is specifically renowned as a B-filmmaker. I’m not saying he’s a bad B-filmmaker, but that’s what he does. Nobody has ever confused him for “first-tier”.
He’s first tier to me so maybe you don’t actually speak for the entire world
How about this… He’s not known as a director of “prestige” movies, but a really good director of genre fare.
yeah like he’s a first-tier filmmaker who came out of b-movies. like…many, many other director.he also has done a handful of prestige movies. a simple plan rocks.
Not exactly true. People forget his run after “Quick and the Dead” and before “Spider-man” when he made legit “adult” moviesA Simple Plan, For the Love of the Game and The Gift were all fairly Oscar bait “A-list” movies
Did A Simply Plan get any noms? I’d be surprised because that was as pitch black a film as I’ve ever actually enjoyed, not the type of thing the Academy rewards.There aren’t many movies that effective at gradually tightening the screws while leaving the audience hoping there’s still an out.
I agree. A Simple Plan is not Oscar-bait. It’s just a great movie.
It wasn’t Oscar bait in the traditional way but it was probably an Oscar hopeful for the studio. This was just after Fargo – a similar film – got a lot of Oscar love.
I agree with people who say they’re surprised to learn it’s not a Coens movie. But the big difference is the Coens love their characters. Ultimately there’s no one in A Simple Plan to root for as their true selves are revealed. But I agree with you that this probably seemed like a formula for recognition in Fargo’s wake. Again, Fargo having one of the sweetest, best-earned endings in movie history while ASP leaves you needing a comfort animal.
He even tried his hand a prestige television. Remember when networks in the early to mid 90’s were trying to imitate the success of Twin Peaks by giving film directors their own little genre bending soap operas often set in quirky small towns? Raimi had one starring a young Sarah Paulson (as a ghost) called American Gothic.
Rottentomatoes rating of 86%. Den of Geek gives it 4 stars – so don’t take any one review too seriously. If Todd didn’t like it, then that is fair but not the end of the story.
62 on Metacritic. RS gave a good review but who is David Fear? If it was Peter Travers I’d say it was a good thing but…Getting a positive on RT is like being the town whore.
Jesus Christ dude
Who is Todd Gilchrist? Who are you? Who am I? All random people on the internet. Yeah being popular sucks.
I’ve read Travers since I was a kid is all I’m saying. I trust Travers’ opinion is all. He was the big RS critic. I’m just wondering if he retired. Oh, it looks like he’s working for ABC News now. Another good reason not to take RS seriously anymore.
Who are you talking to? And why?
This is a post, not a conversation. I am not “talking” to anybody. Go back to your echo chamber.
This place used to be interesting. Now it is…this.
Todd Gilchrist? More like Toc-c- Gilchrist! Aw, it’s just not the same.
Rachel McAdams, who you’d be forgiven for forgetting was a part of the first film Excuse me, I do not forgive anyone who forgets Rachel McAdams was in anything. How dare you.
Her speech dragging Steven when he’s at his lowest and prompts his humbling personality change is top tier.
She gets nowhere near her due as an actress. I hate-fell in love with her in Mean Girls and don’t know I’ve ever seen her turn in a bad performance. She’s great in RDJ’s Holmes movies. I’ll stop before I embarrass myself.
I got you. McAdams was one of my early celeb crushes too.
The Notebook was the Twilight (but for a slightly older set) of its time. Which put me off her, as I hate that sappy shit. But then I watched Slings & Arrows and yeah, she’s just a very good actress.
I supposed I should be thankful then (for a lot of reasons) that I never saw it.
It didn’t bode well for you when you started out claiming that the entire concept of Dr. Strange is a third tier premise. Not any one movie, the whole thing. This review might as well have been written by Scorsese. It’s not reliable.
The AV Club could never get Scorsese to write for them.
“This review isn’t a loving tongue bath on the balls of Kevin Feige, therefore it is moot.”
There isn’t a more basic rule of critiquing than not starting off saying “I am very incredibly biased against this property. Now, onto my review”You’re a stupid person.
The MCU isn’t about standalone films you can pop in and out of. If that’s your expectation then this entire project isn’t going to be your jam. And that’s FINE, but it also means as a reviewer there’s an irreducible bias about the project from the get go. If we’re going to have reviewers who don’t buy into the core concept of the MCU project (“It’s all connected!”) those reviews are going to become repetitive in short order. At minimum we should at least get a second review from someone who DOES buy into the long term project and who can tell us whether or not this works as part of that overall narrative and in what ways it does or does not. “I’m going to review this like any other standalone movie and even gripe about it being connected in a way that is the central feature of the larger project it is a part of” is frankly a pretty useless review. If you can’t review it through the lens of being part of a larger ongoing whole, then kindly just acknowledge it isn’t your cup of tea and find someone else to take these films.
Yeah, it’s like reviewing a Ferrari and complaining that it doesn’t have a trailer hitch and can’t tow your boat. It’s fine if you want a truck and not a sports car, but you shouldn’t review them with the same expectations either.
Personally, I would be much more inclined to believe someone who said, “I don’t care for these movies, but I did like this one.” As someone who’s been watching these things sporadically over the past few years, the ability of an MCU movie to tell a coherent story is a definite consideration.
The MCU isn’t about standalone films you can pop in and out of. Ironically, the MCU films were a big success because they, and the Spider-Man movies before them, were the first superhero films to not need to be graded on a curve.“Yeah, it’s a bad regular movie, but it’s good for a superhero movie.”
If the MCU is back to being acceptable only within the parameters of being a superhero film, then the franchise is in trouble.
My elderly mom should be able to sit down and watch one of these movies without getting bored or confused. Anyone entrusted with a nine-figure budget should be able to master freshman creative writing standards of storytelling.
Raimi has shown himself capable of that in the past, and Fiege has for the most part been able to whip everything into shape as well. If he no longer cares about the MCU being as big of a mainstream success as he did, then I guess it’s good he’s moving on to Star Wars.
I’m not sure you’re getting what I’m saying. I’m not saying they should be graded on a curve by nature of being Superhero movies. As many have noted, the MCU has shown multiple examples of real excellence irrespective of being in the superhero genre.
But, no your elderly grandmother, for whom I’m assuming you would mean this is her entrypoint/first MCU film, should NOT be able to sit down and watch without being bored or confused. That is literally not the project that the MCU is doing. The truly unique, no one has done it before attribute of the MCU is the nature of its long form storytelling, with each chapter being treated as seriously connected to what came before and what will come after. If you think someone should be able to watch this and have the same experience as someone who watched the other movies and shows you are, to be blunt, missing the point of the project and what’s special about it.
The truly unique, no one has done it before attribute of the MCU is the
nature of its long form storytelling, with each chapter being treated as
seriously connected to what came before and what will come after.
Other than the serials, which did it for about four decades. And they were able to put everything new-to-the-serial audiences needed to know into a few seconds at the beginning of the movie. (The origin of both Star Wars’ opening crawl and the “previously on” openings for modern TV shows.)
I like MCU movies, but they’re not splitting the atom. They are capable of making each of these films an entry point for new audience members and, until now, have done so.
