Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

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Ares
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Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

Post by Ares »

I just got out of seeing it, and while everyone should feel free to use the Spoiler tags to talk about it . . . I will just say that I liked this movie A LOT. Between it and No Way Home, this tells me that there's life in the MCU yet. Shang Chi and the Eternals might have both been . . . disappointments . . . but No Way Home and Multiverse of Madness both knocked it out of the park.
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Neo-Paladin
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Re: Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

Post by Neo-Paladin »

Yeah, totally in agreement there. Quite a few very pleasant surprises for the MCU and...adjacent properties.
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Re: Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

Post by greycrusader »

Haven't seen it yet-going to see the movie next weekend, and I'm pretty psyched from what I've seen/read about the sequel. I honestly think Dr. Strange is a way better character to use for the trippier Multiverse treatment than Spider-Man (yeah, No Way Home was a great crowd-pleaser, but there were gaping plot holes and it frankly derailed a lot of story arcs).

I actually enjoyed the Shang-Chi movie quite a bit, EXCEPT that it really wasn't the same hero from the comics except on the most superficial level. Still fun to watch, with some solid performances and inventive action sequences.

All my best.
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Re: Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

Post by Davies »

I hated hated hated this movie. Complaints under spoilers.
Spoiler
1. Characters being depicted as horror movie villains is one thing. Characters acting like the idiotic protagonists of horror movies is another. WHY did they just stand around staring at the door when Wanda failed to appear through it? Run, you fools! Better yet, literally fly!

2. Absolute lack of tension in the climax. Wanda starts to drain Amy. Strange sees Wanda draining Amy. Strange engages in complicated strategy to get to where they are, including extended fight scene. He nevertheless arrives just in the nick of time.

3. Repetition of the "I need you to watch my bod" from the first Dr. Strange movie is annoying.

4. Yet another post-credit scene that insults the audience for sitting through the credits.
Between this and the more goofball antics that are promised by the next Thor movie, I am dreading the next Black Panther.

EDIT: Very reluctantly, I take pen in hand to admit that there were things that I did in fact like about it, because I do not want to be relentlessly negative.
Spoiler
1. Xochitl Gomez is excellent as America Chavez, and I look forward to seeing more of her until the writers decide to -- I look forward to seeing where her story takes her.

2. They brought back Anson Mount to play Black Bolt, despite how that went the first time. And he actually does a good job until they demonstrate that -- he actually does a good job.

3. Rintrah looked awesome until you realize that he's -- Rintrah looked awesome.

4. Give Hayley a movie where she can kick ass for real you poltroons!
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Re: Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

Post by greycrusader »

Just watched the movie this past Saturday, and while I enjoyed the film on balance, I will say that Davies' criticisms above are not unfair; this is definitely a Sam Raimi production, with all the positives AND negatives that entails, so do expect several horror movie tropes to prevail despite not necessarily making sense in terms of the characters or set-up. However, Cumberbatch and Olsen are both outstanding, all the supporting actors are quite good, the plot is fairly straightforward, even for those who haven't seen WandaVision (though...it pretty much totally undercuts the character development from that, a now sadly common practice in the Marvel movies), there are fantastic effects sequences, and the ending is satisfying enough. Oh, and ONE of the post-finale scenes is worth staying for.

All my best.

PS: In my head cannon, the reason why the "..." are taken down so easily by "..." is that they were being mentally influenced by "...", thus making them far less effective in combat than they otherwise would be.
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Re: Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

Post by Davies »

greycrusader wrote: Tue May 17, 2022 12:32 am
PS: In my head cannon, the reason why the "..." are taken down so easily by "..." is that they were being mentally influenced by "...", thus making them far less effective in combat than they otherwise would be.
Plausible.
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Re: Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

Post by Ares »

It's been two weeks since the movie came out, so you guys can discuss Spoilers freely.
"My heart is as light as a child's, a feeling I'd nearly forgotten. And by helping those in need, I will be able to keep that feeling alive."
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Re: Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

Post by Davies »

"The Darkhold taints all it touches!"
"But not me, right?"
"Yes, even you, Steven Strange!"
"Well, I'll probably be fiaaaaahhh I've grown an eye in the middle of my forehead!"
"See, even you, Steven Strange!"
"... actually this is kind of cool. It seems that I'm just as good of a guy with a third eye as I was without one. Wow, I'm really privileged!"
"Yes, that is exactly the right word."
"I'm sorry. I love you. I'm not sorry I love you."
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Re: Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

Post by Ares »

To be fair, we only see our Strange with the third eye very briefly, so we have no idea what it means for him. It could easily be something where the lingering traces of the Darkhold give him something that is apparently useful, something he begins to use and rely on, only for it to be revealed that every time he uses it, the corruption grows and he has to eventually exorcise it from himself. It might even be an interesting way to fully re-create the Eye of Aggamotto by having to contain the corruption in the amulet, then binding it in a way to purify said corruption and make it safe to use.

