Another Type of "C" in the MCU (HEAVY SPOILERS for THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER)

 After posting spoiler-free reviews for tentpole movies, specifically Marvel ones, I usually follow up with a deep dive into the fun stuff like cameos and plot twists, which inevitably involves heavy spoilers. 

For Thor: Love and Thunder I'd like to do something similar but nonetheless a little different given the subject matter. 

FINAL WARNING: HEAVY SPOILERS

Though the movie itself was conspicuously flawed in a number of ways, I'd like to applaud Marvel for choosing to tell the story of a hero with stage-four cancer. 

I can't help but feel that Natalie Portman was enticed to return to the role of Jane Foster, who was basically just window dressing in the first couple of Thor movies before staying out of the third one altogether, by the prospect not only of donning the superhero tights but by the prospect of finally giving Jane her own, compelling story, especially since hers is basically the only compelling story in the whole movie.

Her severely-ill Jane Foster is basically the perfect counterpoint to Christian Bale's Gorr the God Butcher.  Both of them are empowered by their magical weapons and both of them are actually dying as a direct result.  The Necrosword which empowers Gorr is slowly poisoning him, while Mjolnir, which empowers Jane, is actually draining her of the energy she needs to fight the stage-four cancer ravaging her body.  Gorr points this out to her late in the film, and she is thus confronted with the choice to sit out the final battle and recuperate or stop Gorr once and for all at the cost of her own life. Jane, of course, chooses the latter. It's not the first time a Marvel hero has laid their life down to save the world, but Portman really sells the moment and her sacrifice at the end really does resonate as a result.

Jane's journey, drawn in large part from the comics written by Jason Aaron and drawn by Esad Ribic and Russell Dauterman, is about the only part of the film that has any real narrative heft or emotional resonance, and it can be genuinely annoying to see Waititi constantly undercutting these emotional beats with forced jokes before he finally lets the story breathe a little bit towards the end of the film.  

I've said before that terminal illness, or in particular cancer, can fit into a superhero narrative  effectively; James Gunn did it to superb effect in the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, and had TLAT not been so obsessed with referencing 80s songs and making fun of itself, it could have been even more on point here. 

More to the point, though, the folks at Marvel could have taken this opportunity to salute one of their  own heroes whom they lost in real life to colon cancer, Chadwick Boseman. The joke-a-minute storytelling, unfortunately severely diluted this, as did the bad CGI, the lazy music scoring, and Russell Crowe's weird Mediterranean accent (though I confess it has a guilty pleasure quality to it). I know that the movie could not have spent its entire running time grappling with a topic as depressing as terminal illness--that would have made for an even worse story--but telling a story like this needed a delicate sense of balance which Waititi unfortunately did not strike and which, quite frankly, he didn't even attempt. 

 Still, the fact that Marvel was willing to tell the story of someone who was basically doomed to die tells me something interesting about where they may be willing to go in the future...but that's a topic for another day.

The Thunderous Return of Jane Foster: A Review of Thor: Love and Thunder (Spoiler-free)

 directed by Taika Waititi

written by Taika Waititi and Jennifer Kaytin Robinson

I'm going to be blunt: I was not expecting much from Thor: Love and Thunder. When it was announced some months before the pandemic I rolled my eyes a little bit, wondering why unlike Robert Downey Jr., and Chris Evans, who had wrapped up their tenure in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in fine style with Avengers: Endgame, Chris Hemsworth was insisting on having another go.  It didn't really matter that Taika Waititi, who had breathed fresh air into the Thor franchise with Thor: Ragnarok, was returning to direct and this time write the film, I just felt the film was superfluous at a time when Marvel needed to start focusing on their next generation of Avengers. Subsequent announcements like the casting of Batman himself, Christian Bale, as well as acting legend Russell Crowe piqued my interest, but I still felt jaded about it.

My mind changed quite a bit with the trailer, though, which promised a dazzling, fun romp through space with the God of Thunder with colorful new characters and some familiar old ones as well.

The film starts with Gorr (Bale), the last of an unnamed race who walks the desert with his ailing child Love (India Rose Hemsworth) and who offers the last of his strength praying to his god for her to live, all in vain, as she dies. Shortly thereafter, Gorr stumbles into an oasis where the very same god to whom he was praying is apparently celebrating the defeat of a mysterious creature with an even more mysterious sword and discovers just how indifferent that god is to his plight. The sword, which is actually called the Necrosword calls out to Gorr, and he uses it to take his bloody revenge on the god, which then prompts him to take an oath to kill all gods.