If they’re giving up on that, that’s a signal that Disney thinks the audience for MCU movies has peaked and is in decline and aren’t even going to spend meaningful energy on slowing that decline.
I’m quite aware of the serials, but this is different in part for exactly the reasons pointed out; the serials didn’t do complex long form plotting specifically so someone could be caught up with a couple lines of exposition. This is a fundamentally different narrative project than that. I disagree with your assessment that they aren’t “splitting the atom”, which I take to mean they aren’t doing something new. There’s a real attempt in some critical circles to minimize exactly how bonkers an achievement the MCU is.It ISN’T just a formula and it IS a cinema milestone. If anything we’re seeing just how hard it is to do in others’ attempts to copy the MCU project to minimal or no success. DCWB can protest all they want about deliberately being disconnected, but their earlier outings and current talk of a full reboot bely that notion; they want to do exactly what Marvel has done but have run into exactly the problem; there’s no formula. You need a strong visionary at the top committed to the spirit of the lore but not beholden to every detail, and then top notch casting willing to do multi-film deals and individual writers/directors willing to be creative with genre and plotting within the constraints of the broader universe. Really the next two closest in modern film/TV are the Godzilla/Kong monsterverse which is up to four movies? Five? And then the Disney+ Star Wars projects, though those seem more Star Trek in exploring different eras of the same universe rather than MCU in telling a long, overarching narrative.
You’re making excuses.
Creating movies that you can’t fully enjoy or even comprehend without having watched literally days worth of other content is not only bad storytelling but its bad business, and will eventually be a problem for the MCU.
As for business, that remains to be seen. Certainly phase 1-3, which interwove multiple narratives into an eventual culmination, was ridiculously successful financially. As to storytelling, it may be storytelling you don’t care for. And that’s fine. But you don’t have the ability to say it is objectively bad; clearly a large audience disagrees. I don’t think I’m the one making excuses for their feelings here. This is an unusual if not wholly unique longform storytelling project. The idea of longform storytelling requiring having been familiar with prior parts of the story, however is not new the MCU is just doing it on a scale and over a timeframe that is unprecedented. But plenty of TV and Film has required you to have seen something else to get the full impact. Are we really going to argue someone should have had the same experience watching Return of the Jedi or Godfather II having not seen what came before? How about appreciating the final seasons of The Good Place, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Star Trek: DS9 without seeing the prior seasons? The argument is absurd on its face and nothing more than an artificial limit on film and storytelling, potentially arrived at backwards over genre snobbery.
Phase 1-3 was good on both fronts (give or take the obvious individual movies most everyone complains about). I’m not arguing that at all.
I’m not even saying Phase 4 is bad on either front— I’m saying that if you can’t attract new fans because it’s too hard to jump in, that’s a bad thing, both creatively and financially. You inevitably lose audience through erosion (family, hobbies, other entertainment options, etc), and if you’re only catering to your hardcore fans and not pulling in many new ones, you’re going to get diminishing returns.I generally enjoy Marvel movies, if I find them a bit disposable. They’re much more akin to television than films in that respect. And I agree that this is a new kind of thing being done in cinema. But it’s not “wholly unique.” There’s clear precedent here.The comparison to look at isn’t BtVS or DS9, its something which is both counter-intuitive and obvious: it’s comic books.
There was a period in the 1990s and 2000s where DC and Marvel were doing so many “event” storylines that required fans to buy multiple character books for months. It got expensive, unwieldy, and it drove people away. Folks didn’t want to have to go buy Catwoman, Robin, Nightwing and four different Batman books just to follow the story of the one comic they’d been reading for years. Add to that the years of continuity they had to figure out how to manage (and eventually reset multiple times). The MCU is walking down the same path right now. Maybe they’re not there yet, but when they make as much content in a couple of years as they did in the previous decade, people ARE going to peel away to something simpler to consume. Not the die-hards, but you don’t make a billion dollar box office on die-hards alone.It’s a basic tenet of business, especially now in the age of social media— the more action you ask people to take, the fewer number of people will do it.
I think there are some fair points there, but there’s a tech difference that impacts how we consume media that changes the game, namely streaming. More specifically, (Spider-Man notwithstanding, though given Sony’s inability to get Spiderverse off the ground give it time) all of the MCU content becomes available on a single streaming service.
Now, we are in new territory with this from a media history perspective so I’m unwilling to predict that the ability to use a single streaming service to stay caught up will save the project going forward. Phase 4, for one thing, seems much less focused than 1-3 other than clearly having a “Multiverse” theme going on. BUT I also think that predictions based on the earlier state of media can’t be confidently made. I don’t KNOW what’s going to happen here.
I remember in college (this would be well over 20 years ago, to date myself) I had a friend who had somehow gotten every X-Men comic from Number 1 through present scanned on a CD. I literally read the entire history of X-Men over a couple months, then started buying them for a few years. I fell off in law school because in law school reading for fun sounds adjacent to torture.My point with that is, if you have the whole back catalog available on demand does that change the environment for this kind of project? I’m not willing to say confidently that it does, but I’m also not willing to say that it doesn’t.
Re: having back catalog available on one service… I don’t know if that changes things, but I lean towards no. Trade paperbacks of previous storylines have always been a thing, but that didn’t really help the situation in comics I was talking about.
I know I’m harping on the money side of things above, but I think the time commitment is just as important. I think the MCU is probably already at critical mass as far as the point at which they probably aren’t going to be drawing in a lot of new fans. They’ll have their diehards who watch everything, a much larger group that grazes through some stuff, and the general public that watches the movies and maybe a show or two as it crosses their radars. The question remains how long those last two groups’ interest will hold, and I think it largely depends on how accessible the last movie or series they watched was.
Well for a new datapoint the subject of the article, Multiverse of Madness, which absolutely is so steeped in lore you have to have seen prior movies AND shows to fully appreciate it, just did 185 million domestic, 450 million worldwide opening weekend. Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score is currently 87%, and IMDB score is a solid but not earthshattering 7.5.Of course that doesn’t mean anything in absolute terms, and IMDB in particular is susceptible to review bombing (though aside from America’s parents, I can’t think of anything likely to provoke a review bomb on this one.)
But if there is going to be an audience backlash, either commercially or critically, against full commitment to the long form universe and its lore density it does not appear to have materialized with this particular film.
Also, there is a qualitative difference between the streaming services and the trades, and that’s the subscription model and how weird human psychology is (i.e. the rational actor model used by some branches of Poli Sci, Law, and Economics is total BS.) When you buy a trade you own it forever and it is a one time expenditure. However it is an expenditure for that specific thing and to “keep up” you are having to make that expenditure periodically or in different amounts depending on trade releases, how far behind you are, and how many stories you are trying to keep up with.A streaming service is a subscription to access, you aren’t buying or renting a specific “thing” and upon subscription you have access to all of it. This is where my college example comes in, I would have NEVER spent the money on all the back trades but if someone had offered a subscription similar to Marvel Unlimited today I might have gone for it.Now multiply that effect by how much more popular films and streaming TV are generally than are comics. We’ve already noticed that modern TV exists in the same environment as Friends, 30 Rock, even old Nick at Nite stuff like I Love Lucy and Bewitched, because the subscription model makes a huge chunk of humanity’s back catalog available, and to your brain it FEELS free because you aren’t paying at that moment to watch, you have already paid for the subscription which is where your brain registered the cost.
