Dr Strange seeks to follow in Spider-Man’s wake of success

Los Angeles. With a mixture between adventure cinema, madness of universes and even zombie stories, Sam Raimi returns to Marvel 14 years after having closed the first Spiderman trilogy, the one starring Tobey Maguire.After the success of “Spider-Man: No Way Home”, the Marvel universe goes ahead with the new Dr Strange film, which arrives this Friday arrived in theaters around the world and will try to emulate the blockbuster of man spider with a story in which women play an important role. And he does it with “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”, a film that lives up to its title and in which Benedict Cumberbatch dresses again in the powerful cape of Stephen Strange to face none other than the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). With the action set temporarily after “Avengers: Endgame” (2019) and the fantastic series “WandaVision” (2021), Raimi pulls his taste for darkness and horror cinema to put on a film that has everything, even in excess. The first installment of “Doctor Strange” grossed in 2016 a remarkable figure but not one of the highest in the Marvel universe: 677 million dollars compared to the 1,402 that had raised a year earlier “Avengers: Age of Ultron” or the stratospheric figure of “Avengers: Endgame”, with 2,797 million in 2019 (only surpassed by the 2,847 of “Avatar” ten years earlier). But the reviews were good and the public liked this superhero of British elegance and look of a magician of the nineteenth century who in that first installment begins to develop powers that already led him to flirt with the multiverse. Now Raimi deeply explores those jumps from one universe to another and the consequences that acts in one world can generate in another, a complex story with which he seeks to approach the 1,892 million dollars raised by the last Spider-Man.A confusion with which the script plays, as Cumberbatch acknowledges in the film’s production notes: “Will it be the hero of your enemy or the enemy of your hero? Who is our Doctor Strange in the Multiverse? He literally faces versions of himself to find out,” explains the British actor. Cumberbatch is accompanied in this new adventure by a young Hispanic woman, América Chávez, played by Xochitl Gomez, an American actress of Mexican origin whose career had until now focused on television. I love how young she is because it’s something we’ve never seen before” in the Marvel universe, says the actress, who in the film peppers her dialogues in English with phrases in Spanish. The two face an increasingly powerful Wanda Maximoff, turned into the Scarlet Witch with the sole objective of finding in a parallel universe the children she created with her magic at the time when she lived with Vision (Paul Bettany) in the idyllic Westview, in the series “WandaVision”. In my opinion, it’s not much fun to always play the hero of a story that never gets it wrong,” says Olsen about a film in which there are many unexpected appearances, although not of first-rate superheroes, because we must not forget that much of the action takes place in parallel universes. In one of those worlds scattered throughout the universe Doctor Strange is dead, in another Wanda lives happily with her children and in another even the characters become cartoons. A brilliant visual exercise that at times is confusing but also fun, fast-paced, dark and terrifying. And that is a transition film towards the new Marvel universe that the production company is building hand in hand with Disney, with younger protagonists and with more women in leading roles. This same year “Thor: Love and Thunder” will arrive in theaters, with a Natalie Portman who goes from astrophysicist and girlfriend of Thor (Chris Hemsworth) to be the superheroine Mighty Thor.As well as “Black Panther” Wakanda Forever”, the continuation of the film that launched to stardom the late Chadwick Boseman, who has not been replaced in this production, headed by Letitia Weight, Angela Basett or Lupita Nyong’o. For 2023 the premiere of “The Marvels” is planned, again starring Brie Larson as Captain Marvel, very well accompanied by Ms Marvel (Iman Vellani) and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris). A whole display of female power that already began with “Eternals”, the film directed last year by Chloé Zhao, with Salma Hayek, Angelina Jolie or Gemma Chan.Read more: Bad Bunny refers to the novels Ruby and Teresa in his song A coconutBut there is still a lot left for equality to reach a universe dominated by Spiderman, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye, Hulk, Daredevil or the X-Men. Marc Anthony kisses Mexican soil during the National Fair of San Marcos

Original source in Spanish