Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness: 10 Reasons It Sucks

8. The Awful Comedy

Doctor Strange in the multiverse of madness
Marvel Studios

Marvel humour can be a bit of a mixed bag. Many of the films in the series do it absolutely beautifully - such as the Avengers films, the Guardians of the Galaxy films and more recently, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings - but others don't fare so well. Doctor Strange 2 firmly falls into the latter category.

The film's jokes are not only very unfunny, but they're always being deployed at exactly the wrong moment - a good example of this is when Dr Strange and Wong are joking around even as Wanda attacks the fortress. It undermines the tension of what should be a tense, weighty scene and fatally messes with the movie's tone.

Another groan-worthy moment is when Strange and America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) are talking about the other Avengers heroes and joke about their bug powers etc. and again, this belittles these supposedly heroic figures and turns them into a joke.

This undermining of tension with ill-placed humour has been a problem in a few other MCU flicks as well - Black Widow certainly stuck out in this regard and even the mostly excellent Spider-Man: No Way Home had a few such mistakes - and unfortunately, Doctor Strange 2 suggests this issue hasn't been fixed yet.

Contributor

Film Studies graduate, aspiring screenwriter and all-around nerd who, despite being a pretentious cinephile who loves art-house movies, also loves modern blockbusters and would rather watch superhero movies than classic Hollywood films. Once met Tommy Wiseau.