(Patrick Stewart) in his classic yellow hover-chair.
While praised for its creative multiverse designs—like the universe where everything is paint, or the one where characters are sentient musical notes— faced criticism for rushed CGI in certain sequences. The third eye on Strange’s forehead (a nod to classic comics) and some background compositing feel less polished than Infinity War .
Sudden, tense moments that keep the audience on edge.
When director Sam Raimi stepped in, he infused the project with his signature cinematic hallmarks. Fans of his foundational Evil Dead franchise will easily recognize the film's unique stylistic choices:
Raimi’s influence is the film’s defining feature. He infuses the movie with his signature style: dutch angles, rapid zoom-ins, eerie POV shots of demons chasing victims, and a gleeful amount of body horror. The classic Raimi "Oldsmobile Delta 88" even makes a cameo appearance in one universe. The composer, Danny Elfman, a frequent Raimi collaborator, scored the film, giving it a gothic, operatic feel that swings wildly between swashbuckling heroism and funeral dirges. doctor.strange 2
Fulfilling years of internet fan-casting.
The plot of the movie revolves around two powerful "books" (or papers): The Darkhold A book of dark magic and spells used by Wanda Maximoff The Book of Vishanti
Grieving the loss of her twin boys, Billy and Tommy, whom she created and then lost in Westview, Wanda has been corrupted by the Darkhold, a book of unspeakable dark magic. Her goal: capture America Chavez and steal her power to find variants of her children across the multiverse. What follows is a gonzo, reality-hopping adventure where Strange and America jump from a post-apocalyptic Earth (where Strange is killed by Thanos) to an animated universe, and finally to Earth-838, where the Illuminati rule.
Throughout his MCU arc, Stephen Strange has struggled with a god complex. He believes he must be the one holding the scalpel or making the final choice to save the day. Multiverse of Madness forces him to confront this flaw. By witnessing variants of himself who ruined their respective universes because they refused to share control, Strange learns a crucial lesson in trust. Ultimately, he defeats Wanda not through sheer force, but by empowering America Chavez to trust her own abilities. The Illuminati and Multiversal Cameos (Patrick Stewart) in his classic yellow hover-chair
Proponents praised Raimi's distinct directorial voice. They appreciated that Marvel allowed an auteur to inject genuine horror, gore, and style into a formulaic universe. The sequence where a deceased Doctor Strange "dreamwalks" into the rotting corpse of his variant to fight Wanda remains one of the most uniquely macabre moments in superhero cinema.
Marvel then made a bold choice by hiring horror icon Sam Raimi, the mastermind behind the original Spider-Man trilogy and The Evil Dead . Raimi brought his signature filmmaking style to the project, including:
Consumed by maternal grief, Wanda has fully embraced her identity as the . She targets America Chavez, intending to steal her powers to reunite with her lost sons, Billy and Tommy, in a parallel universe. What follows is a brutal, cross-dimensional pursuit that tests the moral boundaries of every hero involved. 2. The Creative Direction: Sam Raimi’s Superhero Horror
"Rule number one of Multiversal travel? You don't know anything." — America Chavez’s advice to Strange [23]. The Inscription on the Watch Sudden, tense moments that keep the audience on edge
The final scene is a classic Sam Raimi gag. It shows Bruce Campbell’s character, Pizza Poppa, still stuck in an infinite loop of slapping himself, left over from Strange’s spell earlier in the film.
The climax of Multiverse of Madness is a surprisingly bittersweet one. After a brutal battle on Mount Wundagore—the birthplace of the Darkhold—America Chavez uses her powers not to fight, but to reason. She shows Wanda the faces of her children from another universe, which are filled with terror at the sight of her. Realizing she has become the monster she once feared, Wanda makes a monumental choice. She destroys the Darkhold temple in every single universe (including the one she is standing in), collapsing the mountain on top of herself. Her fate is left ambiguous; a flash of red magic suggests she might have survived, but for now, the Scarlet Witch is gone.
It’s wild how much the Multiverse of Madness changed from its first draft to the big screen: America Chavez