Asemer01

While it is a very fun, spectacle of a movie contained by itself, as a sequel to both WandaVision and Doctor Strange, the movie fails on both counts for me personally. Sam Raimi directed one hell of film that pushes the boundaries of the MCU a bit further than we’ve seen before, and every one of the cast does not disappoint in their roles either, with, of course, Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff being a stand out. My issues primarily lie with the writing and the storytelling. As a sequel to WandaVision, my still personal favorite of the Disney+ series, this quote “accelerated decent into madness” is not very satisfying. I love the idea of the Scarlet Witch as a full blown villain, I just wish we had taken our time to get there. Yes, we have that one 15 second post credit scene of Wanda reading the darkhold, but the series prior to that ended with Wanda confronting her grief, realizing her mistakes, correcting them, sacrificing her family in the process, and feeling guilt and remorse for what she had done. To jump from that version of Wanda to the version this film presents with little to nothing to bridge the gap, is just overall disappointing and even underwhelming. And maybe I would’ve felt better about the movie if, at the very least, it had shown any sort of internal struggle for her character. If we had glimpses of the real Wanda every now and then questioning her actions before getting suckered back in by the Darkhold. But we don’t get that for the first 95% of the movie. She’s just a ruthless, unrelenting, and, dare I say, one note villain. It’s not until the very end where Wanda is faced with the terror she’s inflicted upon her variant children that she somehow breaks free from the Dark Hold’s corruption completely and sacrifices herself to destroy it. This is the third time this exact same arc has been repeated for the character. First in Age of Ultron, then WandaVision, and now here in this movie as well. Wanda’s grief and anger takes her down a villainous path, but, by the end, she realIzes her mistakes, makes whatever sacrifice needs to be made, and re-emerges as a “hero” in some capacity. It’s just rinse and repeat for her at this point. And, let us not also forget that this movie is supposed to be a direct sequel to Doctor Strange. His character and his story should be leading this movie. But instead, he takes backseat to The Scarlet Witch. Nothing from Strange’s first film is addressed in this movie. Some slight hints here and there and that’s it. We see 616 Christine Palmer for all of about 5 minutes, if that, and then she’s replaced with a variant for the rest of the movie. We’re also given a variant of Baron Mordo for the entire movie, two characters that our Strange has no history with whatsoever. The solo franchise films were meant to tell contained stories of our heroes. This movies fails Doctor Strange and his story in service of expanding the MCU as a whole, and setting up for future projects.