Over 15 years and 33 films, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has thrown countless seemingly insurmountable obstacles and more than a few apocalyptic events at their line-up of superheroes trying to save the world, the universe and reality itself. Their villains are at the head of all of this; crazed scientists, treacherous government agents, brutal alien warlords, amoral industrialists, gods and monsters and everything in between, an MCU villain can be so many things. Some were unfortunately the weakest elements in the movies they appeared in, being either generic, poorly served by the script or misjudged in their performances, while others ended up being memorable highlights even above the title costumed characters. 

There are often multiple antagonists in these superhero stories so we’ve tried to stick to one villain per MCU film. This is except where it’s the same antagonist carried over into a sequel film, and in cases where there’s more than one threat to our heroes. In these instances, we’ve focussed on the most active baddies or the masterminds of the various diabolical plots.

This ranking will be based on the level of threat the various bad guys pose to our supremely skilled and miraculously superpowered heroes, the diabolical creativity of their respective master plans and the sheer evilness of their actions. Spoilers ahead!

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31. Malekith – Thor: The Dark World (2013)

“Look upon my legacy, Algrim. I can barely remember a time before the light.” 

A dark elf conqueror with a vendetta against Asgard for a defeat in ancient times, Malekith is reawakened and plots to snuff out the light across the universe (because his kind really like the darkness of the void).

A hugely distinct and memorable villain from the comics became one of the most boring to ever antagonise a superhero movie. Whatever Christopher Eccleston was trying to do with his performance after undergoing many uncomfortable hours in the makeup chair was lost in a brutally hacked film edit and an all-round po-faced determination to live up to the “dark” of the title.

Note: dark is not the same as interesting. 

30. Ivan Vanko/Whiplash – Iron Man 2 (2010)

“You come from a family of thieves and butchers, and like all guilty men, you try to rewrite your history.”

Whiplash is a Stark-hating, parrot-loving nuclear physicist/inventor with arc reactor-powered whips and an army of drones to carry out his revenge.

Mickey Rourke got a lot of jobs in quick succession as various shades of tough guy in this period. The Wrestler this is not, and he doesn’t exactly stretch himself as Ivan, offering a barely passable Russian accent and playing with a toothpick as a poor substitute for a more intricate characterisation as he plots vaguely defined Cold War-fuelled vengeance on Tony Stark and the American Military Industrial Complex.

29. Emil Blonsky/Abomination – The Incredible Hulk (2008)

“If I took what I had now, and put it in a body that I had ten years ago, that would be someone I wouldn’t want to fight.”

Abomination is an unstable British Black Ops asset who volunteers for a series of dangerous experimental super soldier treatments in order to capture the Hulk.

The Incredible Hulk worked best when it was Marvel’s answer to a Universal Monster movie, but one of its weakest elements was having Blonsky as its villain. Roth is fine, but he just wasn’t all that threatening, the character thinly sketched as a violent jerk with a superiority complex. When he finally transforms into his bony green alter ego Abomination for a CG smashathon in Harlem, it becomes almost impossible to care.

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28. Dar-Benn – The Marvels (2023)

“I always come back.”

Continuing what Ronan the Accuser started, Kree warrior Dar-Benn seeks to unite the two powerful Cosmic Bands in order to open portals across the galaxy to pillage resources from countless worlds to restore her dying planet of Hala and reassert her species’ dominance in the galaxy.

The problem with Dar-Benn is not her evil-for-the-right-reasons master plan or her relative threat level to our heroes (which is considerable considering that with space-magical enhancement she can hold her own against three formidable supes at once), it’s that there’s nothing else to her.

We needed more time for layers to come though Zawe Ashton’s broad, pantomimey performance and she too often feels like a retread of the kinds of villains we’ve seen in the MCU many times before, just a means to an end.

27. Ava Starr/Ghost – Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)

“It hurts. It always hurts.”

The Marvels Review

A scientist’s daughter with an unnatural condition that causes her to painfully phase in and out of the physical realm, Ghost resorts to stealing Pymtech to survive.

Ghost is an admirable attempt to make something interesting out of a gimmicky physics-based villain. The character is let down not by Hannah John-Kamen’s engaging and tortured performance but by her essential irrelevance to the film’s main plot and lack of enough meaningful screen time. It’s almost like they only decided late in the day that Ant-Man and the Wasp should have an antagonist at all, and that may have been the wrong decision for this particular movie. 

26. Ronan – Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

“I don’t recall killing your family. I doubt I’ll remember killing you either.”

Ronan is a Kree fanatic who courts war and is gathering enough power to wipe the planet Xandar from the galaxy.

Ronan, with his war paint, samurai helmet and big hammer has a strong look, and thanks to Lee Pace he is given an imposing presence and a rumbling voice. But you’d struggle to claim he had much in the way of depth as a character. He wants a weapon to destroy a planet because because he’s from a war-like race and that’s about it, though Pace’s affronted expression and confused “what are you doing?” as Star-Lord dances in front of him as he’s trying to trigger an apocalypse is pretty memorable.

25. Darren Cross/Yellowjacket – Ant-Man (2015)

“Did you think you could stop the future with a heist?”

Ant-Man Review

Hank Pym’s protégé, ouster and successor at his company, Yellowjacket seeks to weaponise and sell Pym’s shrinking technology to the highest bidder.

Marvel has a lot of evil CEOs in its rogues gallery and Corey Stoll brings plenty of punchable arrogance to his performance as Darren Cross. He murders rivals and exterminates animal test subjects without second thought, seemingly motivated by Pym not trusting him with the secrets of his technology (though really it’s because he enjoys doing it). 

Cross does have probably the most gruesome villain death in the MCU so far, and it’s no more than he deserves.

“There was an idea…”

Said idea was different to almost every version of the big screen superhero seen previously. Rather than each costumed hero existing in their own sealed-off vivariums, what if they could all share one interconnected universe containing a single ever-evolving and expansive story?

Once the idea gained traction, billions of dollars, and many “phases” of franchise continuity, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) became the envy of every studio with a lucrative intellectual property to siphon and thus many attempts were made to replicate the success of the “Marvel Formula”.

Much like the James Bond series in the decades before it, the MCU is primarily a producer-led franchise, the ultimate mastermind behind the project being Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, though distinct directors like Jon Favreau, Joss Whedon and Taika Waititi have certainly left their mark on their respective entries in the ongoing series.

What keeps us (and wider box office audiences) coming back, aside from the ever-increasing levels of superhero spectacle and long-form storytelling borrowing liberally from 80-plus years of comic books, is the time you’re afforded to grow to love the characters and their relationships with each other, especially in the ambitious team-up Avengers movies.

In this edition of Ranked we at The Film Magazine are assessing every entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and because fans have very different opinions on the best, the worst and everything in between regarding this series, we’ve attempted to find a balance between average critical consensus and general audience reception, as well as genre innovation and the lasting impact on popular culture, to order all of them definitively from worst to best.

Ladies and gentlemen, for your consideration… Every MCU Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie Ranked.

Follow @thefilmagazine on X (Twitter).

33. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)

“A guy dressed like a bee tried to kill me when I was six. I’ve never had a normal life.”

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania Review

The Ant-Man films are probably the most inconstant sub-series in the MCU, quality wise, but because the final chapter of their trilogy tries to go both big and small, it well and truly overreaches itself.

Pitting the Lang/Van Dyne family against Kang the Conqueror in the Quantum Realm, force of nature Jonathan Majors playing a fascinating villain isn’t quite enough to save Peyton Reed’s threequel from being just an eye-catching jumble of mismatched, tonally confusing ideas.