Perhaps, but at some point it becomes an impenetrable mass that, fairly or not, people are just not going to try to get into. To the extent there is an existing fan base who gradually miss movies or shows and decide to not invest the time catching up (and it IS a time investment) then it becomes an exercise in audience churn.
If that happens, it happens. This is the first time in film/TV combined history something like this has been attempted on this scale. I’m not confident making any predictions about how it will go long term positive or negative. At minimum the MCU showed you can make a 22 film story with multiple subgenres and interweaving narratives and pay it off in a satisfying way, so there’s a degree to which everything else is gravy.But I DO think there’s a problem of some critics trying to view these as individual standalone films when that is explicitly not the project the MCU has undertaken. Again, if the nature of that project isn’t for you it isn’t, but that’s a fundamentally different critique than a discussion of how it fits as part of that broader project.
I mean they all make a shitload of money so my observations are probably theoretical to them at most. Clearly the strategy isn’t going changing any time soon.
I mean, we’re closing in on 30 movies in this franchise, and the most successful ones, outside of Captain Marvel, were the most heavily connected movies in the franchise. I mean, fuck, Infinity War and Endgame had plot points from almost every other film in the franchise at that point.
Perhaps, but at some point it becomes an impenetrable mass that, fairly or not, people are just not going to try to get into.It feels like the only reason it seems “impenetrable” is because Marvel has done such a good job making it seem like you HAVE to watch everything.So someone from the outside assumes they won’t understand, and the person on the inside goes “Well yeah you gotta watch it all.”And that feeling of “you gotta watch it all…” breeds a sense of there being an in-group who “gets it” and thus continue to go see all of it so they don’t miss out. They pride themselves in “getting it” so they have every motivation to continue the idea that you gotta see it all as a way to pat themselves on the back.But you don’t.If you’ve seen all four Avenger movies and the first Doctor Strange, you know what you need to. Anything else is background that you can use to help inform what’s going on, but not required.
Imagine. A FILM critic who expects a FILM to function as a FILM!Fucking fanbois…
No. You do realize “film” as an art is more than just the creation of a 1.5-3 hour narrative committed to celluloid/digital and then screened in isolation on a theatre screen? Pretend film snobs who don’t actually have a grasp of the history of film and the multiple ways it’s been used would be hilarious if they weren’t sad.This is a different use of film than is the standalone 2 hour narrative or even the traditional trilogy. This is a set of interweaving narratives across multiple subgenres telling a set of interconnected stories culminating in a shared narrative. If that’s not a use of film you care for, that’s fine. A lot of people don’t like documentaries or short subjects; for some people Tarantino’s use of temporal disorder is irritating, others find Coen style awkward/absurdist humor offputting.
You don’t like what its doing as film, fine. But acting like it’s just a product of “fan bois” (kewl!) rather than something that does have to be discussed as a film project is ridiculous and lazy.
Google “special pleading”
This is a film that was supposed to come out almost two years ago, before Spider-Man and Loki .It has been rewritten, re-edited , and re filmed multiple times.If it’s coherent at all and not a meandering mess I’d been surprised.
Its original pre-pandemic release date was May 7, 2021. Less than one year ago.
Why doesn’t this Marvel studios movie reference the Sony cartoon Spider-Man movies? I am pretending to be so confused about this!
can we publish less on marvel? There’s much more going on in cinema and tv that could use the attention. This ship has sailed, and the MCU needs to fade.
Yeah, the AV Club skipping out on reviewing Marvel movies is what will make the whole castle crumble.
I finally saw No Way Home the other night. It was a lot of fun, but I found myself really irritated at Strange. He agrees to modify the memory of everyone in the world to help a teenager get into college; starts casting the spell without discussing the parameters with said teenager; then repeatedly blames the kid when it all goes to shit. When Tony Stark screwed up, it made sense because he has a history of being unstable, but I just don’t know whether I’m supposed to see Strange as a competent wizard or a chaotic idiot with too much power.
Oh, he’s the latter.
You nailed it
He’s early Tony Stark but with magic this time, which they made abundantly clear in the first Doctor Strange movie. It makes sense that, with RDJ gone, they’d have Strange be the one getting arrogant and stupid. I guess that means his Avengers: Age of Ultron is coming up soon.
Having seen this it’s absolutely the second, and it’s a plot point central to the film. I’m hoping it’s a thread they’ll continue to pull given the outcome of this.
This movie establishes that he leans towards chaotic idiot. Numerous versions of him get drunk with power or screw up royally
He’s a chaotic idiot for sure. I actually hated that he tried to blame Spiderman for his incompetence. He was okay in his first movie, although douchey.
finally, this is the beginning of the end of the Marvel era. A24 and its alumni are slowly taking over, the comic book films are at an all time low (save for Spiderman, but that trilogy ended) and 90% of TV is taking cues from arthouse cinema. the age of art is upon us. bring on the 60s renaissance!
A review that’s critical of the MCU?!? Holy shit, I never thought I’d see the day. So many grown men are SO UPSET!“It doesn’t help that the movie isn’t really about anything.” A perfect description that applies to the entire franchise.
C- Sam Raimi is B+ anyone else. Wonder where the Caddy will show up?
I am an MCU fan, I am a horror fan, I am a Sam Raimi fan… and yet I find myself not really wanting to see this movie. I fear this is the movie where I am going to hit the inflection point of maybe considering moving on from the MCU. I missed Eternals and Shang-Chi (though I heard the latter was good) and did not watch What If or Moon Knight (though the latter is in my ever-growing queue). No Way Home was fun because I had seen all of the Spider-Man movies except ASM2, but for my wife we had to spend a week watching them all so she would know what the hell was happening. It looks like there is a Professor X cameo in one of the teasers, so that’s another 7 movies (yes, I know some of them suck) that are going to provide the context for whatever it is we see (I think). I know a lot of posters are throwing the term “homework” around and I have to say, I agree. I watched and mostly enjoyed WandaVision, but I don’t want to have to watch every D+ show coming out to fill in important plot points for upcoming films.If the MCU is one extreme (everything is too interconnected) and DCEU is the other (things may not be related to anything else, who knows, except when it is, but only sort of and also there are a bunch of different versions of stuff out there, but they might be part of the multiverse if DC can get that Avengers money but if not it was always meant to be a standalone) I would like something in the middle.
Hear hear. How about just making ONE TV show about a superhero and letting it be.
And, just as an idea, maybe it’s a Batman TV show on HBO, somewhere in the PG to PG-13 range?
Ah hell, I basically just want ‘em to start filming the Animated Series live action.
You don’t need to have seen any of the X-Men movies for the Prof. X cameo. There are a few other cameo characters who aren’t even from any other movies, and while they’re fun for comics fan recognition, pre-existing knowledge isn’t needed at all. I’d say the only real “homework” someone might need is the first Dr. Strange, WandaVision, and the Thanos Avengers films. It’s pretty clearly a sequel to the former two, so I’d consider those “homework,” but I don’t have much pity for someone who’d complain about homework for a sequel.