Meanwhile, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) following the events of Avengers: Endgame is a bit aimless. He goes on adventures with the Guardians of the Galaxy (Chris Pratt as Star Lord and the rest of the gang are all back sans Zoe Saldana's Gamora, of course) but when he hears reports of a mysterious figure killing gods all over space with a mysterious sword he sets off on his own in search of the threat with his best bud Korg (Taika Waititi).  Elsewhere, Thor's ex-girlfriend Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) is in a bad way health-wise, and basically at the end of her rope. Having exhausted normal scientific treatment, she heads over to New Asgard, where the broken pieces of Mjolnir are on display in a museum, and hopes to receive just a little bit of its magic. What happens next takes her by surprise and she soon finds herself reunited with Thor in a way neither of them had expected. `

Suddenly, Gorr then kidnaps the children from New Asgard, and Thor, King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), and Jane, realizing the scope of the threat, seek help from the gods themselves, led by the powerful, pompous Zeus (a gloriously campy Russell Crowe). Will it be enough, and will they be in time? 

Thor: Ragnarok was, for me one of the real gems of Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so to reiterate, I was not really thrilled to hear about this new installment, which honestly felt tacked on. Fortunately, Waititi's unhinged sense of fun, along with earnest, genuinely moving performances by series newcomer Christian Bale and the returning Natalie Portman really helped keep things interesting. Hemsworth really knows that Thor is at his best as a goofball so he brings on more of that, trying on a loud new outfit and quite notably shedding the dad bod his character had picked up in Avengers: Endgame.  

There's an energy to the production that helped me overlook most of its foibles, but not all of the jokes hit, and the shift in tone from the more serious scenes to the lighthearted ones was, at times, enough to give one whiplash. A light and bubbly superhero movie featuring terminal illness? These are not necessarily mutually exclusive concepts; Star Lord's mom died of cancer in Guardians of the Galaxy but the movie somehow balanced these scenes out.  Waititi, however, doesn't quite pull it off and for the first time I understand some of the disdain that some critics had for Jojo Rabbit's irreverent look at the dying days of World War II. 

Still, I really do enjoy Waititi's love for the more out-there aspects of Jack Kirby's work. He features the cosmic megabeing Eternity as, well, kind of a MacGuffin, and there are lots of visual nods to the Celestials as Jack Kirby drew them, not how Chloe Zhao reimagined them in Eternals. 

Speaking of visuals, though, I was a bit disappointed at how, after letting Sam Raimi have his way with some incredibly moody lighting to Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness, Marvel seems to have reverted to a more generic look in terms of lighting and color grading. Also, majority of the VFX scenes were shrouded in darkness, which is never a good thing. Considering how long Marvel have been at this, it was distinctly disappointing

Equally disappointing is the seemingly half-baked work of yet another Marvel veteran, composer Michael Giacchino, who doesn't even seem to have thought of a proper theme for this film, which is even more of a let-down considering the kind of work Giacchino has previously done for the MCU in its Spider-Man and Doctor Strange films. Thor now has the unfortunate distinction of being the only solo franchise in the MCU to have had four different composers across as many films. They didn't even bring back Led Zeppelin for this; instead they made Axl Rose and company a whole lot richer by featuring a whopping FOUR Guns 'n' Roses songs.  It's somehow apt, therefore, that Thor has an identity crisis of sorts in this film considering that musically, his character, after all these years, still doesn't have an identifiable theme. 

If nothing else, though, Hemsworth, Waititi and the gang have shown that there are still a few more decent Thor stories to tell, and with any luck, they'll be better than this one. 

6/10

A Hero is Born...Sort of: A Review of Lightyear

 directed by Angus MacLane

written by Angus MacLane, Matthew Aldrich and Jason Headey

When Toy Story 4, which ended with Woody leaving his crew of toys, including Buzz Lightyear, to join up with his love interest Bopeep and HER crew of toys, made over $1 billion worldwide back in 2019, Disney took it to mean that there was plenty of interest left in the brand. They then decided that the best way to follow this story up was...with the origin story of Buzz Lightyear. Not the toy, mind you, but the fictional character within the Toy Story universe on whom the toy was based. 

The result is a movie that could have been a lot worse, but which could have been better, as well. 

