by Ray Keating
Review
DisneyBizJournal.com
May 16, 2022
DisneyBizJournal.com Movie Rating: 5 stars out of 5
DisneyBizJournal.com Box Office Rating: $$$$ out of $$$$
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ranks as one of the very best Marvel Studios movies ever made, certainly by far the top entry since Avengers: Endgame, and it is justifiably getting rewarded at the box office. By the way, I serve up this assessment as someone who has never been a big Dr. Strange fan.
And yes, most of the credit for these creative and business achievements goes to Sam Raimi and his skills as a director.
Raimi already had three of the finest superhero films ever made on his resume – that is, Spider-Man(2002), Spider-Man 2 (2004), and Spider-Man 3 (2007) – along with a wide-ranging group of other films. He brought this formidable experience to work in a Marvel film at a time when the studio clearly needed something big. After all, recent Marvel movies haven’t exactly been memorable. Black Widow and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings were little more than adequate, and Eternals was simply abysmal (see our review). Spider-Man: No Way Home, of course, was excellent (again, check out our rundown), but that was a Sony release that plays in the Marvel universe; it was not a Disney-Marvel Studios movie.
Raimi accomplished a great deal with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
The story was solid. It made sense and was entertaining (such basics cannot be assumed – see the Eternals). The characters, for the most part, were interesting. Indeed, some notable characters were introduced, or re-introduced, and wound up going to surprising places, adding unexpected aspects and richness to the film. Also, Raimi provided touches from assorted genres that he has worked in before, including horror, although the film doesn’t go too far. Yes, this is a hard PG-13, but definitely not an R.
Multiverse of Madness is a visually enthralling film as well. The special effects add to the movie, as opposed to some recent Marvel films in which very expensive special effects managed to distract and detract from the story (that was the case with Shang-Chi).
Perhaps most surprising was one thing that Raimi was allowed to do, and it made a big difference. Dr. Strange corrected or remedied the abysmal ending to the Disney+ WandaVision series (see our take). After committing an assortment of atrocities due to suffering personal losses (both real and imagined), Wanda’s actions in WandaVision were effectively justified or simply shrugged off at the end of the series. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness tossed aside such nonsense, or moral obtuseness, and made clear the evil that Wanda, or the Scarlett Witch, commits.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness turned out to be engrossing, fascinating, and entertaining on multiple levels.
At the close of its second weekend (as of May 15), the film grossed $292 million domestically and earned $688 million globally. Those numbers run far ahead of the total box office take for each of the three previous Marvel Studios movies – Black Widow, Shang-Chi and Eternals.
Here’s a lesson for Marvel: Don’t shy away from getting top-notch directors to make your films, not to mention your Disney+ series. Disney certainly has enough funds available to get the best directors – ones that can handle the scope and the genre, while telling stories well. Sam Raimi directing Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness makes clear that such decisions make creative and box office sense.
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Ray Keating is the editor, publisher and economist for DisneyBizJournal.com, and author of the Pastor Stephen Grant novels and assorted nonfiction books. Have Ray Keating speak your group, business, school, church, or organization. Email him at raykeating@keatingreports.com.
The views expressed here are his own – after all, no one else should be held responsible for this stuff, right?
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