For Kang’s first, less maniacal appearance and the start of this whole Multiverse Saga, make sure to watch Season 1 of ‘Loki’.

32. Eternals (2021)

“We have loved these people since the day we arrived. When you love something, you protect it.”

Eternals Review

Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) is a great director, no doubt, but she was just not a good fit for the MCU in this story of space gods guiding humanity’s progress. Considering the usually grounded and singular vision of her work, this was a particularly crushing disappointment for most audiences.

The ambition and epic millennia-spanning scope of Eternals sadly did not pay off in this jarring, misjudged slog of a final product that couldn’t even be saved by a stellar and diverse cast. 

31. The Marvels (2023)

“Listen to me, you are chosen for a greater purpose. So you must go. But I will never let you go.”

The Marvels Review

The Marvels smartly builds a lot of its appeal around its central team-up of Carol Danvers, Monica Rambeau and Kamala Khan as their power usage causes them to swap places across the universe, but their found family warmth and oodles of charisma can’t overcome all the film’s flaws.

This needed more purposeful storytelling, a villain that doesn’t feel like a retread of what came before and more direct confrontation of the darker implications of the story. The musical elements will likely make an already decisive movie more so, but the MCU overall could do with some more audacious imagery like what Nia DaCosta does with alien cats.

Watching ‘Wandavision’ and ‘Ms Marvel’ through beforehand will certainly help you connect with two of the three leads that bit quicker.

30. Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

“Whosoever holds these weapons, and believes in getting home, if they be true of heart is therefore worthy, and shall possess… for limited time only, the power… of Thor!”

Thor: Love and Thunder Review

Taika Waititi is the kind of distinct voice that gave the MCU a jolt in the arm when it was most needed, and he was vital in reinvigorating the Thor series, but the tonal balance and technical polish certainly felt off in 2022 release Thor: Love and Thunder.

Good performances from Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman and Christian Bale, and some memorable set pieces aside, Thor’s latest adventure battling a god-killer with his now superpowered ex-girlfriend Jane Foster at his side feels like too many mismatched stories smashed together.

Recommended for you: Taika Waititi Films Ranked

29. Thor: The Dark World (2013)

“One son who wanted the throne too much, and other who will not take it. Is this my legacy?”

The God of Thunder’s third film appearance tries to live up to its title with a story of dark elves trying to snuff out all light in the universe. Sadly, a late change in director – Alan Taylor taking over from would-be Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins – and extensive Loki-centric reshoots didn’t help an already disjointed film feel any less so.

Thor’s dynamic with his Earthbound friends is still funny and more Loki (shoehorned in or not) is always a good thing with Tom Hiddleston in the role, but the storytelling is inconsistent at best and Christopher Eccleston under heavy prosthetics as Malekith may be the most boring villain in the MCU so far.

28. Iron Man 2 (2010)

“The suit and I are one. To turn over the Iron Man suit would be to turn over myself, which is tantamount to indentured servitude or prostitution, depending on what state you’re in.”

The MCU’s first direct sequel went bigger and darker with Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark fighting a vengeful Russian inventor, a rival industrialist and potentially fatal health problems. Unfortunately, this ended up being a much less focussed, overblown and not all that compelling movie.

Scarlet Johansson makes her debut as Black Widow here, though she’s just a generic sexy spy at this point and not yet given the dimensions other writers would later bestow. The action is decent enough, but you wouldn’t lose out on much of you skipped over Iron Man 2 on your next MCU rewatch.

27. The Incredible Hulk (2008)

“You know, I know a few techniques that could help you manage that anger effectively.”

Lacking the clear intentions and boldness of many subsequent MCU movies, The Incredible Hulk is stylistically old-fashioned but works slightly better if you view this as a big-budget tribute to sympathetic monster movies (this one was made by Universal, after all).

A movie filled with false starts and one-off appearances (most obviously Edward Norton’s Bruce Banner would be recast with Mark Ruffalo for The Avengers in 2012), very little was carried over to the wider franchise right up until Tim Roth’s reappearance in ‘She-Hulk’ fourteen years later.

This is generally uninspiring stuff, with its most interesting man-on-the-run elements cribbed from the 1970s ‘Incredible Hulk’ TV show.

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On the screen, Marvel Studios’ trusted output has been received positively by critics and audiences alike, the majority of its thirty feature releases being well received and worthy of their hype, even their so-called “calculated risks” being more often refreshing to their already established formula than detrimental to their overall output.

Cinema has been forever changed by the dawn of Marvel’s big screen dominance and old-school serial approach to storytelling, Disney’s newly ordained crown jewel inspiring every rival studio and aspirational production company to gobble up trusted IPs and set forth plans for so-called Movie Universes based around everything from fellow superheroes to famous board games, reinvented children’s cartoons to horror characters.

In this edition of Ranked, we at The Film Magazine are putting the world’s most influential film franchise under the microscope to compare every feature length Marvel release with one another to determine which MCU films are the best and which are the worst, judging each on artistic merit and cultural impact.

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter. 

30. The Incredible Hulk (2008)

To this day, Louis Leterrier’s 2008 MCU contribution The Incredible Hulk is the forgotten member of the family. And, while this isn’t necessarily this distinctly average film’s fault and is actually more to do with Edward Norton refusing to return to his role as the Hulk following strained relationships with both director and studio, as well as how the rights to the Hulk character are locked in a contract that limits Marvel Studios from telling a standalone story with Mark Ruffalo, a lot can still be said for how dated this film is – The Incredible Hulk playing a lot more like Spider-Man 3, Fantastic Four and X-Men: Origins – Wolverine than the later and much more tasteful Marvel Studios offerings to come in this list.

Recommended for you: Every X-Men Movie Ranked

29. Thor: The Dark World (2013)

The worst of a bad bunch of uninspired sequels, Alan Taylor’s Thor: The Dark World not only seemed absent of the comedy and much of the mythology of the original Thor film but it also hit at precisely the wrong time – that being between the much more highly anticipated Iron Man 3 and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and the year after the original The Avengers.

Thor 2 was generic in a Suicide Squad “angry swirl of evil descending from the sky for no reason” kind of way; a movie so uninspired Chris Hemsworth has openly spoken about how he almost quit the role because of it; a perfectly serviceable sequel (especially at the time), but one of little consequence or imagination that few get excited to rewatch – an MCU entry that time hasn’t been very kind to.

28. Iron Man 2 (2010)

The first Iron Man was such a huge success creatively, artistically, critically and financially for Marvel Studios that a quick-turnaround 2nd movie was demanded to bolster Phase One’s launch – a period in the history of the MCU that was a lot more rocky than many are willing to admit.

Iron Man 2 was a failure in all of the ways Iron Man was a success, apart from financially, offering bland and sometimes barely comprehensible moments of action, dialogue and character. As a result, Iron Man 2 fits right in alongside the likes of The Amazing Spider-Man as a very particular brand of cheesy and uninspired comic book movie that was made more to earn a quick buck than it was to fulfil any creative or artistic need. It has its moments – which movie starring Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man doesn’t? – but thankfully the MCU has proven itself to be better than this in its other phases since.

27. Ant-Man and The Wasp (2018)

Coming between Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame – ie, post-snap – Ant-Man and The Wasp was put in an awful position to succeed, the creative minds behind the film having to choose between embracing the actions of Infinity War or ignoring them altogether. They chose the latter (at least until the film’s final moments), but what fans wanted was something of an indicator as to what was to come in Endgame, or at least a taste of post-Infinity War’s MCU landscape, and the comedy-centred light-heartedness of an Ant-Man movie was an example of Marvel Studios not taking a minute to read the room.