Requiring the audience to watch the brutal, slow, boring and completely unfunny Wanda vision is a bridge too far.
I love hating things that’s my favourite passtime I’m friends with no one!
I went to Infinity War without having seen Black Panther and to Endgame without having seen Captain Marvel and Ant Man and the Wasp. My understanding of the narrative was not affected in the least. Now, without having seen any Disney + show, I wonder how much of this will be lost on me.
Only thing you’re missing out on is Wanda’s magically created kids were poofed out of existence at the end of Wandavision so she’s looking for a way to bring them back.
Actually, I would say that WandaVision is the only D+ show that is relevant to this movie, as it would give you greater context for why Wanda is behaving differently in this movie than Infinity War/Endgame.But if you can roll with stuff like Wanda and Vision suddenly being a couple during Infinity War with only a couple seconds of explanation, you should be able to roll with the once scene in this movie which recaps what has happened to Wanda since the final battle with Thanos.Other than also being storylines about the multiverse, LOKI/WHAT IF have absolutely nothing to do with the plot of this movie. So I don’t really understand where anyone is coming from saying this movie will confuse people who didn’t watch the D+ shows.
Womp womp.
I’m going to see the movie regardless. It should have been 2.5 hours. Hopefully there is an extended version.
You also had to do your “homework” to appreciate Infinity War and Endgame, and I didn’t see many people complaining.
When Raimi directed Spider-Man in 2002, it felt like a
Hollywood iconoclast getting to bring his manic creativity to a prestige
property, a perfect pairing of artist and subject.
I don’t agree. Of the 3 films, I think only the second one is worth watching today, and it has been surpassed since. On the other hand, his Evil Dead movies hold up way better. I just don’t think Raimi is as interesting as a big blockbuster director as he is as a small movie director.
This movie looked too stuffed every time I saw some new casting announcement or read a rumor about yet another reference that was gonna pop up. I think Sam Raimi was the only thing really keeping me interested. It’s a bummer to see he couldn’t make this mess work.
I actually thought the cameos were minimal and the highlight of the film was the Sam Raimi aspects. I get the impression people who didn’t like the film for some reason thought like…. all the X-Men were going to show up or something. Go see the film, it’s awesome dumb fun.
“And you have to wonder what sort of negotiations (creative or financial) must have gone on for the remarkably gifted McAdams to come back to this role”I just did a quick IMDB lookup and I suspect the negotiation was along the lines of “Here is a check to be in this movie”. She doesn’t seem to be that picky with the movies she is in.
she was also presumably under contract for at least 3 movies.
And this effectively writes her out of it going forward. It was a great way to get closure on that arc with a nod towards Strange’s What-If.
I’d like to hear from A.A. Dowd.
So there will YouTube videos that will explain Wanda’s journey so far to MCU fans who never saw WandaVision, right?
I don’t think seeing WandaVision is all that important, if you can just roll with the fact that Wanda had a vision origin off-screen, in the same way we had to roll with Wanda and Vision’s entire romance happening off screen between Captain America 3 and Infinity War
Or you could just watch WandaVision because it’s delightful. Or just keep beinf an asshole idk.
“When Wanda decides to recreate in an alternate dimension the maternal fantasy she has manufactured, Wanda finds herself at odds with Strange,…”This seems like a very odd plot disruption. No being creative for you, gals, no sir.
what a goofy thing to take away from her plotline
I am perpetually in awe of the way film buffs will talk about referential cinematic shorthand and act impatient when somebody doesn’t know a reference to a Hitchcock shot but somehow when Marvel’s stories are lightly serialized – let’s face it, you can always figure out what is going on in a Marvel movie, it’s not Antonioni – they’re like NOBODY WILL UNDERSTAND THIS! And I’m also bemused by “this isn’t about anything”. You just said a crazy lady is trying to kill a teenager to resurrect her dead kids and a magician is trying to stop her. That’s a plot. Yes, the magician is also trying to figure out how to be happy, but that is what is known as a b-plot. In good screenwriting, by which I mean formulaic screenwriting, the lesson from the B plot allows the hero to solve the problem presented by the act 2 twist preventing them from solving the A plot. I virtually guarantee that is how this movie will work; Marvel movies are great fun but they are rarely structurally creative. Anyway, this criticism seems ill- informed and misleading, but maybe when I see the movie I’ll find myself in agreement.
MCU fatigue? Why not go see the far superior multiverse movie Everything Everywhere All At Once?
I’m not surprised that this sounds like a messy film, given everything they are trying to cram into it. I thought No Way Home was 90% laughable and 10% well-played, but again…not surprised.Moon Knight is intriguing when it isn’t deeply annoying, and it has Isaac’s acting which covers for a lot of flaws, but still, for a show called Moon Knight, there sure isn’t much Moon Knight. Half the other D+ series have been okay but by no means repeat viewing. And the films since Endgame have been enjoyable but not stellar. So my hope is that Feige’s & Co.’s recent retreat to map out the next decade of material has more direction/purpose than Phase 4.But I also expect to have died before they finish that run.
Because I’m old.
I am curious how this film compares to Into the Spider-Verse. I’ve seen all the MCU films, I’ve seen other Marvel shows, and I’ve read a lot of comics so it’d be pretty hard for me to judge.
Into the Spider-Verse is beloved by almost everyone despite it being filled with obscure comic references. Most people have enough general understand of pop culture to get the important parts of Into the Spider-Verse even if they don’t understand any of those references.I’m sure Dr. Strange will also be filled with comic references general audiences don’t get. But how much do people need to know about the MCU to understand the main plot and character motivations, all the really important stuff.
Based on the review, I don’t know if the reviewer is complaining about minor stuff or more important stuff. “Shadow walk” and Dr. Strange fighting with musical notes are weird comic book ideas, but so are the organic versions of the Sinister Six and Spider-Ham in Into the Spider-verse.
The reviewer is mad that Kevin Feige didn’t jump out of the screen and suck his dick halfway through the film.
While naturally, as always, opinions on these movies are based on subjective tastes, I’m personally completely in agreement with that review score. Like this movie was, for me, fucking painful to watch. Halway through I just kept waiting for it to end as I was somehow at the same time bored out of mind while also being driven insane by the many stupid, stupid choices the movie made.Not going to go to details, because spoilers and all that, but it was almost astonishing how badly it kept failing at big emotional moments. A couple of them almost made me laugh out loud. There’s one thing, though, that needs to be pointed out as I felt this massively false marketing. This movie is in absolutely no way a sequel to Spiderman: No Way Home. Actually, not only is it not a sequel, after watching this I felt it actually contradicted some of the rules set up in that Spiderman movie. Just so that people will know.
Tbf, No Way Home was pretty fucking stupid too. Just fan wank disguised as a stand alone movie.
I’m sorry the MCU isn’t being made specifically for you. Maybe Mephisto will show up in the next one crybaby.
Homework isn’t tough, but I’m getting more than a little tired of having to tie every movie together to make sense of what’s happening. A movie should have the ability to stand alone, that’s what my wife enjoyed about the first Dr. Strange, because she doesn’t follow many of the other films.
