Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

 "This time it's gonna take more than killing me to kill me."

Well, thgis film blew me away. It's a huge fanwank treat. It's very Sam Raimi indeed. I love its continuation of the whole vibe of magic being really trippy, man, in the MCU, almost as thought it was some king of metaphor or something.

But, although very good, this film isn't great. It doesn't quite have the swagger and smooth greatness of the best Marvel films but- let me stress- this is no great critiscism. Merely being very good indeedcis no crime.

Plus, this film may be fanwank, but it's fanwank of the first degree. Rintrah! Clea at the end! A brief CGI hint of the Living Tribunal! Chthon! Earth 616!

But this is about the full realisation of the Multiverse- Black Bolt! Captain Carter! Reed Richards! Confirmation, for those of my generation, that Monica Rambeau is THE real Captain Marvel. And we have Professor X... played by Patrick Stewart"! This is a blatant tease about the former Fox properties, using the concept of the Multiverse to the full.

Yet this film is very human as well as high concept. We explore, through different realities, Strange's relations with Christine, and his rather lovely fatherly relationship with the orphaned America Chavez, presumably a comics character from after my time.

Yet also, after WandaVision, we meet Wanda... and she's the baddie, plausibly yet tragically: she's a loving parent, able to see her beloved children only through snatched, one dimensional, dreamlike moments which are better than nothing but no replacement for everyday physical parenthood. I get exactly where she's coming from. It means a lot that she does the right thing, in the end, through love of her children.

No, this isn't a great film. But just being bloody good is no crime.