Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Is the MCU’s New High-Water Mark

Scott Derrickson’s Doctor Strange remains one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most inventive films—all careening, cascading movement as it shuttles its characters through various dimensions and planes of existence. But it has nothing on Sam Raimi’s horror-tinged romp through the funhouse realms of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Immediately shaming the drab, lifeless approach to the multiverse that defined Spider-Man: No Way Home, the film seizes the possibilities of the material with a giddy exuberance that’s been missing from live-action comic book cinema since Raimi’s own Spider-Man trilogy.

In the wake of Doctor Strange’s (Benedict Cumberbatch) actions in No Way Home, the barriers separating universes have thinned and new monsters beleaguer New York. Strange, already doubting himself after causing so much havoc, is forced to care for a teenaged dimension-hopper, America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), who was a friend of one of his alternate selves and who’s being hunted across universes by enemies who want her powers of multiverse traversal.

As a character, Doctor Strange always works best when he has a foil to play off of, and America’s wide-eyed naïveté and anxiety makes a fun contrast with the sorcerer’s steely self-regard. Yet in his sudden role as a caretaker for the girl, Strange also finds a parallel with Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), who’s still reeling from the traumatic events of WandaVision. Where Strange stoically muses on his failings, Wanda is a spout of endless agony, and the two deal with their regret in starkly different ways.

The events and revelations of Multiverse of Madness will surely reverberate across many future films and shows, and though you may wish that Marvel Studios would place more value in character over incident, Raimi dispatches the usual Marvel table-setting for future movies with astonishing efficiency. The multiverse concept has already been reduced in Marvel to a shortcut to endless cameos by major and obscure characters paraded across the screen like sitcom characters entering the set to studio applause. Raimi cannot avoid the obligation to do the same, but he confines almost all of this film’s “nerdgasm” moments to a single scene, which ends in a hilarious, shocking fashion true to Raimi’s mastery of horror comedy.

Indeed, it’s safe to say that no MCU movie to date, not even the more creator-driven entries like Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther and Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok, has so thoroughly displayed the personality and artistry of its director than Multiverse of Madness. It’s in everything from the cinematography’s use of color and stark lighting choices to communicate mood to the rushing push-ins, shock-laugh zooms, and wild canted angles that have defined Raimi’s style from his earliest days as a filmmaker. At its finest, the film’s artistry perfectly reflects the intensity of Strange navigating endless alternate realms.

Raimi also leans heavily on his horror roots. For one, the film’s CGI favors tentacled monsters, hulking demons, and, in what seems simultaneously a nod to the Evil Dead movies and Oz: The Great and Powerful, wretched, flying monkey-esque skeletons. More importantly, he communicates dread through camera movement, sudden lighting shifts, and editing, running some shots long to set up jump scares and others as a barrage of jolts. There’s consistent imagination here in the animated images and the on-set direction, as well as the integration of the two. It’s also something of a miracle that the film came in at a PG-13 rating, so thoroughly does Raimi test the limits of the MPA’s tolerance of violence and gore.

Throughout, though, Raimi is still the man who unabashedly embraced the humanism of comics in his Spider-Man movies. He grounds the violence in genuine consideration for the terror and bewilderment felt by the average human in a world of gods and creatures that’s rare for the MCU. Multiverse of Madness also gives Cumberbatch the space to develop Strange beyond his haughty, aristocratic mien, pushing the character to admit the limits of his genius and skill and recognizing the strength of ceding his sense of absolute authority.

Across its comics and MCU, Marvel has repeatedly tried to acknowledge that its heroes’ unaccountable actions have had disastrous repercussions, but the studio has always let figures like Tony Stark off the moral hook for the havoc that they unleash. Multiverse of Madness actually forces its protagonist to take stock of his solipsistic attitude, and it suggests that the true mark of a hero is one who doesn’t narcissistically act like one.