I don’t get the reaction that its too hard to understand marvel movies cause they build on each other. If you have that much trouble wrapping your head around serialized storytelling, how can you pay attention to a 2 hour movie. You can litterally read a wikipedia article in the time it takes for the opening trailers to play that sums up wandavision and the what if show. It can be summed in a few sentences then a youtube video or two of the scenes that were important or you could I dont know just watch them. Their not 100 hours long. People spend more time watching sports each month. Add to that if they dont build on each other people say what’s the point these one offs arent impactful large scale stories. If they go small scale yall say whats the point you can remove eternals and it means nothing to the overall story. Yet alone yall scream that phase four is lacking with only 4 or so movies, in comparision phase 1 and even 2 didnt have as much spinning tables for set ups but nope yall want no build up and just resolutions, but i forgot you all also did that when avengers 2 was supposed to be vs thanos and when it wasnt it was considered slow pacing, dont believe marvel…not like they had this argument with watchers last time saying they didnt want another thanos build up villian so now were spinning several build ups and ideas to maximize the universe…now you dont want it. Also people screamed too many characters in marvel CU, but the what if kinda proved to me their werent even enough for that show. Compare it to justice league unlimited and you see what an expansive system does for stories. Its possible to enjoy stuff people, and this isnt speaking to the marvel anti crowd, your right and you dont have to like the movies since changing them to something you’d like would ruin them and cancel them…mostly moody movies with less action spectacle and a cut off point of 3 movies. Egh
My theory is frustration towards “homework” is born out of a fear of missing out. It’s people who aren’t diehard MCU fans who want to participate in the cultural moment of seeing these films because they’re very big in pop culture giving people a sense that they *need* to see it. But the idea that it’s home work sprouts up because they don’t truly like the MCU and they’re just participating out of a fear that they’re weird if they don’t. Which is my theory. These people annoy the shit out of me.
Rant: Yeah, I never thought of it that way. I never saw this vitriolic hate with other long series like harry potter or chronicles of narnia not explaining movies you didn’t watch at the beginning. There are thousands of movies that are stand alone and do a well fixed up ABC plot with little exposition, is it that bad that marvel’s so called formula mixes in off tempo stuff like characters and powers you haven’t been expressly told ages ago. Heck some of the powers can be inferred due to other series, homework would be 5 mins in a wiki about the darkhold, not the end of the world. For people like me its awesome cause i get the reference down to agents of shield. I don’t love or like all marvel but I’m not asking it to cater to me skipping movies. Its so simple though. The mere fact people call it homework. Homework is usually seen as something you do but if given the choice you wouldn’t. They don’t and then complain when they don’t get what’s going on and ask for every movie to be stand alone. But again, that’s fine, opinions and all, but then don’t complain when the movies are standalone like say eternals for the most part, yet people state how bad it is cause it means nothing to the overall story. It explains itself with the point you made…these are people tired of the zeitgeist being marvel every few months and they watched a movie or so…considered it trash or not as mind blowing as they were led to believe by their own judgment (no one tells people their gonna be deep philosophy on the woes of man just nice action movies with a unique through line of being connected). Again the easy way out is, taking the time to read a wiki, or watch the thousands of summaries on youtube instead of complaining that this series of movies doesn’t do the same template as every other movie franchise. People also complained about too much marvel when marvel took a long year break after thanos stuff so I think people just like to complain about marvel cause its popular and not directed like Shakespeare/citizens cane material but just a fun action series.
Good to see a Marvel film not being gushed over. Would love to see some more flops so we can collectively move on from the played out superhero fad.
Flops lol. Why don’t you individually move on, instead of expecting the moviegoing public to share your taste?
Given how many cinematic multiverses filmmakers have created in recent years […] the most baffling choice Doctor Strange makes is that its exploration of this idea has nothing to do with any of them.
I felt that way watching No Way Home, but it didn’t surprise me. I don’t know why people haven’t noticed this until now, but Endgame, WandaVision, Loki, and What If each dealt with “the multiverse” as a theme but depicted its logistics in wholly different, inconsistent ways.No Way Home came up with a fifth version of it, so I’m even less shocked that Dr. Strange 2 (which was supposed to be released before No Way Home) has its own, also different way of depicting it.
When Raimi directed Spider-Man in 2002, it felt like a Hollywood iconoclast getting to bring his manic creativity to a prestige property Um, no. Raimi was a schlock filmmaker hired to direct a schlock property. That it was a huge success is both what made him an iconoclast and what turned Spider-Man into a prestige property.
This. lol so wait why do some characters look entirely different and are played by different actors in some multiverses if other timelines only exist due to one choice being different etc.? The MCU multiverse is one of those ‘don’t think about it’ things. It doesn’t work.
As protector of a protege who’s wrestling with their powers for the
second consecutive movie, Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) settles
uneasily into the mentor role previously occupied by his late
know-it-all counterpart Tony Stark.
Okay that’s the problem. It would be a messed up world if you have Tony Stark as mentor and moral authority. And Doctor Strange, he barely gained any wisdom or maturity from the last Doctor Strange film. He’s still the same arrogant compromise anything to win man who learned nothing about power and responsibility but lectures others to follow the rules. And having him as a mentor or moral authority would be worse.
Just arrived from the premiere in Brazil… Having read this review before watching the movie, I thought it was maybe the reviewer being a bit to harsh on the movie. I mean, “C-”, really?Well, sorry to say but I have to give it to Todd… The review is spot-on. It’s not that the movie is horrible or even bad, it’s just incredibly “meh”.And while most commenters are focusing on the issue of the movie demanding too much knowledge of previous entries in the MCU, that’s not even the main issue with DSATUOM. Although, yes, it’s bad on this department. The movie borders completely alienating people who are not diehard MCU/comics fans. For instance, my wife, who have been to every previous MCU flick with me, but is the perfect example of the regular audience who is not into comics culture. So far she has enjoyed and had no problems understanding the movies. And keep in mind that she is a person who, when Thanos first appeared at the end of the first “Avengers” movie, asked to me, “Why is the Hulk purple?”. And in the recent weeks has been weekly asking me if the new episode of “Moon Man” has already came out (what I mean is she’s pretty much a lot of the audience, despite what nerds thing)… Well, after today’s premiere she said she didn’t liked the movie and the abundance of new characters without any proper introduction annoyed the hell out of her.Now, as I said, that wasn’t even the main issue with the movie, because every other problem Todd points in the review are there. Specially worthy of mention is how the cast is wasted in a mediocre and confuse script. Cumberbatch, sorry to say, played in auto-pilot, barely giving anything resembling his good performances. McAdams, despite being a great actress and putting effort here, has barely anything to do in the movie. And for Christ’s sake, what they did to Xochitl Gomez was criminal! Imagine the excitement of being at a so young age and breaking into one of the greatest franchises of our time, only to be turned into a glorified “McGuffin”, without agency in the story!Now, what about Elizabeth Olsen? Well that brings me to the thing that broke the movie to me… Olsen shines in the movie, and delivers a solid performance. Wanda is the real star of the movie by the sheer performance of Olsen. BUUUUUUUT…Dou you remember how people worried about the possibility of the movie relying on one of the worst and most beaten tropes in movies, when dealing with characters like Wanda? I won’t say exactly what was, because “spoilers”, but anybody who followed the discussions about the movie in the last months know what I’m talking about. Well, Raimi and Waldron did it, and in spades, with a vengeance. It was as shitty as people thought it would be. It completely ruins the movie, specially when you think how the same issue was handled with other characters in the MCU.Finally, yes, Stephen fighting using musical notes and the “souls of the cursed” are exactly cringe and “eye-rolling” inducing as the review said, and the so expected and talked “cameos” do nothing to alleviate the sour taste the movie left in my mouth. Doctor Strange And The Universe Of Madness is 100% a C- movie.