In any case, after sleeping on the movie for a bit, while I still consider it an overall fun movie, it is definitely more of mixed bag. Some of the elements I didn't care for include:

- This is really a Marvel Movie where it can suffer a case of continuity lockout. While they try to explain it clearly, this is a movie where you will feel out of the loop if you didn't watch WandaVision. From the aspect of the fans who just watch the films, Wanda went from talking with Clint at the end of Endgame to being a full on supervillain. It's already asking a lot for a movie audience to watch all of these movies to keep up with the story, asking them to follow all of the TV shows as well is probably going too far.

- I hated it when Strange had the hotdog vendor punch himself for "a week". I know it's meant to be a joke and a callback to the Evil Dead movies, but I hate it when superheroes do petty things like this to people who are no threat to them, especially when it causes said person actual harm. It's like the scene in Man of Steel where an asshole picks a fight with Clark, and instead of Clark doing any other method of putting the guy in his place, Clark goes outside and destroys the guys truck, possibly destroying his livelyhood and his life in the process. Or over in that Captain Marvel deleted scene where a guy flirts with Carol, and her response is to offer him a handshake, crush his hand, threaten to rip it off, and then steals from him.

When I'm watching a superhero movie, I want it to be about actual superheroes, and not petty assholes with power abusing people weaker than themselves. At the very least, it's bullying.

- It feels like the Vision should have been in this film to some capacity, but he doesn't get even a mention.

- While I dig the genre blending with having a superhero horror film, the existence of stupid horror tropes are still eye rolling here. That scene where the heroes stop and look at the door, waiting to see what happens and Wanda just teleports around it . . . somehow. There were also several moments where the characters, who realize they're under a time crunch, instead slowly walk around, slowly walk up stairs, slowly doing things for a dramatic shot rather than anything that makes logical sense.

- It's kind of a shame that the only people allowed to actually give Wanda any kind of fight were other women. Black Bolt goes down like a complete chump, and it honestly didn't even make sense how he died. If his lips could contain his scream, then his skill would have too, surely. They honestly should have had that neutralize his voice, but then he gets to show off that, oh right, he's still a Thing-class flying brick who is actually a trained warrior, and his head antenna lets him do things like shoot energy. But after Black Bolt and Reed are just basically executed, Peggy and Maria get to have an extended fight scene with Wanda, America gets to punch Wanda a few times and actually beat her, but everyone else is basically her whipping boy.

- For a community of sorcerers, Kamar-Taj's defenses seemed depressingly straightforward. Having them use bows and arrows and such was just kind of silly to me. These are mages, there should have been people on defense while you had some on offense doing things like summoning creatures to fight Wanda, using illusions on her, or anything other than just standing there and shooting arrows at her. The mirror trap was one of the only clever aspects of the temple's defenses. It's the magical equivalent of Spock's like about '2-Dimensional thinking'.

- Strange being a public superhero, with his identity known to everyone, is just kind of weird.

- The musical note fight was pretty clever at first, but then they overplayed it and it became kind of silly and tedious.


There are probably other things I'm forgetting at the moment.

On the plus side, there was a lot I liked about the movie.

- This is probably the most tolerable version of America Chavez to date.

- I actually liked the way Wanda was defeated. Not by beating her up, but stripping away any lies she could tell herself about what she was doing, and having her finally come to terms with her grief.

- The magic was, for the most part, very fun and clever. A Hydra spell that literally does the 'chop off a head, two more sprout' thing was pretty cool.

- As a comic fan, it was a lot of fun seeing the various fanservice, everything from Wundagor to the reference to Cthon to the Illuminati, to just seeing Reed, Prof. X and Black Bolt in the MCU, etc.

- Zombie Dr. Strange was very Evil Dead, and a lot of fun.

- It was nice that Wanda was FINALLY called on her BS from WandaVision. I hated how everyone tried to rug-sweep the horrible thing Wanda had done, play up her as some tragic heroine with insulting lines like "They'll never know what you sacrificed", when she telepathically kidnapped and tortured an entire town for weeks. Even then, they at least softened the blow by making it clear that her actions here at least were a result of her being a grieving mother who was being corrupted by a book of evil magic. Wanda going evil didn't really bother me since that was a plot point from the comic, and at least here it was a case of "evil magic book twisting her good intentions to evil" as opposed to the original storyline by John Byrne that was basically "bitches be crazy".

- It was nice to see Stephen's continuing character development as he learns to let go of his control freak tendencies and play better with others. The chat he had with his other self about his sister that died was well done.


So overall, I still enjoyed the movie, but there were definite cracks in it, some that were obvious at the start, some that only popped up in retrospect.
"My heart is as light as a child's, a feeling I'd nearly forgotten. And by helping those in need, I will be able to keep that feeling alive."
- Captain Marvel SHAZAM! : Power of Hope (2000)

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Re: Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

Post by Davies »

Ares wrote: Tue May 17, 2022 4:20 pm
- It was nice that Wanda was FINALLY called on her BS from WandaVision. I hated how everyone tried to rug-sweep the horrible thing Wanda had done, play up her as some tragic heroine with insulting lines like "They'll never know what you sacrificed", when she telepathically kidnapped and tortured an entire town for weeks.
Except that A. She didn't realize that was what she was doing, B. As soon as she did realize that was what she was doing, she attempted to put matters right, and C. Putting matters right cost her a great deal.

