It's the hope that kills you...
Except, I had very little hope. I don't rate Sam Raimi and I actually went into this film expecting not to like it and I wasn't that far off the mark. The MCU malaise has struck deep in me and I so wanted to expect much more from this film, but I ended up being somewhat short-changed.
It is a special effects bonanza and all the myriad of trailers for the film did a good job of feeding us most of the first 25 minutes giving the impression it was the entire film encapsulated. The film opens with a Stephen Strange and young female companion hurtling from different realities trying to escape from a truly interesting and scary monster as they try to reach the Book of Ashanti before the monster. Strange dies saving the young girl who is dragged through a star shaped dimensional portal which drags in the corpse of Strange with her.
From that point on you expect one thing and get a much different approach. The girl and presumably the corpse end up in 'our heroes' New York and subsequently, inadvertently, gate crashes Strange's ex-girlfriend's wedding. Stephen then visits Wanda to ask about the multiverse, discovers he's been set up and everything starts to go a little wonky. Like, for instance, where exactly are Stephen and Wanda, because it doesn't look like any place on MCU earth.
Within 20 minutes the Scarlet Witch is laying waste the armies of magic and trying to kill the girl - America Chavez - to steal her power to be able to go to a reality where her children (from the WandaVision TV series) still exist, oh and she's gone stark-raving mad in the months since the TV show and Strange turning up at her hellbound orchard.
Frankly, you can see Wanda's journey throughout her appearances in the MCU; it's the mutants in microcosm and her already fucked up psyche was always going to crumble, that much was clear after WandaVision. The problem is if you didn't watch that TV show then you missed the massive leap from saving the universe to android body snatching psychopath toying with humans in a malevolent way. In fact, if you're not quite well-versed in the MCU much of this film can't be taken as a standalone, while the bits not mired in MCU history seem to be breezed over or put there for the purposes of moving the main plot along. It's a really badly constructed movie.
Instead of being some kind of revelation to feature Prof X, Reed Richards, Black Bolt, Captain Carter and an all-different - Maria Rambeau - Captain Marvel, and a different version of Mordo, it felt forced, irrelevant and not really needed - like a middle 8 in a song that doesn't work - and the way Wanda despatched them - quite gruesomely in places - puts her firmly among the Thanos-level baddies. It all seemed rather unnecessary and simply playing to the fans.
In the end, the 'multiverse' is looking like it backed up my growing theory that it is a bit of a red herring, not actually the the main story, just the setting for it. Plus, there wasn't really enough of it and it didn't feel all that... mad; in fact you got the impression that in most alternate realities life is a damned sight better than it is in ours or the MCU's. There also weren't enough Dr Stranges, Zombie Stephen is a bit of a double switch and it all rather fizzled out rather than ended.
The post credit scenes were awful; I mean very poor quality and the one that is supposed to move the story on leaves you feeling like you don't want move anything on and you'd like to go back to a simpler time when you didn't need a PowerPoint Presentation just to explain what is happening at the moment.
I know full well I have developed a massive bug up my arse about the Marvel films over the last couple of years, but the sense of watching a quality film you got when you sat down to view something like The Winter Soldier or Iron Man simply isn't there any more. That's what happens when you set the bar so high, you fail to attain it again.
Yes, yes. Everybody knows my waning enthusiasm for the MCU, but was Doctor Smith in the Multitude of McGuffins any good?
Well it cracks along at a pace that feels too fast and there isn't really adequate explanation for a lot of it or even how Wanda became aware of America Chavez in the first place, while Strange seems to have become the MCU's uncle Buck, saving the future of teenagers all over the world... But no, it's a mishmash of a film that tries its hand at comedy, horror and cosmic and kind of fails on all fronts. It's not just the sense of wonder and awe that's missing from this, it's the lack of internal logic, especially with its conclusions. If Chavez now has control over her powers and can locate Strange on another level, then surely she would be looking for her folks rather than trying to become a sorcerer?
That's every Marvel film since Infinity War that I've failed to really like. I just want to warn people that Thor: Love & Thunder really needs to be something exceptional or the entire franchise is in danger of simply slowly fading away.
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