Yeah, I feel like this committed one the worst sins of the Marvel formula: too much reliance on references to previous installments of the MCU in place of genuine plot and character development. I’ve seen all the previous movies and series and I was still irked by this choice because it left the movie devoid of too many vital organs.Marvel movies tend to work more often than not because the studio has had the good sense to focus on building strong characters in the core of the spectacle. This movie lacked that anchor, and it showed. Doctor Strange didn’t have a well-defined character arc of his own in this movie, and his relationships with the other characters in the film were barely fleshed out. As a result, I didn’t feel connected to him nor to anything he was trying to accomplish.Wanda may have had a strong and well-established motivation in this film, but she had all of the complexity she gained in WandaVision flattened down to nothing. She made a spectacular villain thanks to Olsen’s performance and due to the virtue of being the centerpiece of the most memorable action scenes in the movie, but it all felt ultimately disappointing because of how little depth the character was allowed. I did enjoy the moments when Sam Raimi got to flex his talent for camp horror and dark humor, but I agree that it all felt spiritless and empty, like garnish on the top of some hot air.
Agreed. It was also what worried me in the wake of the success of No Way Home. Sacrificing story for the sake of cheap fan servicing cameos.
ACTION-PACKED!!!!!!It was like Sam R worried that something like a conversation between characters might break out if thirty seconds w/o special effects and/or fighting passed.What a fucking, wasted eyesore of a movie!My only positive thought was: “Thank goodness the latest Age of 3D has ended!”One more like this and Marvel has seen the last of me, though I’ll give the new Thor a chance.
What don’t people enjoy about eye-candy? What did you want this film to be? MCU fans have become so whiney nothing pleases them anymore.
Were you waiting for Mephisto to show up? woof.
After reading the review and most of the comments all I can say is: “Relax. It’ll all be rebooted before the end of this decade.”
I enjoyed it, although it is certainly messy. The first half in particular is a mixed bag of “ok, that’s cool” and “ok, I’ve seen that before too many times, show me something new (especially with regards to Wanda’s powers, which really should have been more visually/conceptually interesting)”.However, it’s clearly a Raimi film (and I don’t just mean some of the odd camera angles, etc, some of his less-great traits are also on display) despite being part of a major franchise, and the second half hangs together much better, and starts to show off some more interesting ideas.I started to enjoy it properly when I realised, again, about half way through, that this isn’t “Sam Raimi’s Dr Strange” this is “Sam Raimi does Fantasia, starring Dr Strange”. The whole tone of it just made more sense then.Also, damn the film-makers for playing on my ‘97 nostalgia (if you know, you know). Damn them!
My one sadness is that although I thought it was great silly light horror fun, I know that a lot of it would scare the shit out of my very sensitive child, so I’m not really sure when I’ll be able to watch it with him. Baby’s first horror movie, I guess? Like it’s not going to scare a grown-up in the least, especially because it plays with predictable tropes so much (in a good way!), but it could definitely be scary for a kid.
I saw a couple families walk out of the theatre in my viewing. I’d argue that this is a 14a film and not a PG-13 film.
There’s killing and blood.
I thought it was great silly light horror fun, I know that a lot of it would scare the shit out of my very sensitive child, so I’m not really sure when I’ll be able to watch it with himI’m less concerned about the horror elements and more about the violence. And not the general idea of it, but specifically the battle against the Illuminati. They get taken out in fairly horrific and violent ways.It’s been my one complaint about the MCU since Endgame. Beyond Spider-Man there hasn’t been a movie that feels safe for kids. Black Widow and Shang-Chi had a lot of violence against children. I suppose if you skip the sex scene Eternals probably works fine, but that was easier on D+ than in the theaters.This one though, no way I’m letting my kid see it unless I skip the entire Illuminati fight.
I think once Kamar-Taj falls they do a really good job with Wanda’s powers.To such an extent I hope they bring Raimi back for another Strange film and let him have more freedom to really show his style. You could tell here they gave him some room but still tried to reign him in.Hell, if there’s a team-up film that deals in the bizarre I’d love to see him have a shot similar to how the Russos were given Avengers for a few films.
the battle with music notes especially seemed like something out of a cartoon, altho i liked it
I know it probably can’t be discussed yet in any spoilery way, but I did appreciate the swerve on the fan service. Sadly, I seemed to be the only one in the theatre laughing my butt off at Wanda’s torrent of carnage.
I absolutely loved that sequence. Are there people who seriously thought Patrick Stewart would be going forward in the MCU as Professor X? He’s like in his 80s.
As much as I love PatStew, Professor X was once ‘murican. At some point if they bring in the mutants they should recast. It also makes me less sad at Logan knowing another version of him lived on to die in a much funnier way
He hasn’t been American since Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends in the early eighties.
Ah, didn’t know that!
I thought it was funnier when Deadpool 2 did it.
I loved it. It was also a way for you to see The Avengers vs. Scarlett Witch without doing any permanent damage to 616. Though the Illuminati’s timeline is forever royally fucked.
I loved it, it was exactly what you should do with a witch who can manipulate reality and only Raimi could get away with that type of black comedy
I saw this last night, and yeah, we’re fully into, “If you’re not paying for Disney+ to watch the shows too then fuck you” mode. But even though I don’t watch the shows, my friends and roommates do, so I was aware of some of the stuff going on. But even then, I have two major gripes about shit that makes no sense in this movie. So please, if you know the answers to the questions I’m about to ask, enlighten me so that I can at least reconcile the nonsense in my brain.1) Wanda created her kids with her mind, so they’re not real. This is one of the few Cliffs Notes expositions we get in the film itself, so I’m comfortable in that being canon. However, she wants to leap to another universe and live with them for real. Are we then suggesting that there’s some universe where Vision, an android, could reproduce with human DNA? Or is every universe where Billy and Tommy exist just another version of Wanda’s fantasy, thus defeating the whole purpose? If there’s something in “WandaVision” that explains this, please let me know.2) Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor) ended the last film disillusioned with Strange and TAO over their use of the Dark Dimension and bending the rules to solve problems. The credits teaser even has him confronting Benjamin Bratt and making him a paraplegic again, hinting that he’d be the villain in the sequel. Instead (mild spoiler alert), we only get a Mordo from a different universe in this film as a low-level obstacle and a tossed off line from Strange about Mordo “dedicating his life to killing me.” For the streaming viewers, when the fuck did this happen? My best guess would be “What If,” since that’s the seeming source for the Illuminati (Strange reacting to the name by saying, “Illumi-WHAT-ti?” is lame in the extreme; it’s one thing to not know the organization, but Strange, being a man of education, has surely at least heard the word itself), but otherwise I got nothing. Is there some spinoff where Mordo is tracking/hunting/fighting Strange in an attempt to actually kill him, or is this just a bullshit line thrown in to hand-wave the fact that they teased a showdown that they never planned on paying off?
