Having seen Spider-Man: No Way Home in theaters a total of three times now, I no longer see it through rose-colored lenses and am less willing to ignore at least one glaring aspect of the storytelling that I basically set aside the first few times that I watched it because, well, I had a really great time. But it's a lot easier now to be honest with myself about one of the single biggest flaws of SMNWH.
I'll just say this directly: Marvel (and Sony) did Doctor Strange dirty by basically turning him into a plot device.
It's not the first time that Spider-Man's Marvel Cinematic Universe iteration has had a "babysitter" from the "MCU proper." The first film in the trilogy had Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark, the second had Samuel L. Jackson as an ersatz Nick Fury, so on the one hand Doctor Strange's presence in SMNWH was just the continuation of a tradition (and most likely a contractual obligation). More than that, however, he served as an indispensable plot element as his powers were the needed catalyst for the MCU's version of the multiverse to work. That's not a problem in and of itself, but the way it was carried out was.
Basically, the way SMNWH was written, for Doctor Strange's spell to get screwed up and rip open the multiverse, Doctor Strange had to be dumbed down and turned reckless. I could see some token efforts by writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers to explain him casting the ill-fated spell by basically having him take pity on Peter, but the manner in which the spell is botched just defies logic when the person casting it is supposed to be a sorceror supreme. There was also the fact that Strange was somewhat callous regarding the fate of the multiverse villains, especially considering he's an actual doctor sworn to preserve life, and finally, the fight between Strange and Peter which literally had the writers inventing new superpowers for Peter, like his unexplained, out-of-body ability to keep the spell box from Doctor Strange, just so he could defeat Strange and move the plot forward. We could argue the livelong day about how Peter could legitimately take Doctor Strange in a fight, even though we're talking about someone who held his own against an Infinity-Gauntlet-powered Thanos versus someone whom the latter swatted aside like a fly--er--spider, but to my mind, the way the film handled the fight felt off.
The point is that Strange was depicted so blatantly out-of-character just to make the plot work that a whole theory has been written on at least one fansite (and quite probably more) as to why, and even a casual viewer like Ben Shapiro, who has openly professed his preference for DC over Marvel, has taken notice, even in a largely positive review. It doesn't surprise me; McKenna and Sommers, while not actually bad at writing heartfelt character moments, have had trouble creating devices to move the plot forward and are guilty of some pretty lazy writing in the past. They're the guys, just for reference who gave Janet Van Dyne miraculous healing powers at the end of Ant-Man and the Wasp (spoiler alert, I guess) because the plot needed to be resolved. Speaking of which, Strange, following his battle with Peter, was essentially written out of the story until the writers needed him to conviently show up and fix everything.
Benedict Cumberbatch may have just turned in the single most compelling dramatic performance of the year in The Power of the Dog, but in Spider-Man: No Way Home his character's sole purpose is to open up the multiverse and close it back down again.
When you've got fans racking their brains to explain why one of your marquee characters is so OUT of character, you've definitely done something wrong, and as much as I know that Spider-Man is basically Marvel's crown jewel, a character who will NEVER suffer Tony Stark's fate in Avengers: Endgame, Doctor Strange should not have been so thoroughly degraded just to make Spidey look better. That was unconscionably lazy writing. There were better ways to do it. For example, the fracturing multiverse could have helped Strange lose the spell box to Peter, not some hamhanded explanation of math being the key to manipulating the Mirror Dimension, which the writers quite clearly pulled out of their asses, same as Spidey's out-of-body powers.
Anyway, Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness looks like it may actually fix these mistakes, or at least be cool enough to get us to forget about them. From the look of the trailer, Marvel have basically written Sam Raimi a blank check, and having paired him up with Michael Waldron, the head-writer of the fantastic Loki series, it looks like their investment is going to pay off handsomely.
Just...please, Marvel, don't disrespect Doctor Strange like that again.