Lightyear is the story of, well, Buzz Lightyear (played here by Captain America himself, Chris Evans, making his Pixar debut) a Space Ranger of Star Command who, together with his commanding officer and best friend Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba) is accompanying a team of scientists as they explore possible the galaxy.  While exploring the surface of the planet T'Kani Prime, they are attacked by hostile wildlife and have to flee in a hurry. Unfortunately, this results in severe damage to their ship, and the entire mission is marooned on an alien planet, without a functioning hyper-drive to get them home.  Buzz then takes it on himself to run the test flights for new hyperdrive fuels, only to discover that each unsuccessful flight, which lasts only minutes for him, results in a lapse of four years upon his return.  He perseveres, however, going into space again and again and losing time in four year clumps, even as his marooned colleagues, living behind a force field, have made a life for themselves on this new planet, including Alisha, who starts her own family.  Meanwhile, the closest thing Buzz has to a family is a robotic cat, Sox (Ben Sohn) that Alisha gives him. After one trip, Buzz is shocked to find that more time has passed than even he could have imagined, and that the T'Kani Prime is now facing a threat the likes of which he has never seen before: the evil Zurg.  

To be clear, the Toy Story movies were never straight-up adventures aimed at kids. The bright colors were incidental to the existential crises that the film's characters, led in all three films by Woody, felt. I've often said to my kids that Tom Hanks' greatest acting performance is actually as Woody considering he makes a near-homicidal maniac to be one of the most endearing characters in the history of animation. Those movies were all about the characters' foibles, including Buzz's delusions of grandeur in the first film. 

This movie is, to be clear, is not about any of that, and I honestly think it's unfair that a lot of people were measuring it by that metric.  One thing this film gets right, even as it tries to distinguish Buzz from his toy counterpart, is to make Buzz, like all of Pixar's best leads, a flawed character. His singlemindedness and determination to finish his mission at the cost of all else is not extolled as a virtue but rather as a flaw that causes him to basically miss out on much of his life, and this is the lesson he learns over the course of the film. There are plenty of callbacks to his Toy Story incarnation, with lines lifted directly from the earlier film, but it's clear this movie is meant to be its own thing.

I liked how this film eschewed the pastel colors of the Toy Story movies (and most other Pixar movies, for that matter, with the obvious exception of WALL-E) in favor of a darker, murkier color palette to reflect the grittier aspect of the narrative. There's a pretty obvious visual nod to Star Wars in at least one scene (and probably many others that I missed) but overall, the goal is to make this universe feel more lived-in, and it works.  And yes, whatever the Tim Allen fanboys may say, I liked Chris Evans' performance as the "real-life" Buzz Lightyear. He was properly engaging as a character. 

A gripe I had with the movie was a bit of a dissonance between the highly atmospheric, action- adventure approach and the goofy, lovable supporting characters that the film inevitably introduces later on, like the idiot played by Taika Waititi or the ex-con. There are space bugs that, in a movie rated PG-13 or higher could definitely have the potential to kill one or more supporting characters, but this movie is only PG, so do the math.  All of the main antagonists are robots, so there's no worry about the gratuitous henchman deaths that earned The Incredibles Pixar's first-ever PG rating.  That said, despite the considerably lower body count of organic lifeforms, this movie still gets a PG rating for "action and peril" despite the fact that, at no point did I ever really feel like the characters were in actual peril. You know in Coco there was this ever-present threat that Miguel might not make it back to the land of the living, which grew greater and greater as the film progressed?  This film, despite its villain, doesn't have that sense of urgency.

It's a handsome film, to be sure, but far from Pixar's best work. It's actually more reminiscent of a family-friendly version of an episode of Love, Death and Robots, the animated anthology series on Netflix. 

A lot has been said about a certain aspect of one of the supporting characters which has caused a furor among conservatives all around the world. I have no opinion on that; I will only say that Disney/Pixar made a judgment call and ultimately paid the price for it in terms of global box-office. 

7/10

A Legacy Sequel that Improves on the Legacy: A Review of Top Gun: Maverick

directed by Joseph Kosinsky

written by Ehren Kruger, Eric Martin Singer, Christopher McQuarrie, Peter Craig and Justin Marks

If I'm perfectly honest, I was not the biggest fan of the 1986 film Top Gun growing up. I watched it in theaters, and I did enjoy it, but the older I got, the less I cared for the film. While other films of my youth like Aliens (which came out in the same year), Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park aged pretty well, Top Gun, which was quite unfortunately dated by its Cold War setting, did not. My feelings for the film are actually best summed up by this hilarious send-up prepared by the folks at Honest Trailers.      

It was to my great surprise, then, that when I saw the first trailer for this film, I felt an odd rush of nostalgia when I heard the first few notes of Harold Faltermeyer's now iconic "Top Gun Anthem." From a film that I would think about seeing when it came out, Top Gun: Maverick suddenly acquired an urgency that had not been there before.  The stellar reviews came in, a good chunk of which were from people who openly professed to hating the original film, and my curiosity reached a fever pitch.