More than that, Ant-Man and The Wasp felt scaled down from the original, its outlandish creative ideas brought into line with the wider MCU look and feel of things, making what seemed like a promising sequel to a moving and hilarious comedy one of the studio’s most formulaic and typically “superhero movie” releases to date – the “formula” not being necessarily bad, but certainly overplayed.

26. Eternals (2021)

Eternals Review

Eternals came with a lot of hope and expectation given the nature of the original material it was being adapted from and how it was the first MCU entry to be directed by an Oscar-winning director (Chloé Zhao). Ultimately, it proved too much of a mix of the trusted Marvel formula and director Zhao’s trademark directorial style, the clashes between action and existentialism forcing a disjointed rhythm in the filmmaking that made Eternals feel way longer than it was (which was one of the longest MCU films in history) and hit home way less effectively than anyone would have hoped.

As a product of the world’s largest production arm, Eternals was hopefully diverse from cast to crew, but ultimately this release had two authorial presences that seemed to clash on screen, this already troubling combination being amplified by its position in the MCU as a part of the studio’s fourth phase and thus responsible for a number of story elements and character introductions barely relevant to its standalone narrative.

25. Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

Thor: Love and Thunder Review

Despite featuring one of the most empathetic and exceptionally-performed villains in Marvel Cinematic Universe history, Thor: Love and Thunder was a messy fourth instalment in the God of Thunder’s individual franchise, a film that flipped between tones as if at a loss at how to create both meaningful drama and laugh-out-loud comedy.

In comparison to post-2012 Marvel releases, the action was relatively poor too. Gone were the exceptionally choreographed sequences of the mainstream Avengers films or the differing styles of Black Widow, Doctor Strange and Shang-Chi, and in its place were bland and almost inconsequential battles repeated, a few moments of awe failing to rectify for a movie’s worth of oversights.

Thor: Love and Thunder is an enjoyable time at the movies. It will make you laugh and it does have some interesting moments, but these pros are simply too few and far between to make for a strong (or even meaningful) MCU entry.

24. Iron Man 3 (2013)

Adored by some and maligned by others, Iron Man 3 simply came about much too early, screenwriter-director Shane Black’s offerings of genre and trope deconstructions – most notably the choice to twist a genuinely fascinating villain into a trope-ridden stereotypical bad guy as a form of commentary – being things usually reserved for the dying days of a genre, not for one of its peaks.

This film was the follow up to The Avengers where Tony Stark had almost died, so Black’s smarts didn’t hit as they could have much later in the studio’s line-up – people wanted emotion and stakes, as well as suitable conclusions to character arcs, and Black’s work was seen to undermine that, the very strong work in several aspects of this film ultimately shunned to the background of a film dominated by a creator’s singular intention seemingly forced into the canon at the wrong time.

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That’s fine, generally, when the movie is an original piece or a sequel to a long-beloved franchise – Jungle Cruise and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker spring to mind – but in an age in which the superhero reigns supreme in all multiplex cinemas, where Marvel stands tall among your options and DC offer more films, the blockbuster sphere’s choices in representation must face more scrutiny. Both Marvel and DC should be praised for an often interesting route of colour-blind casting, shifting the films away from a sea of white faces like their comic book counterparts, but when it comes to sexuality the cinematic multiverses of both comic book companies have been let down. 

Things change in adaptations – outfits are modified, origins tweaked, sometimes even superpowers are added or subtracted – but characters’ sexualities are often so intensely a part of who they are that taking them away is undoubtedly detrimental to their representation. What would Spider-Man be without his pining for MJ or Gwen? What would Batman be without his flirtations with Catwoman? The comic books they’re based on are filled with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters. But, while generally gay, lesbian or trans characters have just been flat out avoided, bisexual characters have been straight-washed into oblivion. 

From the start of the modern era of comic book movies, canonically bisexual characters have been dumped into the wasteland of being depicted as straight. The “X-Men” comics, for example, have always been political stories – Stan Lee based Professor Xavier and Magneto on Martin Luther King and Malcolm X – but under the tenure of Chris Claremont, the stories dovetailed into addressing the oppression he saw en masse: that faced by the LGBTQ+ community. 

Claremont wrote in the 80s, during the AIDS crisis, and his stories followed similar routes. Rogue is one of the central heroes of the original X-Men trilogy, and yet for the three films she is only ever presented as straight. Much was made about how Ian McKellen suggested certain scenes in X2 allude to “coming out”, and yet the sexualities of the canon characters remained ignored. This is even more interesting given that Rogue actress Anna Paquin is bisexual, and the director of X-Men and X2, Bryan Singer, is also bisexual, yet Rogue is reduced to someone pining for a boy. Notoriously homophobic director Brett Ratner, brought in to helm the third film, even forces a pointless love triangle for her, Rogue being pined after by both Ice-Man and Shadowcat. 

What becomes more perplexing is that the prequel quadrilogy – X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix – pivots to focusing on the young iteration of Mystique. In the original films, Rebecca Romijn’s interpretation is a loyal, and lethal, second-in-command to Magneto until she is turned “normal” by the mutant cure. But in the prequels Jennifer Lawrence is given a much more substantial role, eventually becoming the focus of the second film. Yet, despite the prequels being even more overt in their allusion to LGBTQ+ issues (Mystique’s final line in First Class is “mutant and proud”), she is depicted as straight, First Class presenting her burgeoning romance with Nicholas Hoult’s Beast and her growing interest in Michael Fassbender’s Magneto. 

Despite going off on her own for the subsequent two films, there is nothing made of her sexuality. She is depicted as straight despite Mystique’s status as a bisexual woman. What makes this worse is that there is plenty to mine in terms of representation. Mystique’s list of powers includes shapeshifting. This provides ample chance to explore the concept of passing for straight. Had they used her sexuality properly, this could have been a way to look at how people sexually express themselves – her blue form representing her interest in men and women, her “normal” form being a way of conforming to the sexuality binary of gay or straight. 

Bryan Singer also directed Days of Future Past and Apocalypse, thus making his four X-Men films notable for being so lacking in representing their characters properly. In Apocalypse, for example, Olivia Munn’s Psylocke is reduced to a near-mute henchman of villain Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac). Munn is given nothing to do. In fact, she has the least of the four Horseman that follow Apocalypse, and by the end is the only one not to die (ArkAngel) or defect (Storm, Magneto). She skulks off into the shadows never to be referenced again. 

The argument could be made that these are films aimed at children and a large mainstream audience, and that in the early 2000s having two prominent bisexual characters would have been hard to do. But, as the world has changed, the fact that the X-Men films stuck to borrowing from LGBTQ+ culture without properly showing it becomes all the more troublesome. It extends further than just the mainline films, too. R-rated swear-fests like Deadpool and Deadpool 2 don’t offer much in the way of showing people. 

Much was made of Brianna Hildebrand’s Negasonic Teenage Warhead being shown in Deadpool 2 to be in a same-sex relationship with Yukio (Shiori Katsuna). This would be a huge step in the right direction, incorporating Hildebrand’s own sexuality into her character and staying true to the roots of the comics, if it weren’t for the fact that despite three leading appearances (once in a poor Wolverine prequel and twice in his own films) Deadpool himself is reduced to being straight. 