So yeah, you're proving her point about how Strange gets forgiven for everything.
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Re: Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

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Davies wrote: Tue May 17, 2022 6:27 pm
Ares wrote: Tue May 17, 2022 4:20 pm
- It was nice that Wanda was FINALLY called on her BS from WandaVision. I hated how everyone tried to rug-sweep the horrible thing Wanda had done, play up her as some tragic heroine with insulting lines like "They'll never know what you sacrificed", when she telepathically kidnapped and tortured an entire town for weeks.
Except that A. She didn't realize that was what she was doing,
That's blatantly false. She could be forgiven for the initial burst where she set up the hex. But she chose to maintain it. She chose to keep those people inside prisoner for weeks. She purposefully edited things to keep people from catching on. She went outside to confront the team sent to investigate things and told them to back off, and threatened to kill them. She forcefully ejected Monica when she realized she was from outside. And when people got a moment of freedom, they told Wanda what kind of tortured existence they had and begged her either to stop it or just kill them, and Wanda basically said "It's not that bad, stop complaining".

You can't even blame Agatha for this. Wanda objectively did far worse things than Stephen did.
"My heart is as light as a child's, a feeling I'd nearly forgotten. And by helping those in need, I will be able to keep that feeling alive."
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Re: Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

Post by Davies »

Ares wrote: Tue May 17, 2022 6:46 pm And when people got a moment of freedom, they told Wanda what kind of tortured existence they had and begged her either to stop it or just kill them, and Wanda basically said "It's not that bad, stop complaining".
No. She did not. When she heard their complaints, she started to shut down the hex.
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Re: Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

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Davies wrote: Tue May 17, 2022 7:05 pm
Ares wrote: Tue May 17, 2022 6:46 pm And when people got a moment of freedom, they told Wanda what kind of tortured existence they had and begged her either to stop it or just kill them, and Wanda basically said "It's not that bad, stop complaining".
No. She did not. When she heard their complaints, she started to shut down the hex.
No, when she heard their "complaints" (which seems like the wrong word for "confronting their abuser"), she immediately started justifying her actions. "I kept you safe. You're happy here. It isn't that bad". And then when they didn't agree with her, when they just start begging "please, let us go", she lashed out and started strangling them with her power. It took that to get her to realize how far she'd gone, but even then she just said that she'd "let them go". It took Agatha's prodding to get Wanda to try taking down the Hex.

What Strange and Wanda did are not comparable.

Strange tried to help out Peter when his identity was revealed, using a spell to put that back in the bottle. When Peter screws the spell up, Strange shuts it down. When he finds out about the unintended consequences, he immediately works with Peter to fix things, and its Peter that delays things against Strange's wishes. And in the end, Peter makes a sacrifice so that Strange can put everything right.

Wanda succumbed to her grief and unconsciously set up the Hex. But then once it was set up, she willingly maintained it. She twisted the minds of the people around her. Everyone was left paralyzed when they weren't within visual range of Wanda or Vision. She tortured these people for weeks with her nightmares and removed their agency. She stole their free will. She threatened and assaulted the people trying to rescue the people she was mentally traumatizing. And when those people finally got the chance to confront her, she attacked them.

Stephen tried to help someone, and on learning that something went wrong, immediately went to work setting it right.

Wanda let her grief overwhelm her, and on learning something went wrong, she kept the wrong going, and going, and going. She used her pain as justification to inflict pain on innocent people. She stole their lives, their minds, their very right to choose. And it took massive outside influence to get her to stop.

Wanda did far, far worse here. That it cost her to set things right is not something she should be praised for when she not only set things wrong, but willfully perpetuated that wrong for weeks. I don't feel bad that Wanda had to face consequences for her actions, and the "they'll never know what you sacrificed" is a hollow statement when the happiness Wanda sacrificed was built on the pain and suffering of those people.
"My heart is as light as a child's, a feeling I'd nearly forgotten. And by helping those in need, I will be able to keep that feeling alive."
- Captain Marvel SHAZAM! : Power of Hope (2000)

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Re: Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

Post by Libra X »

Apropos of nothing, it really amuses me to imagine the Wolverine of Earth-Illuminati as Mr Hugh Jackman in yellow spandex, because dagnabit why waste a perfectly good brick joke?
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Re: Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

Post by Libra X »

Also, I’m not going to lie, it’s quite interesting to wonder who should play the various Marvel heroes on Earth-Illuminati: I’m rather sad that fan artists don’t seem to have taken up the challenge as yet.

Also, does this movie mean we should all start picturing Mr Benedict Cumberbatch as the Doctor Strange of Spider-Maguire’s home Earth? (It amuses me more than it should to imagine that Doctor Strange showing up as Mr Cumberbatch with only a hint of old man makeup and strong hints that he’s much older than he looks).
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