So Top Gun: Maverick takes place over thirty years after the events of the first film, and we find Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Tom Cruise, naturally) testing hypersonic jets for the Navy. Maverick, who could easily have made Admiral by now, has dodged promotions his entire career so that he can stay in the air. Unfortunately, his testing facility is shut down by the big brass, who have decided against spending any more of taxpayers' money on manned aircraft. Fortunately for Mitchell, however, one of his old buddies, Tom "Iceman" Kazansky (Val Kilmer), who happens to be Admiral and the Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet now, has a very special assignment for him over at the Naval Air Station North Island. Maverick finds himself returning to to the training facility where it all began: Top Gun.  This time, though, he's going back as an instructor, to train an elite group of pilots to perform an impossible mission (sorry) to take out a uranium enrichment plant in an unnamed enemy nation's army base deep in the mountains.  Crucially, one of the candidates for the mission happens to be Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw (Miles Teller) the son of Maverick's best friend Nick "Goose" Bradshaw who died back when he and Maverick were students at Top Gun. There is serious bad blood between Maverick and Rooster as the former blocked the papers of the latter back when he was a cadet at the naval aviator's academy, setting him back a couple of years.  Maverick, of course, was only trying to protect Rooster, and acting on the secret request of his late mother. It's a challenging task ahead, with all of the clashing egos, and neither time, nor his commanding officer (Jon Hamm) is on Maverick's side. 

Apparently Tom Cruise was, for a time, not at all keen on revisiting this particular story because of concerns, among other things, that the first film felt a bit too propagandistic. Well, it's a good thing somebody changed his mind because in my humble opinion, Top Gun: Maverick is a rare thing: it's the legacy sequel done correctly.   Unlike recent legacy sequels that essentially kicked its beloved legacy characters to the curb (I'm looking at you, Star Wars), this film brings its main character forward and gives him a bit of growth as a character. The first film was about Maverick stepping out of the shadow of his father, this one is about him doing right by his surrogate son. It's a nice story of redemption, which is quite a step up from the paper-thin plot of the first film.  

What is even more significantly stepped up, however, is the sheer commitment to authenticity that's on display here; the flight sequences are gripping, and in this film much more emphasis is placed on the G-forces the pilots experience in the course of their training and, ultimately their mission, seemingly borrowing a little bit of a tension-generator from another 80s aviation classic, The Right Stuff.  Ed Harris, who played John Glenn in that film, makes an appearance here. These action sequences, at a time when everything in theaters feels like weightless CGI, are just wondrous to not just behold but to experience.

As the title suggests, this is Tom Cruise's movie through and through.  He's basically the only character left from the first film, with Val Kilmer only making the briefest appearance owing to his sickness, which is actually written into the film.  It's gratifying, though, that the filmmakers have cast Jennifer Connelly, who is reasonably close to Cruise's actual age, as Maverick's love interest Penny instead of going with the old trope of having him hook up with someone half his age.  It's a thankless role, but Connelly makes the most out of it, as does the talented young actress who plays Penny's teenaged daughter.  Call me grateful for small favors, but I'm also glad they didn't go for a hot and heavy love/make-out scene, focusing instead on how Maverick connects with Penny by communicating with her and laughing with her. This film doesn't just succeed because of its high-flying action sequences; as unlikely as this sounds it gets a lot of the quieter moments right, too.

Most importantly, to my mind this film works because of how it allows Maverick to grow older, just like the target audience. The fact that Cruise doesn't really "pass the torch" in this film to his younger cast mates has grated on some writers, but let's get real here; nobody's going to watch a movie called Top Gun: MAVERICK to see a bunch of millennials make the freaking title character look like an over-the-hill dotard. The Star Wars sequels, this ain't. Is it a bit of a fantasy to see a borderline senior citizen taking G-forces like a champ, flying rings around kids half his age? Maybe, but when it's this well-realized it's a fantasy one is willing to indulge. It's almost as silly as the reviewers poking fun at the fact that the enemy nation in this movie is completely anonymous, as if they WANT Hollywood to go around picking fights with other countries. Well, like one writer said: go ahead and make it Putin's Russia, if you want to. 

