Ever since the release of Avengers: Endgame in 2019, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been on a fairly steady decline. Aside from the brief, arachnid-themed spikes of quality, most of their movies have been mediocre at best, and extremely boring at worst. So to say I was nervous walking into Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness would be a bit of an understatement. In all honesty, the only reason I even went to see it was because I’m a huge fan of the director, Sam Raimi. However, walking out of the theater, I found myself pleasantly surprised by just how much fun I had. 

As previously mentioned, this film was directed by Sam Raimi, famous for the original Spider-Man trilogy and the Evil Dead series. Within the first few minutes, you can already smell his deadite-scented blood all over this movie. There are so many dutch angles and fade transitions littered throughout the movie it will make your head spin. The first Doctor Strange already had some of the most creative visuals seen in a marvel movie, and Raimi’s directing style only helps to emphasize the sheer craziness of it all. Most of the fight scenes were also very well choreographed, with it being very rare that you’ll see the same spell used twice. I appreciated the more horror-esk tone the film went for. This was definitely one of the gorier PG-13 movies I’ve seen in theaters. I’m pretty sure this film has a higher body count than most of the Predator sequels. 

There are a few things this movie did fairly poorly however. I thought that it relied way too much on the viewers knowledge of previous MCU movies and shows. A Disney+ subscription is all but required to understand the plot. Some of the CGI also looked a lot less high quality than some of the other major blockbusters this year.  The ending fight was also a bit of a let-down. Not to spoil anything, but the main villain literally gets defeated via the power of family.

All of those are just nit-picks however, and at the end of the day, this movie was a lot of fun. Imaginative visuals, great characters, and comic references are scattered throughout. I hope that this, and the previous Spider-Man: No Way Home provide a new template for what to do in these future, post Endgame Marvel flicks. I give this film a rating of three and a half star-shaped interdimensional gateways out of five.