Doctor Strange: In The Multiverse of Madness

Yeah, hold on a sec.

I've come around to not sympathizing with Wanda at all anymore.

The only good point she had.

They weren't. And, as HISHE put it through Black Bolt, she either should have had real babies with someone or considered adoption.

Not missing the point at all. What she wants is stupid and there were less murder-y and life-ruining ways to accomplish it. Literally 5 minutes of therapy.

Plenty of people go through loss and don't commit to existential murder plans.

None of what Wanda did was emotionally or narratively justified in a universe where magic and multiverse travel and basic therapy exist. I know the movie wants me to sympathize with a grieving mom, but I really don't.

I honestly wish someone had confronted her with "your children were literally non-existent, you conjured them from magic with an android partner who was biologically incapable of having children. If you want to have children or even just fill that emotional void left behind by the week you spent with children you accidentally magically conjured, consider adopting a child."

Strange did confront her with that and she deflected with admittedly the best line in the movie, but a deflection that showed off how utterly fucking off her rocker she was nonetheless.

Edited by FOFD on Jan 10th 2023 at 9:21:06 AM

To reiterate. Saying 'well her kids really weren't real and she should have done the x logical thing' really misses the point that Wanda's off her rocker from ptsd/loss/magic book corruption.(ugh)

Bluntly telling her that her kids aren't real was not a winning strategy that was ever going to work. They're real to her. They're what she wants. She not behaving rationally so rational arguments she should have done xyx just won't work.

eta: Why does no one finish writing their posts before hitting submit?

Edited by dcutter2 on Jan 10th 2023 at 2:24:52 PM

I'm only slightly in the pettiest way bitter that this movie got more discussion than Everything Everywhere All At Once which I will continue to say was the superior sci-fi multiverse film with vastly more engaging themes, and I'm baffled that this website of all sites wasn't talking about the Asian-led, progressive, multiverse sci-fi film with Michelle Yeoh and returning actor Ke Huy Quan. The movie even had an older female protagonist, a positive portrayal of a same sex relationship that wasn't Bury Your Gays, and an atypically human portrayal of the IRS.

Granted, Strange 2 was a Marvel movie and there's a wider audience for that. But here I thought this movie didn't do particularly well critically and did a lot of things wrong. The current ennui of Phase 4 aside I thought Strange 2 would disappear like Thor Love and Thunder and The Eternals and Shang-Chi. You don't see those threads up top anymore.

Preach it! EEAAO flexes on Multiverse so hard, it's not even funny. It's the definitive multiversal adventure the likes of which has never been seen before. And for added lol, it's also about motherhood, MOM.

I came out of EEAAO going, "Wow, this was exactly the movie that everyone thought Multiverse of Madness was going to be and was then disappointed that it wasn't. It's a shame nobody's going to watch it because it doesn't have bankable actors playing franchise fan-favorites."

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 10th 2023 at 6:31:27 AM

I feel better.

Perhaps, but being confronted with reality was what ultimately stopped Wanda's rampage in spite of the PTSD/Loss/Magic book corruption. Strange could have done that earlier when Wanda was willing to talk.

Edited by FOFD on Jan 10th 2023 at 9:54:37 AM

As you pointed out. He did.

They confront her with rational problems with her plans throughout the film. Strange, Wong and America at least. What knocks her to her senses is the emotional gutpunch of the kids she's striving for hating and fearing her.

eta: That can't be replicated by just pointing it out to her as they tried that too and Wanda shakes it off as "they'll never know".

eta2: Also I just want to say I don't like the film or what it did with Wanda, and I'm not trying to say that you should like the film or find Wanda sympathetic. That's clearly a personal opinion.

I do have a bugbear about 'why doesn't the character behave in a rational manner and do the perfectly logical thing I think would be the best action' because characters don't work that way.

Edited by dcutter2 on Jan 10th 2023 at 3:45:57 PM

Let's also not forget that all Wanda knew about this Tome that corrupted her was that it had a spooky name and there's somehow an entire chapter about herself in it; but she had no real way of knowing simply reading it would corrupt her like the One Ring.

Of course, it would've been nice if the Darkhold had been better established in the movie. How does it corrupt people? Why is it like this? For what purpose does it corrupt?