It's a little harder, however, to indulge the inherent silliness in the film's premise. The script takes pains to explain why the U.S. Navy has to use older model F-18s as opposed to more modern F-35s for the movie's big mission, but is conspicuously silent on why drones cannot be used for the mission, despite the fact that drones are the reason why Maverick's test flight program was shut down and would entail considerably less risk to human life.  I was paying close attention for the line that would explain this, but the reason never came. I guess the writers were just hoping the viewers would forget about this niggling detail when we would see the awesome actions sequences and, well, to be fair, for the duration of the film, at least I did. 

There's also a touch of silliness towards the climax of the film, which I won't spoil, but suffice it to say  that,  after managing to sell me on its (flawed) premise and draw me in with its remarkable verisimilitude, the film suddenly takes a turn into the borderline fantastical in its final few minutes, in a manner vaguely reminiscent of the ridiculous airport chase scene in the otherwise superlative film Argo.  As with Argo, though, this doesn't really detract from my overall enjoyment of the film.

This was a movie made for people my age, and I have to say, I quite liked it.  

  8.5/10

 

On Marvel's "Disney Plus Requirement" (SPOILER ALERT)

If you're both a box-office geek and a Marvel Cinematic Universe fan like I am, I've got a bit of bad news: in its second week-end of release, the latest MCU entry, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has dropped a steep 67% from its soaring opening weekend gross of $187 million in North America down to an estimated $61 million dollars  To put this into perspective, the much reviled 2003 film The Hulk (also produced by MCU head honcho Kevin Feige in his pre-MCU days, incidentally) had a similar 1st to 2nd weekend plummet, though of course it did not start out with such a mighty first weekend. All told, the second weekend of DS2 is the kind of opening weekend most studios would kill to have, especially in post-pandemic times. In terms of global box-office, the film experienced  a 60% drop-off from its opening week-end take, which is more important to this discussion, for reasons to be explained below.  

This has to be some cause for concern among the head honchos at Marvel, who have included front-loading into their box-office projections by now and who can usually expect between 50% to 60% percent 2nd weekend drops.   This movie, by rights, should have been in the upper echelons of Marvel's usual box-office hauls, considering the pedigree of those involved in the movie. It is, after all, Sam Raimi's first movie in almost ten years and his first superhero movie since 2007's Spider-Man 3. 

So what happened? Was it a really bad movie?  I certainly didn't think so, and with a 74% "Fresh" critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and with a verified audience score of 86%, I can reasonably say that a fair number of people agree with my assessment.  Also, its higher-than-expected box-office drop notwithstanding, it's still the number #1 movie in most of the world, so there's that. So why the higher-than-usual attrition?

 I'd just like to propound my own theory, and I'm fairly confident that I'm not alone in this.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness marks the first Marvel Cinematic Universe film that makes direct reference to the series of shows that Marvel launched on Disney+ last year. Specifically, DSITMOM serves as a direct sequel to Wandavision, the inaugural Marvel series that featured Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda Maximoff and Paul Bettany's Vision living in a small town called Westview, despite the fact that Vision had died at the hands of Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War.  That series ended with the revelation that, in her grief, Wanda had created a new Vision and even two children and had placed an entire small town in her magical thrall. It also ended with Wanda losing both the Vision and her magically-conjured offspring. To be entirely fair to Marvel head honcho Kevin Fiege, he was quite transparent about these plans quite early on, when he announced Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness months before the COVID-19 pandemic threw a monkey wrench in everyone's plans.  

That said, there are a number of problems with this creative decision, some of which have admittedly been compounded by things beyond Feige's control.  

Among people who have watched Wandavision  there are a vocal number of viewers, including film critics, who feel that Wanda's turn from where she was at the end of that series to the full-on villain she has become by DSITMOM was somewhat abrupt and should not have happened off-camera. Still others are annoyed that Wanda has essentially stolen the show from Stephen Strange, even though the story itself is about how Strange and Wanda learn to deal with their own personal losses very differently.  

And THEN there are the droves of other fans from different countries all over the world, who do not have the benefit of being able to legally watch Disney+, and who therefore have no idea what the heck has happened to Wanda after the events of Avengers: Endgame.  While it would be unfair to blame Kevin Feige for the Walt Disney company's inability to make Disney+ available in every possible territory, I think it would fair to hold him responsible for  his failure to foresee how a hiccup like this could negatively impact the storytelling of the films. A lot of fans feel they have missed out on a major chapter in the character's journey.  This might not have mattered as much to the North American viewers who have ready access to Disney+, but it may have made a significant difference in outside territories that, for going on three years running now, still do not have Disney+. A 60% drop is not exactly insignificant. 