In the comics, Deadpool is an out, proud and extremely loud pansexual character flaunting his sexuality at any chance he gets. The first film opts, instead, to offer a love story of him trying to cure his own cancer to be with his love Vanessa. Despite Ryan Reynolds being perfect for the role, and having a very sex-positive attitude – a funny scene of him being pegged for International Women’s Day is a highlight – the first Deadpool film still presents the character as straight. Even in the sequel where Vanessa is unceremoniously killed in the opening act, the film becomes a long meditation on loss and Deadpool’s pining for his heterosexual love.

Deadpool is never shown as anything other than straight. Flirting with men sure, but never expressly showing himself engaging in sex with men. Given that the film is excessively violent, and filled with bad language, showing Deadpool having sex with a man would not be out of the realm of doable and certainly negates the excuse of avoiding such to reach large family audiences.

Marvel Studios, under the guidance of Kevin Feige, have tried in part to offer better representation. It’s clear that, for a period of time when Feige answered to Ike Perlmutter, there was a tension between Feige’s desire to show the full spectrum of the universe and Perlmutter’s bottom-line decisions to not make black or women-focused films, meaning that the time it took to get Black Panther and Captain Marvel are indicators as to why no LGBTQ+ characters appeared until Chloe Zhao’s Eternals, released in 2021.

This excuse can only extend so far, however. Perlmutter has been ousted for some time, and yet the Marvel Cinematic Universe has still not done much to course-correct this oversight. Loki, perhaps one of the MCU’s most popular characters, is a prime example. Having first appeared in Kenneth Branagh’s 2011 film Thor, Tom Hiddleston has played the role across five additional films and a spin-off Disney+ series. In the films, little is shown about Loki’s internal life, the focus being squarely on the family dynamics of him, his brother Thor, and his parents Frigga and Odin. 

The issue arises in his self-titled series ‘Loki’. While much was made about showing variant versions of Loki, the exploration of his sexuality boils down to one conversation in which he summarises his companion Sylvie’s sexuality as both, before confirming that his is also both. The focus on looking at Loki falling for his female variant undoes what was genuine chemistry between Hiddleston and Owen Wilson as his mentor-figure Mobius. Showing a more sensitive side to Loki, and him being the central character, could have allowed for his sexuality to come into its own. 

Even when variant versions of Loki are introduced, none are afforded any insight. A sexually liberated Loki, replete with both male and female partners, could have been presented to offer an insight into Loki’s head and heart. It is telling that, for all the potential Lokis we are presented with (an ageing one, an arrogant one, one that is a crocodile), they opted for one of them to be a child, as doing so has long been a guaranteed way for comic book adaptations to avoid inevitable questions regarding sexuality representation.

Kid Loki actor Jack Veal, at 14, is much too young to be depicted as sexually liberated. And he’s not alone. X-Men spin-off Logan took bisexual character Rictor and made him a child too, robbing him of his sexuality. But even within the MCU this tactic has been used multiple times…

‘WandaVision’ explores the world of Wanda Maximoff, and her creation of her two sons Billy and Tommy. Both are shown primarily as children around the age of ten. For anyone familiar with the comics, both children are a part of the LGBTQ+ community. Julian Hilliard’s Billy/Wiccan is gay in the comics, while Jett Klyne’s Tommy/Speed is bisexual. Putting them into the world as children might mean there is longevity for their arcs, but we are yet to see any representation of these fundamental character traits in their appearances across ‘WandaVision’ and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. 

What appears to be the changing status of the MCU is Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder in which Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie will be searching for a Queen to rule alongside her. Thompson and Waititi confirmed before the release of Thor: Ragnarok that Valkyrie is bisexual, but a scene depicting her leaving her room with a woman was cut for “pacing”. Even so, introducing your first proudly bisexual character after 29 films feels a little too late given that Valkyrie isn’t the main character of the film anyway. 

The rival to the MCU, the DC Extended Universe, is not much better, despite a rich history of bisexual characters to choose from. One of the cornerstones of the DCEU is Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, first introduced in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Diana Prince has gone on to star in two versions of Justice League and two solo films. Her first solo film, Wonder Woman, plays out like an epic war story romance, with director Patty Jenkins opting to tell a story of compassion and love during World War I. Diana is shown to have been raised on the mythical island of Thymescira, populated only by Amazon women. Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor is the first man she has ever seen. 

Their romance forms the backbone of the narrative, allowing her to see the contradictions of mankind, and his heroic sacrifice convinces her that mankind has redeeming qualities. In the follow up, Wonder Woman 1984, Trevor is resurrected via a wish. The main point of contention is that his resurrection means he possesses the body of a totally different man. Despite the film’s epic runtime, WW84 underdeveloped one aspect of its narrative: the clear flirtations between Diana and Kristen Wiig’s Barbara (who becomes the villainous Cheetah). In the comic books, all Amazons engage in same-sex relationships. As such, Diana has been portrayed consistently as bisexual, as has Cheetah. Their relationship or, more aptly, their lack thereof, seems dismissive of a fundamental part of each of these famous comic book characters.  

Jenkins’ exploration of love could have extended to showing Diana and Cheetah falling in love and Cheetah’s villainous turn being the emotional point of contention. While the comic code authority put a stop to most explicit depictions of Diana’s attraction to women for some, her creator William Moulton Marston was a professor who theorised that the world would be better under the loving authority of women. Diana herself was based on two women, his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston and their mutual lover Olive Byrne. Byrne was also the daughter of radical feminist Ethel Byrne and niece of Margaret Sanger. The fact that Wonder Woman was explicitly based on two bisexual women, and radical feminists, is as key to her character as the lasso of truth, yet in Wonder Woman and WW84 it is absent.

Similarly, the DCEU’s other consistent character is Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, first introduced rather unfortunately as the abused and lovelorn sidekick of The Joker in David Ayer’s Suicide Squad. As one of only two female members of the team, Harley is the sexual object, the one who walks into battle against an ancient witch in hot pants and a crop top.

Given that the most praised aspect of the negatively reviewed film was Harley Quinn, it’s not a surprise a spin-off was green-lit. For some reason, instead of taking her away from a team and allowing her to shine on her own (or at least with her on/off girlfriend from the comic books Poison Ivy), DC pushed her into a group, the all-girl Birds of Prey. Director Cathy Yan begins the film with Harley narrating her life story over animation, including her lamenting failed relationships. Here, an image of her with another female is shown briefly and then nothing is made of it. 

Despite Yan’s best efforts to subvert the tropes of many women-centred comic book films – practical outfits, decent fight scenes, etc. – the film falls into queer-baiting tropes. Despite the prominent role for Rosie Perez’s lesbian detective Montoya (who is shown to have an ex-girlfriend briefly), the film does nothing with its LGBTQ+ characters. There are no references made to Harley’s sexuality outside of the opening animation, and given that this is entirely her emancipation, that is noticeable by its absence. It should also be noted that there is heavy queer-baiting on the part of villains Black Mask (Ewan McGregor) and Victor (Chris Messina), without ever properly exploring it. 

It’s this lack of care shown to Harley’s sexuality that best illustrates how studios continue to consider bisexuality as something to be erased. And this is made worse in James Gunn’s R-rated gore fest The Suicide Squad in which Harley’s subplot is based entirely around her falling in love with her captor (a nondescript Latin-American fascist). Gunn’s genuine attempt to inject emotion into the caper is admirable, but making her subplot entirely about this romance with another man once again robs us of the full spectrum of her sexuality. 

