Review – Multiverse of Madness
Last weekend I went to see Dr. Strange 2: Multiverse of Madness.
Please note: this post contains spoilers.
Coming off the heels of the incredibly successful, perfectly executed Spider-Man: No Way Home, I was excited for this movie. The first Dr. Strange is one of my favorites of the MCU, and seeing him reprise his role in his sequel film was thrilling. All the more, too, because Wanda Maximoff was in it. But now, having seen the film, I am fucking livid and have a lot to say on the matter.
The vast majority of the writers and directors of the MCU films are misogynistic pieces of shit.
1) WHY is feminine anger ALWAYS vilified? Wanda has so many justifiable reasons to be pissed the fuck off, not the least of which is that she had to kill the man she loved to protect the universe, only to have it mean nothing at all (since Thanos used the Time Stone to bring Vision back and take the Mind Stone).
A loss that she only mentions one fucking time throughout the entire movie, I might add.
She’s lost Steve, the person who brought her into The Avengers in the first place, she’s lost Natasha, she’s lost her brother, she’s lost the life she was building before the events of Infinity War. Her anger is so valid, and yet she’s made into this villain who is willing to sacrifice everything for what she wants, no matter the consequences.
2) What does she want? Her two sons WHO DO NOT EXIST IN HER UNIVERSE. They are a delusion she created.
THIS IS CALLED DISASSOCIATION, and it’s a result of profound trauma.
We have a woman who, in all reality, probably has massive PTSD, no longer knows what or who to live for, and the writers decide to now add more trauma on top of it all and make her a villain. We’re not talking about Hela here, a woman who has been bloodthirsty her entire existence and just wants power; we’re talking about someone who has been a victim of circumstances entirely outside of her control since the moment we met her, someone who is full of pain, but also love and compassion. And yet we have to sit and watch as Wanda is willing to kill an innocent teenager to live in a universe with her boys. Even when America offers to use her powers to just send her to that universe, so that Wanda doesn’t have to take her powers and kill her, Wanda refuses.
This also perpetuates the “mentally ill people are dangerous and expendable” trope, and I hate it. I absolutely fucking hate it.
3) Yes, I know, it was the Dark Hold that corrupts her and leads her to do what she does, blah blah blah, but that is such a cop out. It still works off the “women are more susceptible to evil” stereotype that the movie doesn’t even try to hide, since Dr. Strange Dream Walks using the Dark Hold and he’s not corrupted. But he’s Mr. Dr. Stephen Strange, so of course he can use the Dark Hold without consequence, even though (as a friend pointed out), up to the point he uses the Dark Hold, he’s been searching for the Book of Vashanti, the Dark Hold’s opposite, and then suddenly, without explanation, decides to use the Dark Hold to stop Wanda.
Moreover, if it really was just the Dark Hold that corrupted Wanda, that makes the end of the movie even worse because it means SHE IS STILL A VICTIM OF OTHER PEOPLE’S CHOICES, who then has to FUCKING DIE because when she finally does reach a universe with her two boys, they’re terrified of her and she realizes she’s become a monster.
FUCKING BULLSHIT.
4) I am so fucking goddamn exhausted by Marvel reducing woman characters to nothing more than their uteruses and ovaries. Joss Wheadon did it to Natasha in Age of Ultron, and now they’ve done it to Wanda, and I’m sick of it.
These are badass, fucking powerful people who could literally do and be anything they want, but because they don’t have kids/are sterilized, they’re not worth anything. Just like how the Russo brothers killed off Natasha in End Game. And how Black Widow didn’t even get her own movie until after her character had been killed off, so now they don’t have to give her a trilogy of her own.
And I keep thinking about the other women characters and how they’re represented.
Peggy Carter? Reduced to nothing more than the brief kiss she has with Steve in the first Captain America movie. Thanks for absolutely fucking nothing, Russo brothers.
Pepper Pots? Literally has no identity, no role in any of these films, outside of Tony Stark’s love interest. She even gets her own fucking powers at the end of Iron Man 3, and then immediately has them taken away. Never uses them. Sure, she wears the suit at the end of End Game, but so what? We hardly see her use it.
Lady Sif? Reduced to nothing more than the rival love interest for Thor in Dark World, and then not even in Ragnarok.
Jane Foster? Thank the movie gods for Taika Waititi, because he is actually doing justice to the powerful fucking women in the Thor comics. She’s now The Mighty Thor.
Valkyrie? She’s now the King of Asgard, thanks to Taika, but because of Disney and other people, we still don’t have a canonical scene showing she’s bisexual. Presumably, this is supposed to change in Thor: Love and Thunder, and I know if it had been up to Taika, we would have had that in Ragnarok.
Gamora? One of the most complicated women in the MCU, and in the end, sacrificed by Thanos so that he could get one of the Infinity Stones, and so that they can get Quill to mess up their attempt at getting the gauntlet from Thanos, so in the end, not even her own character with autonomy, but just a pawn in the lives of the men around her. Fucking gross.
Nebula? A badass who is, in my opinion, one of the only women characters to be given more equal footing in the MCU, but even her character development revolves around Thanos pitting her against Gamora.
Carol Danvers? Captain Marvel is still my favorite MCU film, and yet she’s not anywhere in Infinity War, and is hardly in End Game at all, and only shows up at the end for a bullshit cameo that means absolutely nothing. And so far, no word on a sequel movie for her.
The women in Black Panther are the only ones with really great, unique, character development, and that’s because Ryan Coogler actually cares about the characters he’s working with.
And sure, now we’re getting a She-Hulk series and a Miss Marvel series, but why aren’t they getting their own movies? Why don’t we have an actual MCU trilogy that actually focuses on the women of Marvel? Cause they’re not priority. The shows can fail and Marvel won’t care because they’re not investing hundreds of millions on a movie that might flop.
Multiverse of Madness is just an extension of how much the majority of the writers and directors of the MCU sincerely and truly don’t give two shits about the women of the Marvel Comics.
I am so fucking angry. I am SO fucking angry.