All of that said, DSITMOM is still destined to make a fortune at the global box-office, with a final projected gross of over $850 million and an outside chance at the coveted $1 billion, but with the level of hype behind it, plus Marvel's built-in fan loyalty this was always a given. I can't help but wonder, though, if Marvel will start to think about money they may have left on the table by tying their film so intimately into their Disney+ series. Sam Raimi's return to Marvel, after all, should, with theaters opening up quite a bit nowadays, have been an easy billion and not this emerging question mark as to whether it can actually make ten-figure territory. 

If a near-sure billion-dollar hit like this film can suffer what appears to be a bit of backlash for tying it so intimately into a TV series that not everyone around the world can watch, how does this bode for other series that are even MORE intimately tied into Disney+ series? How might this impact Captain America 4, which will directly follow up the events of the Disney+ series Falcon and the Winter Soldier, or The Marvels,  which is set to include a character set to make her debut in a Disney+ series this August? Notably, to celebrate the launch of the world's first Pakistani superhero, namely Ms. Marvel, Disney is making the unique and unprecedented move of reformatting all of the episodes of the TV series for theatrical release in Pakistan alone, for the simple reason that they still don't have Disney+ there. If only we could all get that kind of accommodation.  

Time will tell if Marvel can sustain its Phase 4 momentum with this new, added burden it is essentially putting on its viewers: to keep up with series that many of them cannot even watch.  

So...How About those Cameos (and other Spoilery Things About Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness)? MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING

 Again...

MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING

Okay, with that out of the way, I'm about to do a deep dive into how Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness lived up to a considerable bit of hype in some ways, and how it didn't in others.

Given how wildly successful Spider-Man: No Way Home turned out to be, largely due to the appearance of the two previous onscreen incarnations of the character as played by Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, it made sense for Disney to hop back on that particular hype train as they started marketing the next installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.  That said, the cameos bruited about turned out to be far less significant than a lot of fans might have hoped they would be. 

So, as is clear to anyone who's already seen the film, of the ballyhooed cameo rumors, only the rumors of Patrick Stewart's return as Professor X and John Krasinski's casting as Reed Richards turned out to be true. These were some pretty amusing fan service moments, particularly Stewart's appearance, which was accompanied by the first few notes of the theme from the popular 90s X-Men cartoon as well as his exaggerated hand gestures accompanying the use of his telepathy, also drawn from the cartoon.  In the shadow of the more high-profile cameos, the other members of the so-called "Illuminati" namely Captain Carter (Hayley Atwell), alt-Captain Marvel (Lashana Lynch) and Blackagar Boltagon (a.k.a. Black Bolt, played  by Anson Mount) felt distinctly underwhelming.  I mean, the What If? series which debuted Captain Carter was one of the less warmly-received Disney+ series, the Captain Marvel film was a long way from being universally loved, and the Inhumans series in which Mount actually starred as Black Bolt was cancelled after one season.  

In truth, though, even if every single cameo had been the fulfillment of all fanboy dreams, the euphoria would have been short-lived as these appearances had far more in common with Deadpool 2 than they did with Spider-Man: No Way Home.  The entire Illuminati were basically mowed down by the Scarlet Witch in a short but somewhat gruesome sequence.  The description of Reed Richards as the "smartest man alive" felt a little chuckle-inducing after Wanda quite literally cut him to ribbons and popped his head like a balloon. 

It's actually a shame that so much of the conversation about this movie has swirled around the cameos, because they kind of distracted from the things about the movie that were much more noteworthy, like Elizabeth Olsen's absolutely outstanding performance, and the utterly bonkers direction by Sam Raimi which featured direct callbacks to his Evil Dead days as well as the mid-credits cameo that managed to fly under just about everyone's radar. 

It was refreshing to see Raimi and screenwriter Michael Waldron throw out the tired, old "third act twist" storytelling structure that's been used in too many Marvel movies (including the first Iron Man) and right up front, reveal Wanda to be the big bad.  The marketing materials had pretty much given this away, and pretty much everyone who'd seen the end of Wandavision knew this was coming, but the timing was nonetheless very effective.  Without the baggage of having to conceal a twist, Olsen was able to deliver a truly memorable bad guy, and one very true to Raimi's tradition, started in the Spider-Man movies, of having bad guys who weren't really bad, just terribly misguided souls.  The difference here is that, coming into the film, hardcore viewers already know what Wanda's been through and what has pushed her to this. 