Much of the erasure comes in the midst of these large multi-film franchises, but 2005’s Constantine is not such a film. Francis Lawrence’s take on the main character from the ‘Hellblazer’ comics is so radically different it should be laughed at. Alan Moore’s creation, a Sting-lookalike Liverpudlian occultist, dons a trademark pale trench coat and red tie to do battle with the forces of the unnatural. In Lawrence’s film, Keanu Reeves plays him as an American, black haired guy in a black suit. What’s more, the film makes no reference to his bisexuality which is ever-present in the comics. 

Given that Constantine was an action-horror aimed at adults, there is no excuse for this to happen. Moreover, Constantine wasn’t tied to any ongoing franchise so did not need to curtail to bigger universe needs. While the film is interesting for casting Tilda Swinton as Gabriel, giving the angels an androgynous look, it’s still questionable why sex is barely present. There is a hint that Peter Stomare’s underused Lucifer is sexually interested in everyone (he is also bisexual in the comic books), but nothing is made of it. 

More so than any other comic book character, John Constantine has been a symbol of the punk era, showing Moore’s ability to imbue a subculture with stakes. His bisexuality, at a time when AIDS was a very real threat to the LGBTQ+ community, makes him more than just a cool guy who fights demons, he’s one of the first comic book characters to proudly have that sexuality. This is lost in his film translation. 

It remains to be seen if proper strides are going to be taken to change this kind of flawed ideological process. With films taking on long-form narratives now, and no sign of the big superhero machine stopping, it’s probably time to question if we’re really “respecting canon” by not representing a key aspect of any given character. After all, the importance of people being represented has been spoken about time and time again.

For now we have to settle on the promise that something might become of people gesturing to an interest in “both”, that superhero cinema will one day be brave enough to take a stand against sexuality inequality and discrimination just as it has long taken a stand against demons, aliens and gods. 

Written by Paul Klein

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In Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, viewers are spoon-fed characterisation and exposition using dialogue akin to the airplane method weirdly successful with infants. Viewers and fans deserve more credit.

The MCU web is a complex one. Even for those who have keenly watched every film release, and would be confident naming all characters on the board of a Marvel-themed edition of Guess Who, there are a lot of moving parts, both at an individual film level and in the ever-expanding list of crossovers, cameos, and introductions. So much so, that fans are, with every release, becoming more reliant on blog posts and videos to explain these references. With that in mind, wouldn’t some merciful condescension offer some clarity?

Increasingly often, and never more so than in Marvel Studios’ latest offering Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, we aren’t afforded the privilege. Instead, audiences are left to wonder about – or miss altogether – the myriad of possible connections between characters, between narratives, between universes and even multiverses, instead having the specific plot points broadcast to us in headline phrases. Given the enormous success and budget of Marvel’s visual effects department, it is safe to say that they can be trusted to illustrate events without some of the world’s most famous actors simplifying their performances like they’re a tour guide. But it’s the dialogue that is to blame…

Stronger dialogue is often identified as having two very simple traits: it shows, rather than tells, and; it’s individual and idiomatic. In Michael Waldron’s Multiverse of Madness script, speech does the opposite.

Parts of the film feel like they are a collage of phrases from other Marvel movies, and act purely as a textual description of an on-screen event. Viewers need dialogue to characterise and/or progress the plot, as well as entertain them, but here it is used in a foundational way that feels unfinished. Similar to the production of a first draft, where the script’s job is to build the story’s pillars and walls before they’re painted in subsequent versions with vernacular and believable emotion, Doctor Strange 2’s impressive cast is forced to utter lines that feel like they could have instead been reminders about what CGI was planned for post-production. The experience of watching this film could be noticeably improved by focusing more on allusion, subtext, and inference, rather than by repeatedly staging – and losing – a battle between a line’s quotability and cheese.

Here are some of the worst examples:

‘Kamar-Taj must now become a fortress.’

Wong growls this after a roughly ten-minute insight into Wanda’s commitment to out-do Mrs Doubtfire in reaching her children. Viewers know she’s coming, and for whom, and there is even a neat sequence where all the other sorcerers arrive in defence of the stronghold. Because of these, audiences are capable of inferring that the combative actions and stances of all these characters is a defensive move against Scarlet Witch. So why collapse the tension with a line from an 11-year-old writing a comic book?

Better options for this would be to either: move the plot like this does but in a less derivative way, such as bellowing an imperative to ‘Lock the Gates’; or provide some light-relief in the form of a complaint: ‘When do I get a day off?’ or ‘All you’ve done is give me a headache, Strange’. Wong repeatedly shows this irreverent streak in times of significant tension, so why not then?

‘Come in and tell me everything about your universe’

In one of the other universes Strange visits, he meets previous adversary Baron Mordo, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who enthusiastically delivers this line like a welcoming old friend. Of course, this is how (albeit with a little suspicion shared by fans and Strange) he is portrayed in this moment. But this line is too functional and not realistic enough. Instead, the writer could have used another declarative more indicative of a friendly relationship, such as ‘Let’s get you out of that ridiculous coat’, or used an interrogative that characterises, or perhaps is used as a red herring, to incite trust from viewers. This could be, for example, ‘How’s the tea over there (in your universe)?’ or ‘Is Wong still taking himself too seriously?’ Either could be used as a segue into a subsequent scene where Strange explains his predicament or the reality of his universe.

‘Perhaps if I can pull you from the rubble, the spell will break’

The communication of this plot point is simple to fix: it should belong to the visual medium. Aside from some budgetary constraint (which seems an incongruent concept with Marvel), it seems odd to imagine this being a conscious choice, to have this said rather than shown.

Perhaps, for example, initial jerks of the character out of the rubble are met with a hazing, or a stretching of the spell, a cracking in the pattern seen on screen. This option would avoid that squirm-inducing feeling of being patronised, unfortunately present at various points throughout Multiverse of Madness.

There are more of these, notably ‘Go back to hell’ and ‘Face the eternal consequence’, which both seem like direct quotations from director Sam Raimi’s earlier film Drag Me to Hell, but the rules are the same – not enough of the polishing or individualising that makes scripts effective.

So why did they make the final cut? Surely Marvel, with its seemingly infinite resources and clear ability to manage outrageous plot structures, have included this type of dialogue for a specific reason?

In parts, it is easier to see the motive behind the dialogue. For example, Wanda’s intentionally tropey dialogue, continued from ‘Wandavision’ as a symbol of her naivety about family life and longing for mediocrity, is great. Most audiences notice the stock phrases and priorities, and they work successfully as foreshadowing or dramatic irony. In addition, there are parts of the film where the dialogue appears as scaffolding, acting as a stabiliser for younger viewers or those new to the MCU. Even so, to both demographics, the visual medium is surely a more powerful tool. By eliminating this weaker dialogue, writers can avoid some of the ‘Theme Park’ criticisms of Marvel films made by directors such as Martin Scorsese, and allow audiences to focus on other, stronger, elements of the film.

Potentially the most noteworthy strength of Multiverse of Madness is Raimi’s use of horror tropes, which are, despite their frequency, undoubtedly entertaining, as well as contributory towards a darker tone many have called for to be in more Marvel films. The Evil Dead-esque chase sequences, the violence that pushes the limit of PG-13 content, the obligatory hand springing from the ground, all of these are signatures of a director who appreciates the relationship between fear and fun, a balance films such as Venom and Morbius failed to strike. However, what feels nostalgic and, at times, just delightful, in these visual moments feels limiting and, in terms of audience intoxication in story, sobering, in speech. Maybe these aforementioned phrases were intentional, left in or included in meetings with Raimi and Waldron so that the tone of the fan service is complemented in dialogue. Nonetheless, it is difficult to imagine the misguided nature of that choice not becoming all too apparent on the first table-read, or take.

