Finally got around to watching Multiverse of madness, and I think it’s official that Marvel has now spread themselves too thin past the point of return. There’s just… too much. This movie should have been the connective tissue between No Way Home, Wandavision, and Loki, and it was not. Which is probably too much to ask from one movie, which is kind of my point. To connect all of these moving parts would required unholy levels of planning and precision, and instead it seems like separate writers and directors were all given different marching orders on different projects, and then the Dr. Strange team was asked to cobble them all together.
I don’t even blame Dr. Strange 2 for not living up to the expectations set upon it, because I think they were given an impossible task, and decided to try and fix it by just throwing lots of “multiversisms” at the audience and hoping they would be too confused (and awed by the spectacle) to ask questions.
So… yeah. I personally didn’t have high expectations for this film, and I still came away feeling glad that I didn’t waste my money to watch it in the theaters.
The real issue with the marvel universe right now is that viewers are expected to have watched everything just in case something pops up in a movie from another show or movie… but then the payoff isn’t worth it. It’s some random plot thread or a character cameo or most often the punchline to a joke. It would only be worth it if there was some sort of satisfying cohesion between stories, like there was in the very early marvel days.
I’m going to make a prediction (that might look ridiculous in the future) that within 5 years, they’re going to stop ordering new productions on marvel films. Or marvel tv shows. Or both. They might continue with one, but this method of both films and shows is not working. It’s too much. And it’s way too much to ask people to keep track of, particularly if they don’t actually connect everything in a satisfying way.