It's also worth mentioning that for all of the focus on Wanda, this is still a Doctor Strange movie, as exemplified by his character arc, and by all of the major action set pieces featuring him, all of which have  Raimi's signature firmly inscribed. Strange's and Wong's battle with Gargantos, the giant tentacled one-eyed being, is arguably the most "traditional" Marvel battle, but given that it ends with Strange ripping out the creature's single eyeball, it's definitely a Raimi concoction.

But the real treat comes later in the film, when Strange meets another, more sinister version of himself, and engages in a magical battle with him which involves...musical notes. It is wildly imaginative, and the kind of thing you'd have to see (and hear) for yourself to really appreciate. It is also one of the reasons why Raimi was clearly born to direct a Doctor Strange movie; you would never see any other superhero doing something like this. 

And then, of course, there's the expertly-realized "dreamwalking" sequence, in which Strange, still trapped in another universe and wanting to save America Chavez, possesses the corpse of his alternate self who died in the beginning of the movie and which he buried in his home universe, "616." Far from just being a visual gimmick, Zombie Strange showcases a really cool, if frightening aspect of Strange's magical abilities, and is arguably THE single most "Sam Raimi" moment in the whole movie, albeit with a $200 million budget to realize it, and a two-time Academy-Award nominated actor shambling along like a zombie. Seeing Cumberbatch embrace the camp was the absolute icing on the cake.  

THESE are the things worth talking about, rather than the dime-store cameos that were good for a whoop and a cheer and then an "aaaauggh" when the characters met their grisly fate. 

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention cameos by two Raimi staples: Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell, who shows up as a hostile pizza ball vendor whom Strange enchants into punching himself, and Raimi's Oldsmobile Delta 88, which has appeared in all but one of his movies (that being the 1995 Western The Quick and the Dead, for obvious reasons).  These were both quite welcome, though I confess I didn't recognize Bruce Campbell right away; like many of us, the dude's gotten old. Special shout-out to my friend Aljay for pointing the cameo out. 

Finally, there's the cameo that apparently nobody knew about going into the movie, that of a very important Doctor Strange-related character, Clea, played by a very prominent actress, Furiosa herself, Charlize Theron. Her casting was not nearly as much of a coup as the fact that Marvel was able to keep her cameo completely under wraps, and it's clear they have plans for her in the near future, so this is cause for some celebration. 

So if I were hyping the movie, I'd say "come for the cameos, stay for the Raimi goodness!"

As Awesome as It Needed to Be: A Review of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

 directed by Sam Raimi

written by Michael Waldron

I wrote not too long ago that because Marvel and Sony had basically turned Doctor Strange into a glorified plot device in the global blockbuster Spider-Man: No Way Home, Marvel would have to make it up to the character by making his own movie, Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness, a mind-blowingly awesome film.  I'll have to admit, as confident as I was in director Sam Raimi, stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Elizabeth Olsen and the rest of the talented cast and crew, I could feel doubt begin to creep in as reports of extensive reshoots started dominating the news on the film in the months leading up to its release.  Had Marvel gotten it wrong, somehow?

Having seen it twice now, I would like to assert that, in my humble opinion, they have not. 

The film opens with a frenetic chase scene in which a slightly different-looking, Spanish-speaking Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and young America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) flee a mysterious, rather frightful-looking being through what looks like some kind of interdimensional plane, a nightmarish scenario from which the Doctor Strange we all know (also played by Cumberbatch), wakes up from in a fright. Later that day, though, he learns that this encounter was no dream as he and his fellow sorcerer Wong (Benedict Wong) end up saving America, who has somehow ended up in New York, from a  gigantic, one-eyed, tentacled monster.  America, it seems, has the power to travel between universes, which has made her a target for a mysterious pursuer. Recognizing the markings on the creature he has defeated as runes used in witchcraft, Strange seeks out the other powerful magic user he knows, Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) who has been living the life of a recluse since recent events turned her life upside down. This request for help, however, does not turn out as Strange hopes, and before long, Strange finds himself not only fighting to save America Chavez, but the entire multiverse.

