So I torrented Doctor Strange and the Multiverse Of Madness. It’s a cosmic horror film with a marvel budget. Rami pushed the PG13 rating about as far as he could. I ate shrooms before starting the movie.
Spoiler summary:
Scarlet Witch gets corrupted by the Necronomicon into a demon goddess and hunts Dr. Strange and a magical lesbian named Amerika across multiple realities. The pacing when at its most tense is a supernatural slasher film with a demonic murderous witch.
...
The film starts slow, but gets going after about 20 minutes when a Cthulu/ beyonder thing shows up and starts assblasting New York city. This is coincidently about when the shrooms kicked in.
I watched the movie on shrooms which was… well… mostly groovy. The exception was -(spoilers)
When the Scarlet Witch started trying to crawl through every reflective surface in a room to get at Amerika. The Witch wants to consume her and take her power to travel across realities.
When she started to crawl through the reflection of a mirror too small for her body, I looked up and made eye contact with myself in the mirror. That was NOT OKAY.
...
That scene put The Fear(tm) in me. My roommate came home to find every mirror in the house covered with a blanket or turned toward the house. Shroom energy is… something else.
Anyway, the movie is a fusion between the tone/ visuals of Army Of Darkness and the better Marvel slop like the new Loki show.
Rami entertains himsef with easter eggs and also fucks with the audience by having CIA Jim...
Get shredded apart like mozzarella cheese by Scarlett Witch. Mr Fantastic tries to fight Wanda by stretching and he gets pwned lol She magically rips him apart into multiple writhing tendrils that then burn up. He screams the whole time this is happening.
She also fuses Black Bolt's mouth shut so that when he screams as she tortures him, his head explodes.
A little later, Wanda also snaps Charles Xaviers neck after he loses a psychic duel. I'm an X-Men girl because I'm extremely gay so it was tight to see Charles powers shown off for once.
...
Rami uses a lot of womb and birthing imagery in this movie, so I'm sure it upset some bazinga brains with mommy issues (all of them).
Danny Elfman wrote the soundtrack and mostly phones it in, but does let himself have fun a couple times. I’d honestly do the same if I was him, get that bread Danny.
Magic is actually imaginative in the film and Marvel let Rami do comic book stuff with the mechanics. Lots of physics and momentum manipulation, weird 70's acid style visuals, and spells that conjure shit.
The horror elements are there and the movie ends with
Dr. Strange possessing one of his corpses from another universe to fight the witch. He dukes it out as a decaying zombite with a cloak made out of the souls of the damned.
Sam Rami used a marvel movie's fuck-you budget to create a Dr. Strange / Evil Dead mashup film and it's a hot mess so I loved the ride.
Final rating: 7/10, don’t pay money for it, do drugs, hail satan.
Elizabeth Olsen carried the entire film for me. I was pleased, like you mentioned, that Raimi was more imaginative with Strange's magic in the fight against his other self than literally any other scene he's been shown using magic in before - as that's a hugely frustrating part of the MCU for me given each film's budget. 7/10 for sure but I was all for giving it a 10/10 just for the way he sent CIA Jim packing, as he is absolutely a horrible choice for Mr. Fantastic in general & god forbid they do a F4 movie with him.
Yeah, 7/10 for a standard movie and 9/10 for
21st century westernscapeshit.
I watched the movie sober. Around half an hour in I thought "holy cow this would be a great movie to watch high". Around an hour and a half in I thought "This would be an awful movie to watch high".
@WhyEssEff , @Zoift , @Jadzia_Dax , @thelastaxolotl - is this a real rule or, like, a shitpost?
@BolsheWitch I had fun watching this with you, even though you kept cackling every time Wanda murdered someone
:meow-popcorn:
Its a fun movie that could have been one of the great entries in the MCU if it had been a bit more focused. There's just too many disjointed ideas and themes that ultimately just don't quite mesh and are likely in large part the result of both studio interference in service to the larger cinematic universe and the fact that they changed directors mid production.
spoiler
The big thing I want to say is: Elizabeth Olsen absolutely crushes it in this movie. She not only gives a great performance, but is genuinely terrifying in a way I never expected. Scarlet Witch's heel turn lands her as the scariest MCU villain we've ever seen. ...BUT...this heel turn really wasn't earned IMO. Sam Raimi dropped the ball and let it slip that he hasn't actually watched all of Wandavision and by god does it show. There's a lot of discourse around these movies and how much they should stand on their own versus be expecting the audience to be familiar with the goings on of the larger universe. I can see fair arguments for either position but one thing I hope we can all agree on is that if its required reading for the audience It is also required reading for writers and directors. The end of Wandavision sets her up to move forward and become a more heroic figure....and as much as her place in this movie wouldn't make sense without wandavision....in this regard it almost makes less sense. Its disappointing how jarring it is.
Again...a lot of the movie and its themes don't really work when you pull out....but also...the movie has some genuinely fun sequences and seeing how weird and out there they get with strange's magic is genuinely just a fun experience that's worth seeing in a theater.
Highlight of the movie: seeing Captain Carter in live action. Please notice and step on me sempai
😢
The MCU really needs some bottle stories. Like, movies that are basically just standalone stories that don't contribute to the greater universe other than developing the world indirectly.
Moon Knight was basically that. Didnt have any tie ins to any other property and I dont recall even a mention of anything mcu. Entirely self contained. that said its jsut decent. the ending kinda flops like all the marvel tv shows (other than legion)
now wait till the 17th to pirate (or legally buy cause its a legit good film) Everything Everywhere All At Once and watch on shrooms. Hilarious that this random film comes out and does multiverse 20x more entertaining than the marvel slop that came out a couple weeks later.
i liked it but
spoiler
Wanda's entire arc just turning into "i want to be a mommy wahhhhh" got old fast.
also i think there was a couple lines that came off as weird and cringey kinda but i cant remember what they were really. i think one was like "go to hell" before killing something. trying to be Sigourney. ill just remember thats it mostly a movie for children.
Good! Audio was fine, I downloaded subtitles. Was like watching a 720p or SD copy of the movie.
I really liked how the magic fight scenes were shot. I hated every time there was a dialogue or exposition scene cuz it seemed boring and dumb just let me watch wizards fight each other in cool ways pls marvel. The music fight between two Stranges was hilarious for example
I haven't willingly watched a capeshit movie since Man of Steel and I'm proud
I should write a whole thing on it. I love how much they commit to Kal-El being an alien. The H.R. Giger flesh tech is incredibly cool.
What didn’t you like about that movie? Snapping Zod’s neck is probably the only part I really remember disliking.
The trailer promised a fascinating look into "what if Superman was actually real?" It looked gripping and like it would actually ask some interesting questions about superheroes. The movie started out with a boring 30 min plot about Superman's home planet, and then descended into boring fights at the end.
Did I mention they fight in IHOP?
tbf his job in the comics is often to be worf and show how strong another psychic is
