Friday, July 22, 2022

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

And this week's Friday night movie has been... Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness!


Original image located here. Accessed 22nd July 2022

I have been following a lot of criticisms about the current phase (no.4) of the MCU. Chief among them is that the movies of this phase seem to lack a sense of direction and, after such a pay-off (Endgame) from years of build-up, there is nowhere left to go.
Personally I did enjoy the Eternals and Spiderman: No Way Home but even I will admit that the criticisms of being directionless are hard to ignore. After all, when you climb the mountain and find nowhere left to go, what do you do?

That being said, I did find this latest instalment to the MCU something of mixed bag. On one hand, there is so much continuity to cater for that the movie seems to groaning under it's own weight. Also, there is a lot going on here that the pacing seems to go at light speed and is therefore difficult to pick up. In addition, this isn't quite the horror movie I was expecting.
But that's for the first half: Maybe it's just me but once the second half kicks in, this movie remembers it's a Doctor Strange movie and plays into it's strengths: The creative & striking visuals and Benedict Cumberpatch. It's great to see Benedict playing different iterations of this character and some truly impressive visuals (the staircase immediately comes to mind). And I also must give credit to director Sam Raimi who is able to make his own stamp - especially when doing so isn't an easy task in the MCU.
So yeah, not a bad effort but the problem of 'where do we go from here' still persists....

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