From the moment the Marvel fanfare ends, the movie hits the ground running and, quite frankly, never stops, which is very much a good thing.  Sam Raimi's fingerprints are all over everything in the film, from the quiet moments to the big action set pieces, and therefore I must respectfully, strenuously disagree with the critics decrying this film as "studio mandated." Quite the contrary, this feels like the MCU's single most stylized film, with due respect to the excellent work of the other directors whose work I've enjoyed. Raimi really puts his stamp on this film from everything to the transitions, the close-ups, the creepy build-ups to jump scares, and yes, even the performances from his actors, just about all of whom turn in outstanding performances, especially Cumberbatch and Olsen, who gets a far more generous helping of screen time than she ever has in any theatrical Marvel project up until this point. I'm just mildly annoyed that the series that did feature her, Wandavision is basically required viewing for this film considering that a substantial percentage of global audiences, including folks in this specific part of the world, still don't have Disney+.   Still, regardless of whether or not one knows Wanda's backstory through that series, which is quite crucial to understanding her character's journey, there can be no denying that Olsen has turned in an incredible performance.  Cumberbatch, who plays as many as four different versions of Doctor Strange, brings his "A" game here and reminds us all of why he was such a perfect fit for this role in the first place. Benedict Wong's Wong gets a much welcome expansion of his screen time and importance. Newcomer Xochitl Gomez makes the most out of what she's given, but more on that later.

Lovers of the Spider-Man trilogy (only 2/3 of which, really, is fondly remembered) may want to crucify me for what I'm about to say next, but I will go ahead and say it: having seen Darkman and at least two of the Evil Dead movies, I have to say that Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness feels more like a Sam Raimi movie than any installment of Sony's groundbreaking superhero trilogy. Spider-Man 2 had the operating room scene as its signature Raimi sequence, but this film has a whole bunch of those. If I'm perfectly honest, I'm quite surprised that this movie managed to squeak by with a PG-13 rating; somewhere in the third act my eight-year-old shouted "this is a horror movie!" and she wasn't wrong. 

Raimi has clearly been given a pretty big sandbox to play with by Kevin Feige, and as a result the storytelling can get pretty intense, and his visuals definitely get extra trippy.  Sure, there is the requisite massive dose of CGI used to depict the multiverse, but Raimi uses it quite effectively, and arguably more so than Scott Derrickson did in the first film. The "multiverse jump" scene which partially features in the trailer, with Strange's face coming apart, is actually even more entertaining in its full form.  

Also, I'm happy to note that the film does not get bogged down in fan service here; the much vaunted cameos the internet has been buzzing about do not dominate the movie; they're worth a cheer and a whoop or two, but nothing to really distract from the overall story. Make of that what you will, and I guarantee you this will not diminish your enjoyment of this film. Conversely, if you go into the movie expecting cameos on the level of Spider-Man: No Way Home, prepare to be disappointed.  

If the film does have any weak links, the most prominent would have to be its supposed breakthrough character, America Chavez. Xochitl Gomez turns in a decent performance, but the role is so sparsely written that it's painfully clear that she is little more than a plot device, essentially the mechanism to make the multiverse work. To put it even more cynically, she's basically a MacGuffin.  I expected better from the writer of Loki. 

Also, this isn't so much as a criticism as it is me scratching my head: what the heck was the point of Rintrah, the green minotaur guy who basically stood around Kamar-Taj and later got his butt kicked, without contributing anything at all to the story?  Given how relatively obscure the character is it didn't seem like the best form of fan service, and he had to have cost at least some tens of thousands of dollars (if not more) in computer-generated imagery.

To go back to the positives, though, I genuinely enjoyed that apart from the callbacks to Wandavision and Spider-Man: No Way Home, this film does not play out like a set-up for the next big Marvel event. Sure, there are the obligatory mid and post credits scenes, one of which teases for future adventures for Doctor Strange, but there's nothing that screams "everybody has to get together to fight the next big thing" in this film, and I was honestly relieved that this was the case. 

Almost forgot: I'd be remiss if I failed to mention one of the major pluses of the movie for me, and that is a surprisingly robust music score by veteran composer and longtime Raimi collaborator Danny Elfman. I was initially upset that they had replaced the original Doctor Strange composer Michael Giacchino with Elfman, as I was a big fan of the score Giacchino had composed for the first film, and was worried that Elfman would just trot out a remix of his previous work with Raimi and Tim Burton.  Also, Elfman's last work for the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a last-minute substitute for Brian Tyler on Avengers: Age of Ultron had been nothing to write home about.  It was much to my surprise, therefore, that Elfman turned out a rich, moving score for this film, and I say that as someone who has followed his work since 1988's Beetlejuice.  Does it sound Burtonesque? Sure, at times, but it really highlights the film's emotional beats and marks the characters' emotional journey without being cloying. Wanda's theme is downright haunting at times, and I hope Kevin Feige and his brain trust consider this theme as canon, moving forward, given how Marvel has come more and more to embrace the importance of music in their films.

Critics may not be as solidly behind this movie as they were the first one, but I'm a fan of how Marvel let Sam Raimi do his thing with one of their prized properties and heartily recommend this film to anyone interested.

7.5/10