They had so many opportunities to showcase this. Imagine the scene where 838 Professor X goes into Wanda's head. Instead of seeing 838 Wanda under rubble, have him see 616 Wanda and a silhouette of Chthon behind her, with Chthon laughing at his feeble attempts to free her or something. Or better yet, give us scenes of her actively trying to resist the Darkhold. Have her hesitate before doing something... but then we hear a whisper and she snaps back into Terminator mode. Small changes like that would have done wonders.

The sheer lack of any sort of development put into what the Darkhold is really enhances the feeling that, at the end of the day, the movie isn't supposed to be about that. It's like a pre-emptive Author's Saving Throw tossed into the mix to offset what they knew would be a contentious plot point.

They didn't write this to be a movie about Wanda being corrupted by a powerful demonic force and needing to be saved. They wrote it to be a movie about Wanda going crazy and killing people. "The Darkhold made her do it" was just there to be a defense against criticism over the kind of story they wanted to tell.

That's why the climactic resolution isn't about Wanda breaking free from the Darkhold's grasp. It's about Wanda realizing that she, Wanda, has gone too far and can't truly bring herself to cross the final line. With the words "And then she destroyed the Darkhold forever in all universes" stapled onto the end of it.

The movie isn't about the Darkhold. It's just about Wanda. The Darkhold is little more than some enabling Phlebotinum applied to the story to try and smooth over the contentious characterization choices made with Wanda.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 10th 2023 at 8:52:45 AM

Is the movie even about Wanda? Because frankly, her role as the villain is so interchangeable. You could swap out Wanda for anyone else and nothing would change.

Sometimes I just wish Doctor Strange 2 had whatever story this concept art was for.

I'm more of the opinion that the Darkhold didn't "make her evil" so much as it pulled on a nerve. It repeatedly showed her visions of universes where her kids exist and also presented extremely amoral solutions.

Maybe that's because that's more interesting than "evil book made me do it".

When and how? She's living alone in a cabin with nothing but a bad self-help book to keep her in line, and to anyone on the outside who might know where she is she seemed to be coping rather well.

But some people do. I mean, you're talking about a woman who got over the loss of her parents by volunteering for a Nazi science experiment. She's not got a great track record to begin with.

Honestly, corruption has always seemed better to me than possession.

Anyone can be possessed by a demon, but for the demon to manipulate you using your dreams and weaknesses, leading you to do things you wouldn't do under normal circumstances seems much more interesting to me.

And I mean, I want to see Wanda get a redemption story and all. But the idea probably was a lot more digestible after WandaVision, since while what she did there was also bad, at least no one died there. What we got here is pretty much a bloodier version of her WandaVision arc:

1. Wanda does something bad for a sympathetic reason due to something clouding her mind (turns a town into a sitcom reality out of grief over Vision's death; tries to kill a teenage girl to steal her powers because she wants to be with her kids thanks to the Darkhold's corruption)
2. A third party tries to reason with her, but she's having none of it (SWORD and Monica outside the Hex; Strange and his sorcerers at Kamar-Taj)
3. She eventually accomplishes her goal despite heavy resistance (White Vision, Agatha, and Hayward are all defeated; the Illuminati, Strange and America are all defeated)
4. After a realization, she willingly gives up and tries to fix things (she takes down the Hex upon realizing everyone in town is in pain, and promises to learn how to control her powers; she realizes what the Darkhold's done to her and destroys every copy in the multiverse)

That's more or less the sort of argument I'd make for why they should've just used Nightmare as the villain here.

Edited by dmcreif on Jan 18th 2023 at 10:35:00 AM

Yeah, Multiverse of Madness's biggest flaw is that, at the end of the day, it's just WandaVision done shittier. It's kind of amazing that this happened. It's like releasing a Thor movie right after Winter Soldier, where Thor has to help Captain America discover a totally unrelated Hydra conspiracy inside S.H.I.E.L.D. and ultimately take both organizations down again.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 18th 2023 at 8:25:39 AM

The whole mess can be maybe attributed to mismanagement on Marvel's part and them deciding that they valued spectacle at the expense of continuity.

I mean, I'd call it a bad omen when one of the lead actors is filming a show that sets up this movie, and the show's story didn't even make the actor think they were going to be the villain of the subsequent movie. (Elizabeth Olsen has said that she only found out that Wanda was going to be the main villain in DSMoM when she returned from COVID hiatus to finish shooting WandaVision in the fall of 2020, and her initial reaction was, "Oh my god, how do I weave this into WandaVision?!")

