Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Essential on continuity and it requires WandaVision absolutely. The antagonist's entire motivation, and the emotional logic of everything she does, comes from a nine-episode television series, and a viewer who skipped it will watch a character behave inexplicably for two hours.

Sam Raimi directing a Marvel film is the main event and it is not subtle: Dutch angles, a possessed corpse, an eye in a tunnel, jump scares, and a sequence of deaths staged with the glee of a horror director finally let off the leash. It is the closest thing to a horror film the franchise has released and the certificate was argued about.

What it does with Wanda is the divisive part. WandaVision ended with her understanding what she had done; this opens with her hunting a child in order to steal a version of her own, and the film offers no transition between the two. The argument that it undoes a carefully built arc for a villain the plot needed is a fair one.

The multiverse material is less interesting than advertised, with most universes visited for seconds. The music-note duel is the single most inventive action beat in Phase Four. Elizabeth Olsen is extremely good in a part the film mishandles.