Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness - Cheap Thoughts

It’s hard to feint excitement for a new MCU product, not because they always lack quality, but because they are on an endless conveyor belt of content you never go any time without them. The final episode of Moon Knight came out on Wednesday and this movie came out on Thursday. You can’t anticipate something that is omnipresent. What we can be excited for and haven’t seen in a very long time is a new film from the one Sam Raimi. 9 Years since his last directorial feature and it’s with the biggest corporation in the film industry, considering this man has been burnt by studio’s before, all the way back with his sophomore (and underrated) feature Crimewave, to the infamous studio meddling of Spider-Man 3, to the watered down and voiceless Oz The Great & Powerful, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the man swore off any studio film for the rest of his life…so yes let’s say interest was certainly peaked when this production was announced.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Yes that is the best title to any Marvel movie) is certainly the most vocal a director has been behind the camera. His distinct style and voice is definitely there, the use of horror, the over the top presentation, the wonky camera movements, everything you would expect, but it is still Raimi being reserved. Marvel doesn’t just hire this man because he’s a marketable name, but because he does have a genuine style they want to utilise, they also know it has to be held back and blended with the style of the MCU and frankly, on that level, this might be the best studio film Raimi has ever made. Not in terms of plot, style or creativity, but in production. There is no clash to be felt, purely compromise on both ends, as any good collaborative experience should be. Raimi gets to bring his toys to the playground but doesn’t force everyone else to play with them.

The unexpected yet best collaboration to come from this production is that of Elizabeth Olsen, the longest running cast member of this film, who has certainly grown as a performer with each instalment and yet does her best work here working with Raimi (Yes, even more than WandaVision). It’s hard to pin down why, certainly a lot of it is for the legwork done by other productions to develop her character, but there is a physicality and lack of restraint to this performance. Olsen is an unstoppable force and Raimi is steering her in all the right directions, absolutely the scene stealer of the film.

If you’ve been around the block and you know how this modern Hollywood system works, you can probably tell what’s coming next. It’s unthinkable that Sam Raimi would spend nearly a decade of not making movies, only to come back for a studio production where he had to restrain himself without something promised in the pipelines. The trend of directors promising to make a billion dollar movie for a studio so they can get a blank check on their next passion project is clockwork, which means it won’t be long before we get a true unchained Raimi flick in the next couple of years and if so then we truly have something to look forward to, and as far as compromise films go for better productions later on? Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is certainly in the upper echelon.

-Danny