"Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness"
Written By Alex Greenbaum
There was a touch of arrogance coming from filmmaker Martin Scorsese and a feeling of skepticism on my part when Scorsese scrutinized the Marvel film experience, saying "Marvel movies aren't cinema". In his 2019 New York Times opinion piece, Scorsese went into painstaking detail describing the "elimination of risk" reflecting on the possible decline of modern-day movie making. While I won't be that dramatic in my stance, watching "Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness" has created a new mindset for me, due to the unbearable qualities of this latest Marvel entry.
Directed by Sam Raimi ("Evil Dead", "Spider-Man") and written by Michael Waldron, the sequel to the 2016 "Doctor Strange" is a shameless cash grab that includes atrocious CGI, laughable dialogue and poor acting. Talented actors like Benedict Cumberbatch, Rachel McAdams, Elizabeth Olsen, Chiwetel Ejiofor and even some small cameos by A-list actors (no spoilers here) phone it in. I felt embarrassed for all of them throughout, mostly because of Waldron's cartoonish script.
The dialogue, on more than one occasion, is unintentionally humorous. The chemistry between Cumberbatch and his teenage cohort (Xochitl Gomez) is like sour milk. There's nothing witty about it or dramatically compelling, including Gomez's amateur acting. If there was a smidgen of hope, Raimi's standard horror zoom in shots and B-movie editing still exist, which does add some minor (microscopic) relief.
Dramatically speaking, this will go down as one of the worst movies of 2022. There's few redeemable characteristics, especially if you're a Raimi or Marvel fan. It made me genuinely sad that a film this poor will gross hundreds of millions of dollars and be perceived positively by the majority of audiences. Scorsese might've sounded like a doomsayer at the time, but if movies are allowed to be released in this state, the more I'm convinced that Scorsese was prophetic in his insights.
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