In 2008 he started the Marvel Cinematic Universe with ‘Iron man’. It is difficult to know if then those responsible for the powerful film franchise had already planned so many thematic arcs and transfer of characters to form a great fresco rather than a succession of films. It is likely, since the producer of that first Iron Man film was already Kevin Feig, authentic ideologue of everything that has been cooked in these 15 years in Marvel films, recent multiverses included. Feige is still at the helm, becoming the great demiurge of ‘marvelian’ fiction.
‘Iron Man’ didn’t just kick off the Marvel universe on screen. It was also the first installment of the so-called Phase 1 and, at the same time, of what has been called The Infinity Sagawhich would also cover the Phases 2 and 3. You can see all the deliveries in different combinations: the order of the factors does not alter the product.
This immense cycle ended three years ago with ‘Spider-man: Far from home’. The second installment of Phase 3 was dedicated to Doctor Strangea somewhat picturesque character, sorcerer, mystic and even ‘cool’ –he lives in the New York neighborhood of Greenwich Village–, a superhero who has not needed mutations in his body product of spider bites or laboratory accidents, nor does he have a healthy checking account to design whatever he wants.
Doctor Strange is, despite his powers of Sorcerer Supreme, a more earthy Marvel superhero. He hasn’t enjoyed the same commercial buzz, even charm, as Spider-man, Mutant X, Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, Black Panther, Black Widow, Nick Fury or the Fantastic Four. But if on paper he has worked more than correctly, in the cinema he is becoming one of the essential figures of that vast project that Feige feeds with new intersections, twists, turns and games of mirrors.
‘Doctor Strange’ (2016) passed well and left a mark. The character has subsequently appeared in other films in the franchise, always with the elegant and disturbing features on a par with benedict cumberbatch. ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ is the fifth film installment of Phase 4 and it appears as a new – yet another – plot twist that maintains the essence of the franchise, but all kinds of licenses are allowed. It’s what they have parallel and alternate worlds and the ‘reboots’. Anything goes to start over: squeeze the invention trying not to run out.
In this Phase 4 Inaugurated last year, Strange’s second film was preceded by ‘Black Widow’, ‘Shang-chi and the legend of the ten rings’, ‘Eternals’ and ‘Spider-man: No way home’, in addition to the series ‘ Scarlet Witch and Vision’, ‘Falcon and the Winter Soldier’, ‘Loki’, ‘Hawkeye’ and ‘Moon Knight’.
the multiverse
The multiverse theory was implicit in that clever superhero sitcom that is ‘Scarlet Witch and Vision’and exploded in the latest spider-man film, invoking the presence of the previous actors who had played Spider-Man in a playful game for fans. But, in reality, the concept is fully developed in a previous film unrelated to the Phases, ‘Spider-man: A new universe’ (2018), one of the best animated films of recent years.
The multiverse thing, although sometimes you end up getting lost among so many parallel realities, responds to an ideology that has a lot to do with another type of cinema. In fact, we could talk about stories of crossed stories in the style of films by Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson or Rodrigo García when facing the connections that the films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe establish with each other: the protagonist of a saga that appears in a film of another series, the post-credits scene that reveals a new relationship, the long shadow of the villain Thanos in several films& mldr ;
In ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ it is of paramount importance Wanda Maximoff / The Scarlet Witch, just as Strange did in the last Spider-man movie. Wong, another master of the mystic arts, played his hand in the movie about Shang-chi. And if Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) is important in Strange’s multiverse, she is no less so the presence of the Latin American and LGBT teenager America Chavez, a relatively recent character in Marvel comics. He was created by screenwriter Jon Casey in 2011. He now naturally joins the Strange universe with his power to cross universes.
the artificers
Who is directing ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’? neither more nor less than Sam Raimi, a classic of contemporary horror. Inactive in the cinema since 2013, when he made ‘Oz, a world of fantasy’, a sterile revision of ‘The Wizard of Oz’, Raimi has managed to print his stamp on the doctor’s new adventures. The machinery of Hollywood and Marvel have not devoured him as he usually does in these cases, that of Chloé Zhao with ‘Eternals’ without going any further.
Raimi is a veteran in these superheroic battles. At the beginning of the 21st century he provided the trIt’s great Spider-man movies with Tobey Maguire, already with Feige in the engine room. Doctor Strange’s vision of him in the multiverse is somewhat reminiscent of ‘Terrifyingly dead’ (1987), the second installment of his saga started with ‘Infernal Possession’, jocular presence of actor Bruce Campbell included.
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Not only that. The huge, one-eyed, gigantic octopus that Strange, Wong, and America Chavez face at first is pure analog fantasy to Raimi’s tasteas well as the splendid sequence of the battle between two different Stranges throwing musical notes at each other or the passage through the different multiverses, which include a comic version and another in painting. The title is also very reminiscent of ‘pulp’ horror literature and cinema.: the novel ‘In the mountains of madness’ (1936) by HP Lovecraft and the film ‘In the mouth of madness’ (1994) by John Carpenter, premiered here as ‘In the mouth of fear’
The script is signed by Michael Waldron, creator and producer of the series ‘Loki’. It leaves nothing aside: the idea that dreams are windows to the multiverse, the presence of the treatise on magic ‘Book of Vishanti’ and the Darkhold (the book of sins), the city of Kamar-Taj in Nepal, the idyllic town of Westview, Christine’s loving memory. She has an ace up her sleeve the presence of the illuminati, a spectacular secret society of superheroes whose members we will not reveal here, although a few days ago leaks circulated on the networks about who they are and what actors play them. In any case, they are not exactly the same as those devised in 2005 for comics.