Dialogue is so indicative of tone, so powerful in its ability to manipulate the overall experience of a film, that it needs to be used carefully; its ability to cloud other elements of any given movie is both a tool, and an obstacle. By considering this in the drafting process, and perhaps encouraging more cooperation between screenwriters and visual effects producers, Marvel can climb out of the straight-jacket constraints of conventions it has bound itself in, and trust its audiences more than it currently is.

Written by Callum McGuigan

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Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Directors: Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
Screenwriters: Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
Starring: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, James Hong, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr, Tallie Medal

The last time Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Daniels) graced us with a film, Paul Dano was surfing on Daniel Radcliffe’s explosively farting corpse in Swiss Army Man. Everything Everywhere All at Once, as an epic inter-dimensional family drama, is certainly a different prospect to that previous quirky black comedy, though rest assured there are still plenty of crude jokes to be found in and amongst all the brain-melting concepts, honest emotionality, and kick-ass martial arts action.

Laundromat owner Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) has a lot going on in her life. Her business, co-owned with her timid husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), is struggling and due a potentially disastrous IRS audit by the formidable Deidre (Jamie Lee Curtis). At the same time, Evelyn’s daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) is visiting for Chinese New Year with her new girlfriend Becky (Tallie Medal) just as Evelyn’s formidable and traditional father (James Hong) arrives to stay. Family arguments and financial troubles fade in the rear view when an alternate version of Waymond from another dimension appears and informs Evelyn that she, and her countless other iterations, must save the multiverse from a terrible threat.

The sharpest and most astute observation Daniels make in Everything Everywhere is that most of us would see humiliatingly failing at our everyday obligations – your job, your relationships, your taxes – as far scarier prospects than reality itself being on the brink. Who cares if one hundred universes adjacent to mine are about to collapse when I’m really embarrassed and having a miserable time of it here and now? Humans can be selfish and inward-looking creatures by nature after all, unable to see the bigger picture outside of their immediate orbit.

This film is for everyone who feels, like Evelyn, that they have ended up being the most disappointing version of themselves. Every small decision made throughout life has shifted your path, created another universe where things might have gone differently, and many of us live with the regret of what might have been if we had just been bolder, braver, weirder.

Endlessly creative films like this make the most of the madness inherent in the concept of multiverses, and put more mainstream examples like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to shame. Every seemingly throwaway gag in one universe gets a worthwhile payoff in another, and the very idea that there exists a reality the same as ours except for that everyone has hotdogs for fingers is worth the price of admission alone.

Even the obligatory exposition dump where “Alpha Waymond” explains the rules for extra-dimensional travel is turned into a wonderful comic set piece in which Evelyn has to try and process the myriad workings of the multiverse and simultaneously look like she’s paying attention at her audit interview as her mind pings back and forth to a janitor’s closet in another dimension.

During his decades away from acting, Ke Huy Quan (Temple of Doom) worked with Wong Kar-Wai as an assistant director, so appropriately enough in one universe Evelyn and Waymond seem to be living in one of the Hong Kong master’s existential romances (particularly resembling Chungking Express), complete with neon-lit night-time streets, motion blurred crowds and poetic dialogue (“in another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you”). It’s great to have Quan back in front of the camera here, and he really proves his versatility as a performer, completely transforming his movements, posture, his very essence, to match the vastly different Waymonds from across the multiverse.

Quan and Stephanie Hsu end up having to do about the same amount of demanding action as Michelle Yeoh, and it’s impressive work from a stunt team reportedly sourced via YouTube. Together they create dynamic and inventive slapstick-inflected fights, like Jackie Chan if he got really into absurdist humour all of a sudden. This is all captured in Larkin Seiple’s (Cop Car; I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore) clean and expressive cinematography, and is enlivened by Son Lux’s peppy score.

It’s Yeoh’s show of course, and her star power radiates like a small sun. The Daniels have fun packing the film with references to her long career in order to provide Evelyn with all the necessary skills to overcome the huge array of challenges she faces (by doing something unexpected or particularly weird, characters are able to borrow talents and abilities from their other selves in other universes). A trippy montage of all the different Evelyns screaming at the camera invites freeze-framing through at a later date to fully appreciate some of the wilder character variations.

This is a really moving family story, particularly pinpointed towards the type of difficult mother-daughter relationship that doesn’t get enough attention in films in general. After Turning Red, this is the second such story in as many months exploring these issues through the lens of Chinese immigrant experiences, and much like how the family dysfunction in Domee Shi’s animated film was expressed through a big old Kaiju battle at its end, here it is the family unit vs the collapse of the multiverse. Parents need to find the balance between making a loving connection and letting go of their children, because as the Daniels theorise, one big thoughtless mistake might have catastrophic consequences for your loved ones in this world and many others. Basically, don’t be a dick to your kids or reality will collapse on you. 

Everything Everywhere All at Once cements Daniels as one of the filmmaking partnerships to watch, the directorial duo equally imaginative, technically accomplished and emotionally dialled in to what makes us humans tick. Their second film is far more assured yet just as unique as Swiss Army Man, and has more wit and invention, not to mention doing far more with maybe one-tenth of any major blockbuster’s budget. You’ll find yourself breathless, grinning and with tears running down your cheeks, and you’ll never look at some inanimate objects in quite the same way again.

Score: 22/24

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
Director: Sam Raimi
Screenwriter: Michael Waldron
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen, Xochitl Gomez, Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Stuhlbarg

In a seemingly throwaway scene in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, loudmouth newspaper editor J Jonah Jameson and his Daily Bugle staffers are furiously brainstorming what to call the new villain in town who will eventually be known as Doc Ock. When the hapless Hoffman (played by Raimi’s brother Ted) excitedly pitches they name him “Doctor Strange”, Jameson wryly responds “That’s pretty good… but it’s taken!”. Who’d have thought that 18 years later Raimi would make good on that joke?

Previously on the Marvel Cinematic Universe… Peter Parker’s secret identity as Spider-Man was revealed to the world so he asked sorcerer Doctor Stephen Strange to cast a spell to make everyone forget. That spell went wrong and the multiverse opened, bringing heroes and villains from other worlds to ours. Elsewhere (‘Wandavision’), Wanda Maximoff created and sealed herself off from the world in her own blissfully happy reality, enslaving the minds of the town of Westview in the process

Now, Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) must help protect dimension-jumping teenager America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) who is fleeing a dark force that wants to take her power and her life, all the while encountering alternate versions of his own enemies and allies.

Sam Raimi’s hugely distinctive filmmaking style probably stands up the best to MCU-ification out of all the big name directors who have played in this limitless toy box so far. Black Widow only really felt like a Cate Shortland film for its fairly low-key opening 20 minutes, and while nobody else but Chloé Zhao would have made Eternals look quite the way it did, the naturalistic, personal storytelling of her earlier work was lost amongst the space operatic hugeness of the thing. In contrast, Raimi sprinkles dark humour and disturbing visuals including jump-scares and dismemberment throughout all the usual superhero action, moments straight out of Evil Dead or Drag Me to Hell sit somewhat jarringly but proudly alongside all the predictable fight scenes between super-people. 

Standout scenes in Multiverse of Madness include a New York street battle against a tentacled cyclops, an imaginative and unexpectedly musical magical duel, and a sequence where Strange and Sorcerer Supreme Wong (Benedict Wong) try to protect their charge from her pursuer in magical sanctuary Kamar-Taj by briefly trapping them in the seemingly inescapable “Mirror Dimension”. All of these set pieces remind you that Raimi is still among the best out there at blocking action scenes and keeping the geography crystal clear among the chaos. 

