20 Biggest Wasted Opportunities In The MCU
17. The Multiverse of Madness
The problem with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness isn't entirely the multiverse side of things - director Sam Raimi does a great job of exploring the cosmos for all its weird, wonderful, and scary realities - but the film surrounding these brief creative highs.
Instead of offering an adventure that forced Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to deal with past trauma and his own complex legacy, there are far too many moments in Raimi's MCU debut that reek of tacky nostalgia bait, the multiverse of it all allowing the studio to give vocal fans (and haters) some meme-able cameos.
Between Hayley Atwell's turn as Captain Carter, which should have been so much cooler, and the fleeting, boring appearances of Patrick Stewart (sorry, sir) and John Krasinski as a dull-as-dishwater Reed Richards (after years of fan casting), the film suffers from an abundance of odd, uneventful Easter eggs.
Multiverse of Madness soars with its central conceit and emotional pull, but everything either side of it is just a bit sad.