Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (3 Stars)

This is the biggest disappointment of the year for me. I went to the cinema today with sky-high expectations. I expected it to be the best film of the year. It's not. Not even close.

Why did I expect so much of the film? It's the return of Sam Raimi to the Marvel fold. He's the director who made the best Marvel films before he was sacked over creative differences. I thought he would give Doctor Strange a deeper mystical style in his second solo film, but this was proved wrong in his first battle. When Doctor Strange faced a Ditko-esque monster on the streets of New York he looked more like an action hero than a Master of the Mystic Arts (capitalisation deliberate).

"Doctor Strange 2" (as I prefer to call the film) furthers Wanda Maximoff's portrayal as a bad guy. I thought she would have been reformed after "Wandavision". (That was a brilliant TV series, Marvel's best so far. I'm disappointed with myself for not writing about it). It's possible that she reforms at the end of this film. All I can say is that I'm disappointed that she plays the Big Baddy in "Doctor Strange 2". It's not faithful to her character in the comics, and why is she so powerful? In the comics she was a novice witch, no match for Doctor Strange.

Does Sam Raimi even know what the multiverse is? Judging by the dialogue, he doesn't. It's spoken of as something evil and uncontrollable. Rubbish! The multiverse is just a word to describe the different parallel timelines/universes. In the comics they're usually created by time travel, when someone goes back in time and changes events. The differences between the universes are subtle, not drastic.

In the last paragraph I bundled together the words "universes" and "timelines". In the comics (from the mid 70's onwards) they're practically synonyms, two words intended to describe the same thing. In the MCU the parallel universes in "Doctor Strange 2" and the parallel timelines in "Loki" seem to be different things. Otherwise the Time Variance Authority could have dealt with the problems while Doctor Strange stayed at the wedding sipping champagne.

So many random things are thrown together, We see the Illuminati, admittedly an alternate version of the Illuminati in the parallel universe Earth-838. The introduction of the Illuminati in an Avengers story in 2005 was one of the sillier ideas of Marvel's post-canon age, but in the film they look even more ridiculous.

What's with the Darkhold? We already saw it in Marvel's "Agents of Shield" series. It briefly appeared in the final episode of "Wandavision", but it plays a major part in "Doctor Strange 2". Is it the same book? It has different characteristics to the book in "Agents of Shield". The continuity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is breaking down. Can't Kevin Feige, or whoever's responsible for the MCU, keep things better under control?

There's an unforgivable blunder. Sam Raimi should be ashamed of himself. It's claimed that the Doctor Strange in the film comes from Earth-616. Wrong, wrong, wrong! The main Marvel Universe in the films is Earth-199999. Earth-616 is the universe in the comics. They're very different to one another. Mysterio already called our universe Earth-616 in "Spider-Man: Far From Home", but he was a liar, so his mistake was deliberate.  Although, admittedly, they're becoming more alike. After films are released, stories are written in the comics that match the films. There's a major incursion of Earth-199999 into Earth-616.

Who is Charlize Theron supposed to be in the mid-credits sequence? The film itself doesn't name her, but in the credits she's listed as Clea. I hope her character isn't ruined by rewriting her in future films. She's Dormammu's niece, the daughter of his sister Umar. All true Marvel fans know that.

There's a silly post-credits scene in which Bruce Campbell speaks into the camera and tells the audience that the film's over. That made me smile. I know what it's about. Sam Raimi has said in interviews that he's opposed to post-credits scenes. Marvel probably insisted on a post-credits scene, so Sam made one as short as possible, not worth watching. Unless, of course, you're a Bruce Campbell fan.

When I walked out of the cinema my first inclination was to give the film a one star rating to signify my severe displeasure. I calmed down a bit on the train on the way home. Three stars is a fair rating. It's a reasonably well made film, even if it isn't Marvel.

The Marvel bubble has burst. When the MCU was launched in 2008 with "Iron Man" I was excited. I rushed into the cinema to see every film as soon as possible. I could hardly wait to buy them on Blu-ray. That's changed. The Marvel films don't excite me any more. "The Eternals" is the first MCU film that I refuse to buy on Blu-ray. It's not worth the money. There may come a time when I skip Marvel films in the cinema. That time isn't far off.