But this wouldn't be the only way continuity was disregarded. I mean, none of the rules about the multiverse stated in Loki make the slightest appearance in Multiverse of Madness. The Illuminati speak of incursions, people can get glimpses of other universes via dreams, and America is able to travel through the multiverse, but none of this has to do with anything addressed in Loki. Hell, they've forgotten that sling rings can be used to travel through the multiverse (as mentioned by Mordo in the first Doctor Strange film).

Cross-title continuity in the MCU has always been in a weird spot. The franchise gets a lot of praise for its continuity, but that's mainly for the fact that it has a shared continuity among many entries. It has stronger cross-franchise continuity than The Dark Knight and Superman Returns did, because those movies didn't have cross-franchise continuity at all. The MCU kind of invented this whole style of cinema.

But the beat-for-beat continuity in the MCU kinda sucks. The closer you scrutinize it, the more you start to see the seams. Kevin Feige is the big man in the chair, but the individual films are ultimately made by different teams of creators, each with their own separate vision for the characters and stories. Movies are made with a few instructions from the studio about things they need to do, and then left up to this creator or that to work out the rest.

The MCU is kind of in an odd place where they are by far the best there is at what they do: A kind of storytelling largely unprecedented in the medium, where many attempts to Follow the Leader have ended in dismal failure. And yet it's hard to shake the feeling like there is a lot of room for improvement.

The MCU gets a B grade in a subject that no one else ever dared to even take before them, and in which all of the peers that came after them are getting F's.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 18th 2023 at 11:36:59 AM

I dont think that get mention, the idea is sling ring can past thought space but no diference universe.

And in a way the stuff of loki dosent matter that much because as tobia said, the rules exist mostly to justify why there is a multiverse all the sudden. Is more "it didnt matter then, it matter now"

As far as the Multiverse goes, Loki is pointless. The only thing that establishes there isn't a multiverse is Loki which it then undoes.

No other film has had to reference even hint at Loki's events and to introduce and use the Multiverse.

That said I do agree with Tobias and have said before the MCU is a Dancing Bear, it's continuity isn't great, and I kind of scoff when anyone references Feige's masterplan, it's the fact it's got continuity at all that's the amazing thing. Let along across umpty-one entries now.

Edited by dcutter2 on Jan 18th 2023 at 7:59:49 PM

The fairly spotty continuity is because these movies tend to be made at roughly the same time or one after the other. WandaVision was shot (post-lockdown) from September 2020 to November 2020. Multiverse of Madness was being filmed from November 2020 to April 2021. The film couldn't reference the TV show for continuity much because the show wasn't released yet, nor could they reference the raw footage or script much because Marvel's pretty tight about not wanting leaks.

Ideally the best direction would be to not make the sequel until the preceding entry is released... but in business terms that sounds like "make money slower" and Disney won't go for that.

Yeah, Elizabeth Olsen also has openly admitted in interviews over the past year that there was a lot of her explaining "we covered this in WandaVision" on the Multiverse of Madness set because the people working on the movie didn't fully understand the show yet, due to that whole fact that WandaVision wrapped only shortly before filming the movie began and wasn't released yet; and that there were "bits that were too similar", and "repetitive" that she tried her best to mend. But she was limited in what she could change because by that point, the sets were already being constructed.

In short, Wandavision and multiverse is probably one of the cases were the continuity that make marvel famous got shat and hard.

This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder why the MCU doesn't have a "show bible" of sorts. Because that would probably help mitigate a lot of these continuity issues.

Edited by dmcreif on Jan 19th 2023 at 8:39:49 AM

They probably do. But it doesn’t mean much when the continuity to be referenced still hasn’t had the ink dry.

Moral of the story: Don't co-opt one of your franchises to make an upcoming film into a sequel to an upcoming TV show that's being produced by different creators simultaneously alongside the film.

It's not like they don't have enough sub franchises to space stuff out with after all.

Has there been any word on why marvel decided Doctor Strange 2 HAD to deal with Wanda?

I know the production was troubled but when was this decided

Edited by Bocaj on Jan 19th 2023 at 3:29:45 PM

Didn't Covid alter the timeline for Dr. Strange 2 originally. I think it was supposed to happen before Spiderman at first.

I feel like Covid probably threw a lot of things out of whack, and while there were definitely some mistakes that happened independent of it, I'm sure it didn't help.