Brandon at Random Reviews

For several years the average Marvel movie was guaranteed to be a hit with me. There were so many great stories, characters, and elements that were carefully woven together over time that it brought such satisfaction for audiences, such an excitement for what was next. But then we got to the end of the original Avengers saga with “Avengers: Endgame” and things had already started coming apart at the seams for me. “Thor: Ragnarok” performed well and was well-reviewed, but for me it wasn’t enjoyable. It was too jokey, and frankly kind of stupid on that note. The movies around this time were hit and miss and I didn’t have the same child-like wonder in going to see them.

Now, Doctor Strange 2 (DS2) didn’t necessarily have that whole “culmination of dozens of movies of build up”, but rather it had a couple flicks that teased its content, and a whole slew of rumors making the rounds leading up to its release. You have to remember, sometime after Avengers: Endgame and before this DS2 movie, Disney, the company that owns most Marvel character film rights, bought 20th Century Fox and now had the rights to the X-Men, The Fantastic Four, Deadpool, and probably others but those are the ones people care about. Suffice it to say that they now own pretty much all non-Spider-Man-related characters. So naturally, it was widely assumed that they would use this whole “multiverse” concept to bring the newly acquired characters into the fold. Which makes sense, but apparently not enough to actually do a ton of that.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Doctor Strange and his lore, I love the Scarlet Witch/Wanda almost as much as I love the actress that plays her. But something in this movie just fell short for me. There were a decent amount of appearances by exciting characters with equally exciting casting choices. But there wasn’t even close to enough of that stuff to satisfy me. They could have had several cameo appearances by many different characters, but they just didn’t. The ones that appeared did pique my interest some, but I could’ve gone for at least setting something the fuck up. We got a familiarity in Patrick Stewart’s Professor Charles Xavier, a fresh face in John Krasinski’s Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, and Hayley Atwell’s Captain Carter. Not only did they not set anything else up really, but they didn’t even pay-off on expected appearances based on the story and characters from Paul Bettany’s Vision/White Vision that this movie desperately needed for Wanda.

Another thing I am more than sick of with these movies is the mid-credits/post-credits scenes. Especially here, neither did anything for me. We see a small glimpse of Charlize Theron’s character she’s portraying in future Doctor Strange-related films, and obviously it’s just a tease, but I’ve never heard of that character so I didn’t give a hoot, especially after having just been disappointed by DS2. The post-credits scene with Bruce Campbell should’ve been left on the cutting room floor and instead they should’ve brought in a much juicier, more titillating scene with an appearance from one of the characters I’ve mentioned.

This movie also got a little ridiculous in this scene where Doctor Strange is dueling another Doctor Strange with musical notes for some reason? Is that a thing? I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

The performances were pretty good here though. I thought the acting was solid. I do find Wanda to be a more compelling character than Strange. Obviously Olsen’s character motivations drove her to the villainous place she wound up in. Cumberbatch was a good protagonist, and he did get some character growth so that’s neato. Rachel McAdams, another love of my life (along with Olsen), had remarkably great execution in what the story had laid out for her.

I find that although this movie was not necessarily what I would call a bad movie at all, it was just disappointing with all the writing on the wall about new character appearances, of which we got very few. So I would say this was a decent one, but I don’t know if I care to ever watch it ever again.

⭐️⭐️⭐️