This is a multiverse movie but only to the extent that it is required for the plot to keep moving and the spectacle to keep coming. Don’t go in expecting lots of groundwork to be laid for future entries in the MCU; while we are presented with the entertaining possibilities in regards to characters and who might play them in other universes, it’s pretty explicitly stated that not much of this will stick around and affect the status quo of this series going forward (next year’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania looks likely to be the next entry to do that). 

Multiverses are all the rage in Hollywood these days, from Spider-Man: No Way Home, Everything Everywhere All at Once and the upcoming The Flash, and as a storytelling trope they in theory allow you to do anything you can possibly imagine. This makes it more than a little disappointing that most of the worlds Strange and America Chavez travel to are just similar versions of New York with a slightly different colour palette. A dazzling montage that ricochets the pair through reality after reality, including one in which they’re animated and another in which they appear to be made of luminous paint, is all too fleeting.

There is a colossal bit of fan service about halfway through the film’s remarkably restrained 2 hour run-time – the much-teased Illuminati scene that is this secret society of smart superheroes’ first live-action appearance – but even this is gleefully lampshaded after the bare minimum amount of time is given for fans to squeal at who they’re seeing. 

Annoyingly for some viewers, Marvel movies now require you to at least Wikipedia the major plot points of the TV shows in order to fully appreciate their latest big screen releases. In the original pre-Covid plans for “Phase Four”, Multiverse of Madness was set to be released before No Way Home, picking up directly after the events of ‘Wandavision’. The showrunner of ‘Loki’, Michael Waldron, is on screenplay duties here and continues Wanda’s character arc from the sitcom-inspired show created by Jac Schaeffer.

Wanda/Scarlet Witch’s journey – explicit discussion of which would constitute a spoiler – is likely to provoke the most heated of discussions among fans of the character, and it is debatable whether every eye-opening moment she is given here is fully earned, but Elizabeth Olsen is still excellent in the part. 

Elsewhere in the cast, Benedict Cumberbatch is still an incredibly reliable lead allowed to bring a little melancholy to a character who finally has time to register how unfulfilling his life is when he’s not saving half the universe – plus he gets to play multiple iterations of Strange, all of whom have lived very different lives and experiences. Xochitl Gomez is a real find and has a warm repartee with Cumberbatch, while Rachel McAdams gets to be a much more active participant in the action this time around. 

There are admittedly some rather laborious exchanges, telling rather than showing using clunky dialogue to explain what the hell is going on and why it matters. Some of this might be due to having to re-write the film to fit in with the new chronological order of the MCU caused by the pandemic delays, but there must be more interesting ways to keep your audience up to speed. The middle stretch of the film, while not wasting any time, sags and loses focus, though this is the rare Marvel film that keeps momentum in its final act.

Sam Raimi has a mischievous and twisted sense of humour, but he is also a pretty sentimental sort, so in the end this film is all about love. Much like the first Doctor Strange film, this isn’t the deepest of stories but it is memorable on a visual level, moves at a pace and delights in demonstrating how a vivid directorial vision can punch up some samey material. Multiverse of Madness is flashy and pretty exciting stuff that will delight fans in the moment, but whether it will linger remains to be seen. 

Score: 17/24

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Doctor Strange (2016)
Director: Scott Derrickson
Screenwriters: Jon Spaihts, C Robert Cargill, Scott Derrickson
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, Tilda Swinton, Benedict Wong, Mads Mikkelsen, Michael Stuhlbarg, Benjamin Bratt, Scott Adkins

One of the major problems with launching new films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that a lot of the characters from Marvel comics have essentially the same origin story. “Arrogant jerk becomes selfless hero” is almost as omnipresent as DC’s “grief gives hero guilt-driven purpose”. Stephen Strange’s story may not be all that far removed from that of Tony Stark or Thor, and the first act of Doctor Strange might feel very familiar to anyone who has seen Batman Begins recently, but the rest of the film offers so much that is new on a visual and conceptual level that you don’t really mind.

Brilliant but arrogant neurosurgeon Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is brought crashing down to earth when a car accident leaves him barely able to use his hands. In a desperate search for a miracle cure, he travels to Tibet and comes under the tutelage of the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) who leads an order of sorcerers who protect time, space and reality itself from inter-dimensional threats. Will Doctor Strange put aside self-doubt and reach his full potential in time to stop renegade sorcerer Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen) from performing a dangerous ritual that will open the door to the “Dark Dimension”?

From the film’s first sequence – an eye-popping magical heist and chase through London – director Scott Derrickson is making a bold aesthetic statement. Christopher Nolan, who may have been influenced himself by Steve Ditko’s imagery from the original “Doctor Strange” comics, ain’t got nothing on this. From entire cities flipping and folding, shards of reality punching through our field of vision, an elaborate fistfight inside a reversing timeline and some good old-fashioned psychedelic mind-melting, this is easily one of the most unique visual offerings of the MCU so far. An argument could certainly be made that the benchmarks of distinctive modern visual effects used to portray reality misbehaving are Dark City and The Matrix, Inception and now Doctor Strange.

As much of a bold choice as Joaquin Phoenix (who turned down the role) would have been, Benedict Cumberbatch was born for this and makes surgeon Strange a strutting Sherlock. He is an endearingly inept magic user at first, but never above using his previous arrogance and competitive streak to try and get ahead in his new and unlikely profession. Chiwetel Ejiofor hints at a lot more going on below the surface of his calm and collected but pained Mordo, whilst Mikkelsen brings deadpan humour to Kaecilius’ interactions with Strange, and Rachel McAdams’ Dr Palmer refreshingly reacts to strange goings on like a real person would and doesn’t instantly forget her ex was a terrible person when he rocks up in a snazzy new uniform. Swinton is convincing as an ageless bastion of knowledge and generally justifies her casting over the highly stereotyped image of the Ancient One in the comics, but they could always have made her odder to really tap into Swinton’s skillset. 

It helps that Marvel is committed to keeping things light where needed, notably a pleasing recurring gag that has Strange comparing formidable arcane librarian Wong (Benedict Wong) to the endless list famous mononymous music stars. Even the most intense action set pieces get punctuated by a few slapstick gags, especially when Strange is still a novice and tends to win more by fluke (or very protective sentient cloak) than through skill.

The sheer visual onslaught is at times a bit much. It seems churlish to compare this (one of the best blockbusters of 2016) with Duncan Jones’ Warcraft released earlier the same year (which…wasn’t), but both do encounter the same problem in that human beings can only process so much information via our eyeballs at once. The opening set piece works, as does the concluding sequence for its sheer ballsinesss, but there is so much going on in the scene that ends the film’s second act where Strange and Mordo chase Kaecilius through the highly malleable “Mirror Dimension” that it’s a real challenge to keep up.

Doctor Strange may not be the most thematically demanding movie out there, but it has got imagination in abundance and personality to spare, and it’s very easy to enjoy it on a wild, pure escapist level. The way the Marvel Universe(s) are left at the end of all this certainly offers up some interesting narrative and character possibilities for the MCU’s future, and those possibilities have certainly started to bear fruit in over the past couple of years. Whereas once we might have feared how Strange joining the wider action in the MCU would remove any tension given that his powers are essentially limitless, post-Thanos those fears have proven unfounded. Besides, there are other formidable (and colour coded) magic users sharing this universe who have had a pretty bad time in their appearances of late and who could conceivably abracadabra even Strange into oblivion without much effort should they wish to…

19/24

While challenges remain ongoing for the film industry and so much has yet to be written regarding the future of exhibition amidst our global efforts against the pandemic, the slate of movies due for release in 2022 seems just as full and exciting as the last few months of 2021. Amongst the most hotly anticipated releases sit blockbuster heavyweights from Marvel and DC, delayed should-be summer hits, some brand new tear-jerking animated films from the world’s most successful studios, a spate of direct-to-streaming offerings, and a handful of films that could take the festival and awards circuits by storm.

