Review: 'Dr Strange: 2'

 by Anjali Arackal

Unpopular (?) opinion: I didn’t love the new Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness. Garnering mixed reviews online (74% on Rotten Tomatoes, 7.5 on IMDB and a middling 3/5 stars on the Guardian), this movie was a divisive sequel to the 2016 Doctor Strange.

Now, I loved the first film; although it’s a classic Marvel production, it felt removed from other superhero movies. Thematically and visually, it offered something different to the usual pattern of action films - I enjoyed the unexpected setting of Nepal's capital Kathmandu and it was just an enjoyable movie to watch. This is a common opinion: the film achieved an 89% rating on the notoriously harsh review site Rotten Tomatoes. 

As such, I bought my popcorn and could hardly contain my anticipation entering the cinema. Apart from The Amazing Spiderman (which can never be topped), Doctor Strange is my favourite superhero film so I was excited to see where the filmmakers took the story in his first full-length production in six years (the character has appeared in other MCU instalments). Sadly, it just… fell flat. 

Somehow, the movie felt less put together as a whole. I feel like Michael Waldron (screenwriter) could have done much more with the character of America, and not just one scene in which we learn the horrifying backstory of how she inadvertently killed her parents and then it’s never mentioned again? Of course, maybe he’s setting up for a possible third instalment in the series, but I feel like there’s a way to keep some questions unanswered whilst giving her character some more dimension. 

Additionally, all of the depth & exploration of Wanda’s character in Wandavision was completely scrapped here, reducing her to a singular personality trait of ‘desperate mother’. The majority of her screen time was just variations of the phrase “I’m not a monster, I’m a mother!”, and while I recognise the merit of showing her descent into madness through the repetition, eventually it just became boring. 

The dialogue read like a Disney Channel original movie in certain scenes. Nothing against DCOMs (Lemonade Mouth was a masterpiece ahead of its time) but honestly I found myself correctly predicting the ends of statements because they were just so cliche. For example: “Every night I had the same dream..and every morning I had the same nightmare” when Wanda describes seeing her (nonexistent) children in her dreams, and also the final wink from Strange (delivered through his corpse-zombie self - the plot went to some weird places) to America to encourage her to just “believe in herself” and she’d be able to defeat Wanda. The triteness undermines the entire movie and leads me to believe that the script was the low-effort money grab that sequels often, regrettably, are. 

Finally (last complaint, I promise!), the length. Multiverse of Madness has a runtime of 2 hours and 6 minutes. This reflects a trend in many recent releases; whether in action (Batman (2022) stands at just under three hours, Spiderman: No Way Home is slightly leaner at 2h 28m) or otherwise, such as Bond’s 2h 43m No Time To Die. I have no issues with a longer film, but in Multiverse of Madness, I truly think it could have been cut down. I often found myself checking the time - a surefire warning sign that the movie was not as attention-grabbing as it could have been. 

Ultimately, it was a..fine movie. I concede that there were some elements I really enjoyed: the music battle sequence for one, in which Strange and his evil multiverse self fought using musical instruments and sheet music where the notes were given knife-like qualities. I thought that was a unique idea, and that America’s character had potential.