1 – During the events of WandaVision, Wanda’s powers go out of control, resulting in her creating a fake reality where she and Vision have children. She dissolves the fake reality after learning she’s gone into some kind of trance, but also gets her hands on the Darkhold and is shown to be possibly under its influence in the end credits.Wanda’s kids doesn’t exist in the MCU proper, but in the multiverse, there are apparently versions of Wanda who did have children2 – Mordo doesn’t appear in the any of the streaming shows at all. In fact, as someone who has seen all the D+ MCU shows other than Moon Knight, WandaVision is the only one relevant to Doctor Strange 2 at all. There are Doctor Strange centric episodes of What If, but they don’t have anything to do with the plot of this movie.I think we are meant to believe Strange became aware of Mordo’s antagonism towards him off-screen, and they decided to make Multiverse of Madness because the multiverse was in now, instead of “direct sequel to Doctor Strange 1 where rogue Mordo is the villain.”
Thank you. That clears up a lot.
Well… it’s not necessary but What If explained the multiverse and Captain Carter.
I enjoyed the whacky ride but struggled with that premise – all that trouble because Wanda wants her fake kids back? Not a strong motive and kind of annoying that it perpetuates the only motive for female characters written by men: that all a woman wants is babies or she will go crazy!However, despite that, I enjoyed it and some fun cameos!
I think that this could have been highlighted better by the movie, and maybe is only really clear from watching Wanda’s whole arc, but her motivation isn’t simply that she wants her children back. It’s that her only family for the longest time was her brother, who was killed during the fight with Ultron. Then she found a new family in Vision, who she was forced to kill in the fight with Thanos. And even though she did that, it didn’t actually make a difference in the long run. That’s why she’s angry at Strange, who willingly gave up his time stone because he believed it necessary to save the world, but in doing so condemned Vision to death.So by the events of WandaVision, she’s lost the most important person in the world to her twice, and then willingly gave up her fantasy family, when all she ever wanted was just to be able to live a normal life with her family. So it’s not just that she wanted her kids, but that she had a taste of what her life could have been like, and was convinced by the Darkhold that she could have it again.
I suspect that for a fair number of people, the influence of the Darkhold on her wasn’t clear/obvious enough. Maybe an occasional Voice of Cthon in Her Head voiceover would’ve made people happier.
– all that trouble because Wanda wants her fake kids back?They weren’t fake though, that’s the point. Even if you don’t watch WandaVision it’s made clear in this film she’s haunted by the life she could have had every night.Later she points out that she gave up Vision to save the world and it didn’t mean a thing to anybody, while Strange condemned half the universe to death and got a mulligan.
Guys, I picked up this book and skipped directly to Chapter 30- that’s probably okay, right?
I thought the conflict was, rather obviously, “how you see yourself vs. how others perceive you”, which is something both Strange and Wanda have to come to terms with by the end of the movie. The parallels between Strange and Wanda were hardly subtle, either.
Having seen the movie, I’d say the grade could be split. If you haven’t seen Wandavision, you’d probably grade this as a C- or worse. You’re probably confused as hell as to what’s going on.
But if you’ve seen Wandavision, the movie is a B to B-. It’s good and entertaining. But I think it does suffer from moving too fast. It’s just constant action, jumping from one thing to the next. If it slowed down in parts to let a few moments breath, maybe a bit of exposition to fill some gaps in a couple of places, the film would be a lot stronger.
SPOILERS:
I’d argue otherwise, I have a friend who hasn’t seen WandaVision and that friend just viewed her as “witch antagonist”. On the flipside, two female friends who loved her in WandaVision hated this film because they felt it did the character a big disservice which… it kinda did.
I don’t agree with your friends thinking the film did her disservice from WandaVision. If they wanted a happy ending for Wanda, sure. You’re gonna be disappointed. But WV essentially set up her up on a tragic figure arc that Strange 2 followed through and ended. Elizabeth Olsen was fantastic in both showing how extreme grief and sadness completely consumed her to where she couldn’t see that her actions were villainess. That also makes for a strong villain as well, where their actions seem justified by a certain kind of logic. It’s one of the strongest character arcs and actor performances of the entire MCU imo to date.
I watched WandaVision so I was just confused. Isn’t Vision back? In all white? Why wasn’t he even brought up here? Did they explain that and I missed it? Now suddenly she’s all grief stricken about her kids instead of her husband. They basically just repeated the same beat.
Bingo. Had you come straight off Endgame it would make more sense why Wanda is in this place. But after watching that you’re pulling for her. So her descent in to madness feels really sudden.It felt like her villain reveal at the orchard would have made more sense if she only snapped once she was faced with the possibility of what America could do.
I disagree. I was pleasantly surprised that this was much more coherent than Moon Knight. It’s not as astounding as EEAO, but it’s a better film than NWH’s nostalgia fest. Hopefully Raimi will return for the next installment. https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com/2022/05/08/doctor-strange-2-multiverse-boogaloo/
You see a lot of moaning from critics about the MCU’s interconnectedness, but the truth is:- all narrative requires the recipient to have some outside context, and this is frequently metatextual. You can enjoy a movie with the bare minimum, but can also unlock additional layers of it by having and leaning on this context. This is the point of professional critics – their take on a text is interesting because they are familiar with the industry, with the established conventions of the medium, with other texts which the one under review is referencing.- conversely, I’d argue as a viewer none of the context is really mandatory – I don’t need to know who any of the cameos are as long as the film provides me enough to understand what is happening with them. From that point of view, the Illuminati get a pretty good mini story arc, which also ties in well with the larger themes of the film (what does it mean to be Doctor Strange? more broadly, what happens when really big decisions are being made by one or a handful of flawed individuals?), all without needing a single on-screen origin story.
As a long time comic book reader, it’s not really homework. The die hard fans, whether its comic books or the movies are going to get what is going on. I have a friend who loves the movies but never read any comics at all. So I have to explain to him who that character is or why this is happening. He’s seen all the MCU movies and tv shows and he still has questions. Like for one, he doesn’t know who the Illuminati are even though they explained it in the movie. Or why Prof X is part of that group. So for the true die hard, it’s not homework at all. It’s just keeping up with what’s going on in the comics and what gets fed online by entertainment channels.
As a long time comic book reader, it’s not really homework. The die hard fans, whether its comic books or the movies are going to get what is going on. I have a friend who loves the movies but never read any comics at all. So I have to explain to him who that character is or why this is happening. He’s seen all the MCU movies and tv shows and he still has questions. Like for one, he doesn’t know who the Illuminati are even though they explained it in the movie. Or why Prof X is part of that group. So for the true die hard, it’s not homework at all. It’s just keeping up with what’s going on in the comics and what gets fed online by entertainment channels.
