Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

I feel like maybe Guillermo Del Toro would have nailed this one
dir: Sam Raimi
2022
Errm, this is not the best recent film I’ve seen dealing with the idea that there are an infinite number of other universes in parallel to our own.
This isn’t an entirely bad film. It’s okay. Some parts are even enjoyable. Some parts work really well. Others, not so well.
If you find either Benedict Cumberbatch or the Doctor Strange character insufferable, then you might just suffer through this a lot. If you love either of them, or you like otters, then you might enjoy sections of this flick. If you have liked Sam Raimi movies over the decades, and can watch him cribbing from his own film history to deliver a kind of scrap book / lifetime achievement award to himself, then maybe there might be some sly meta level to enjoy the flick on.
As the latest entry in the Marvel universe, it’s kind of a dead end, or at least something that seems like it’s opening up a wild, new vista, but it ends up slamming the door on itself because, I dunno, it would be too much work otherwise?
The central lynchpin of this flick, which is kinda baffling, is that out of nowhere, after however many films, Dr Strange wishes he had a girlfriend again, being Christine (Rachel McAdams).
It turns out that not only can’t Strange be with her in this universe, but, when he finds out there are lots of other ones, he finds out that he can’t be with her in those universes either.
That’s got to suck. Even if it’s an infinite number of universes, in none of them can he be happy with Christine, or, put differently, there is no universe in which Christine can put up with his bullshit for too long.
Also coming to terms with infinite possibilities still leaving someone unsatisfied, Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) has decided that killing people is way more satisfying that dealing with her various griefs. She grieves the death of her boyfriend who was a robot, being Vision, but, now stay with me if you never watched the Disney + series WandaVision, she also mourns the loss of her two magical sons, Billy and Tommy, who existed for a brief period of time when she took over a New Jersey town and turned it into a 60s 70s 80s tv sitcom hell on Earth.
If you were feeling uncharitable, you could say she was mourning two kids that never really existed, but if you told her that, she would probably kill you quite effortlessly, because she spends most of the film killing powerful people with little to no effort.
She is now so powerful she’s pretty much a threat to life even in other universes.
I just…yawn. Once we peaked with a villain who wanted to end half of all life in the universe, and now it’s like “well today’s villain is okay with destroying multiple universes!” it’s hard to give much of a damn. That goes beyond stakes that mean anything further than shrugging one’s shoulders and thinking “well okay that’s the premise, then.”