In this, The Film Magazine’s 2022 Big Movie Preview, we are looking at the most exciting films due for release in 2022, categorising each by defining factors such as their genres and budgets. Amongst the films listed are those we have trailers for and know lots about, as well as those with little more than a director and some actors attached.

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter.

Superhero Specials

The impact of superhero cinema on the big studios’ release slates is incomparable, its importance to the exhibition industry unrivalled, its cultural imprint so significant that the realm of fantasy-action hybrids is now going by its own genred term: superhero films (or comic book movies).

In 2022, DC are following up the audience successes of Zack Snyder’s Justice League and The Suicide Squad with more DCEU releases and another entry into their darker timeline of more adult-focused superhero stories, while Marvel are doubling down on the multiverse idea that proved popular in No Way Home and look set to reimagine some of their franchise stalwarts. Here are the superhero movies to be expectant of in 2022:

The Batman (rel. 4 March 2022) – From the director of Let Me In and the last two Planet of the Apes films (Dawn and Rise) comes a dark reimagining of Batman trying to unravel the truth behind Riddler’s games. With a cast featuring Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Paul Dano, Colin Farrell, Andy Serkis, Jeffrey Wright, Barry Keoghan, Peter Sarsgaard and John Turturro, this could be an early-year mega-hit not too dissimilar to Deadpool or the late-year DC billion-dollar movie Joker.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (rel. 6 May 2022) – The long-awaited sequel to Marvel’s Benedict Cumberbatch-led superhero offering Doctor Strange sees the multiverse introduced in the latest Spider-Man movie presented through the lens of original Spider-Man director and cult hero Sam Raimi. With a powerful premise of Strange versus Strange teased in the trailer, it seems that one of Marvel’s Phase 4 leaders could be another MCU box office smash.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse – Part One (rel. 7 October 2022) – The original Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was a genre-defining hit from Sony Pictures Animation and was probably one of the greatest superhero films ever made. This October, we get its sequel, and this time follow central hero Miles Morales across different universes in his own multiverse of madness, the same quality of animation and same creative team steering the ship.

Some more to add to your watchlists (use Letterboxd, we do: /thefilmagazine):

+ Morbius (rel. 28 January 2022) – Jared Leto stars in the Spider-Man universe film from the director of Life and Child 44.

+ Thor: Love and Thunder (rel. 8 July 2022) – Taika Waititi returns to the director’s chair following Thor: Ragnarok in this upcoming MCU event movie starring the usual suspects and a returning Natalie Portman.

+ Black Adam (rel. 29 July 2022) – Dwayne Johnson stars in this DCEU anti-hero tale from Orphan and Non-Stop director Jaume Collet-Serra.

+ The Flash (rel. 4 November 2022) – It director Andy Muschietti brings Ezra Miller’s Snyderverse version of The Flash to life in another of the year’s multiverse-hopping superhero entries, with an appearance by Michael Keaton as Batman likely to be a late-year talking point.

+ Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (rel. 11 November 2022) – Marvel look set to redirect their Black Panther franchise within a franchise without lead Chadwick Boseman.

+ Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom (rel. 16 December 2022) – James Wan follows up his billion dollar hit Aquaman with its sequel starring Jason Momoa, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Nicole Kidman and a slew of big names.

Anticipated Awards Contenders

Each and every year, the festival circuit propels some noteworthy releases towards awards season, and while it is often difficult to predict which films will be hits and which won’t, we’ve looked at some of the upcoming films from respected and award-winning filmmakers to bring to you these must-adds to your watchlists.

Untitled Elvis Presley Project (rel. 3 June 2022) – Baz Luhrmann returns to the silver screen with a summertime Elvis Presley film that is set to star Austin Butler as The King of Rock and Roll and Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker. While little is known about the film at this time, including its title, anticipation is high for a new film from the director of Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!.

Babylon (rel. 25 December 2022) – Whiplash and La La Land director Damien Chazelle takes on the golden era of Hollywood in this period drama with an all-star cast. Margot Robbie will play Clara Bow, one of the few silent era actors to successfully transition into the talkies, and she will be supported by a cast including Brad Pitt, Tobey Maguire, Olivia Wilde, Kathryn Waterston, Samara Weaving, Flea and more.

Blonde (rel. 2022) – New Zealand-born director Andrew Dominik offers his first feature drama for a decade with Blonde, a look at the inner workings of the life of legendary Hollywood actress Marilyn Monroe. With the director’s previous films Killing Them Softly and The Assassination of Jesse James being such critical hits, and the cast boasting Ana De Armas in the lead role, this looks set to be a certain awards contender in at least one of the major categories at the 2023 Oscars.

Some more to add to your watchlists (use Letterboxd, we do: /thefilmagazine):

+ Thirteen Lives (rel. 15 April 2022) – Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell star in Ron Howard’s dramatisation of the harrowing real-life events that occurred in Thailand in 2018 when a group of children were trapped in a cave.

+ Untitled David O. Russell Project (rel. 4 November 2022) – American Hustle and Silver Linings Playbook director David O. Russell reunites with Christian Bale and Robert De Niro. Amongst the supporting cast are Anya Taylor-Joy, Mike Myers, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Rami Malek, Zoe Saldana and Taylor Swift.

+ Untitled Bee Gees Biopic (rel. 4 November 2022) – Kenneth Branagh is following up his critical success Belfast with a biopic of famed Australian music group the Bee Gees, though details (including cast) are currently being kept under wraps.

+ I Wanna Dance with Somebody (rel. 23 December 2022) – Harriett director Kasi Lemmons aims to chronicle the life of late pop megastar Whitney Houston (Naomi Ackie) set for release in the height of awards season.

Click to the next page for even more.

Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen is currently in talks to replace Johnny Depp as the villainous Gellert Grindelwald in the next installment of the Fantastic Beasts franchise. Grindelwald is the main antagonist in the new Harry Potter spin-off series and briefly appeared in Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 1. 

Mikkelsen recently earned critical acclaim for his starring role in Danish drama Another Round.

This news follows Johnny Depp’s departure from the series, which he announced last Friday via an Instagram post in which he revealed that studio Warner Bros. had asked him to resign. Depp, known for iconic roles such as Sweeney Todd and Captain Jack Sparrow, lost a legal battle against a British tabloid for libel after they had published a story claiming that he had beaten his ex-wife Amber Heard (Aquaman).

Mikkelsen is director David Yates’ top choice according to Deadline. The actor has appeared in multiple blockbusters in recent years, such as Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Doctor Strange. He has a plethora of smaller films under his belt too, including the critically acclaimed The Hunt and A Royal Affair, as well 2020 BFI London Film Festival Best Picture winner Another Round. Mikkelsen is also well known for his role as Le Chiffre in Casino Royale and the titular role in NBC’s ‘Hannibal’. He is set to appear in the upcoming sci-fi film Chaos Walking.

Fantastic Beasts 3 was initially schedule to be released on 12 November 2021 but has since been pushed back to 5 July 2022.