We went to see this last night. I was hoping for a reprieve from Mother’s Day (as someone battling infertility currently) and I was actually extremely moved by Wanda’s longing for her children. Wanda, in general, was the highlight of this movie. I do love Dr. Strange – the first movie was awesome. But I felt something was missing from this. It was too many random characters, the plot didn’t feel that important. I was kind of hoping for more mishaps in alternate universes, actually. It was very cool seeing him and America going through each universe – the paint! The weird cubist stuff! Wanted more of that, honestly.As someone who considers herself a casual fan of MCU, this movie didn’t do it for me. I didn’t know who the purple witch was at the end but I’m sure I’ll find out one day. Wanda and all the horror surrounding her was terrifying. Like, extremely. Elizabeth Olsen plays evil so well. There was so much CHEESE in the dialogue and that disappointed me. I was hoping for better. But you know I’ll keep seeing every next installment.
I’m an MCU fanboy since day one. Spider-Man 2001 is one of my fav films of all time. I found this wildly disappointing. I’m shocked at how bad I thought it was.
This movie is bad. Not because it requires foreknowledge or whatever, because it has serious story problems, and inconsistent characters and tone.The script is weak (there are some terrrrrrible one-liners and hammy exposition) but serviceable; It could’ve been worked into a solid top-half MCU adventure. Wanda’s corrupt and unstoppable—so crib from a terminator movie or something!Instead it’s a montage: the coolest (and corniest) moments aren’t connected to character motivations, they seem to happen because Raimi said “this’d look cool” and stuffed it in. I am typically a defender of the MCU, there’s some stuff to enjoy here, but overall it is a disappointing mess. I honestly think I could’ve directed the same script better than Raimi did.Remember in Infinity war how cool the fight between Strange and Thanos was? Nothing in Multiverse of Madness comes close to matching that spectacle. They mostly shoot wizard lasers at each other. More potent attacks get used once and then forgotten in the next scene to keep the plot moving. You’ve got a character who can punch through universes, maybe give us a climactic romp through mind-blowing realms of imagination—a Multiverse of Madness? Instead, well… let’s just say that’s not what we get.
They named a character America for the memes, right?
I will see this film, regardless. I hope that other some actors from past iterations of Marvel media can come back in nods. Wesley Snipes as Elder Blade, for example. There was still a missed chance with Nicholas Hammond as the original live action Spider-Man. Even supporting actors would be a fun nod.
So where was Vision? Her whole arc in WV was about her great undying love for Vision. She’s so grief stricken she became evil. This movie just repeats that exact same beat except now it’s all about how much she loves those kids she created in the fourth episode — with nary a mention of Vision, who’s nowhere to be found. What did I miss here?
I think Vision wanted nothing to do with her, which is a great plot point to emphasize how messed up she is
I thought the writing was really bad. “He could kill you with one whisper… from his mouth.”ME: “From his mouth? Why would he say that? Where else would a whisper come from? Who talks like that? ‘He can kill you with a whisper.’ That’s the line.”WANDA: …What mouth?Ah. He was just teeing up her line. Got it.
I really wish he just turned around and farted Wanda out of existence
I was so excited for this. Sam Raimi and Doctor Strange is a match made in heaven. I re-watched several Loki episodes in anticipation of this (which turned out to be unnecessary) and I was impressed all over again. Smart and imaginative. It tried to subvert the tropes at every turn.This was the total opposite. I can’t believe it’s the same writer. It was dumb, lazy and sloppy. And talk about tropes! ‘The power was inside you all along’? Seriously?? They drink tea and the room starts spinning? I’ve seen that scene done the exact same way a hundred times before. A man as smart as Doctor Strange actually fell for that cliche?
How bad/sloppy/lazy was the Memory Lane machine?? You just step on a square of sidewalk and suddenly it starts broadcasting your backstory on a big screen in front of everybody??Even the Illuminati — which just felt like cheap fan service — felt like I’d seen it before. Basically they were Team X in Deadpool 2 and the B squad in The Suicide Squad. Wanda was basically Jean Grey in X-Men The Last Stand.Wanda had the exact same arc she had in Wandavision! Except now she’s grief striken over her kids instead of her husband?? Like, didn’t we just we through this with her? Where is Vision for that matter??? That show was all about her great lost love for him, now it’s about the great lost love for her fake kids? You’re hitting the same beat here.Same with What If! We just saw the multiverse get introduced and fought for. This brought nothing new to the table. “In this universe red means go”?? Seriously? How lazy is that?? Where’s the creativity? Unimaginative is the LAST thing I expected a Sam Raimi Doctor Strange movie to be.I was SO excited to see this. I’m a huge MCU fanboy. Spider-Man (2001) is a top 3 favorite movie of all time for me. This was a CRUSHING disappointment. I’d rank it just above my most hated MCU movie Eternals. Is Feige being spread too thin with the TV projects? Where’s the famous MCU quality control lately?
Finally saw it and it was at best a B- or C+. I go C+ as the fan service stuff seemed forced. The lines from the other hero’s trying to do the 616 hero’s lines were so bad I laughed out loud. But I still love some of the fan service as I rather that than shitting on your fans.The only thing I hate is that since there are Thanos on ever universe the one that destoryed the 616 is a nobody and so is everyone on the 616 as you can just bring someone in from another place to take their place. It’s what I hated about the comics and it’s what I never like about DC and all of their earths.But it is what it is. I will say Bruce Campbell alone makes the movie decent/good.
You have far underrated the film, It’s not the top of the line but I was fine with it. I thought it might be more complicated than it was. I had fun and ate my popcorn. I’d give it a B or B-.
Disney+ offered a way to alleviate the “homework” issue with its recap shorts called “Legends”. They’ve been doing this for each of its series and movies starting with WandaVision.
For this particular film, they have three recaps dedicated to Dr. Strange, Wong, and Scarlet Witch, which are less than 25 minutes long altogether.
I got around to seeing this last night on Disney+.Multiverse of Madness is awful, just awful, the worst of the MCU – say whatever you want about Iron Man 2.It is even more boring than The Eternals, but at least people seemed to enjoy being on screen in The Eternals. Here, everyone on screen, everyone, even Bruce Campbell, whom I otherwise love to watch hurt himself, looks like they hate what they’re doing every second they’re doing it.
Give Sam Raimi ten million dollars and he makes Army of Darkness and Darkman. Give him one hundred million dollars and he makes Oz the Great and Powerful and… this.
Finally got around to this and jesus… C- was frankly generous, and I’m embarrassed for everyone involved in it. Something clearly went completely off the rails in pre-production: the script is mostly people standing around explaining the plot to each other, and despite being, by the clock, a half hour shorter than No Way Home (and an hour shorter than Endgame) it feels infinitely longer. And somehow despite not one but six surprise(ish) cameos, not a single one of them seemed interesting or involving. Hell, the Evil Dead joke felt rote. If Sam Raimi can’t make a slapstick fight funny to watch, what is even the point?
I just watched this in the last couple of days…and yikes, I gotta’ agree. While there were cool things I liked. The Horror aspects and the Illuminati…yeah, it was okay and a bit meh.