Short version: Sam Raimi’s back.
Slightly longer version: Sam Raimi hasn’t directed anything since OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL, and now I’m wondering whether I should maybe sit down to watch that after all. It’s for sure it won’t be most of a decade before Raimi directs another movie, this time. DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS is very much a Raimi joint: expect a sometimes comic take on gore, body horror, and dead people. I mention this solely because somebody was whining about this on social media, which is roughly equivalent to whining about the fact that a Kurosawa film featured swordplay. Neighbor, what were you expecting?
Anyway, fun flick if you like the idea of Sam Raimi being given a lot of money to screw around with the MCU. So, as you might imagine: I had a grand old time.
#commissionearned
Oz the Great and Powerful wasn’t BAD.
It just wasn’t Oz.
It fits well enough with the famous film, but if you obsessed about the books during your childhood…
Well, the tone is off, the geography is off, the history is off, and the details are off.
But even though that annoyed me, I still enjoyed it. It set out to tell a slightly surreal story and evoke a variety of emotions along the way, and it was successful.
If there was any significant pushback, it would be from the witches having agency.
It didn’t go the “strong independent woman misunderstood and called evil by haters” route.
The bad witches had agency, and chose to be the bad witches.
Even if one of them had sympathetic reasons, there were clear moral horizons deliberately crossed, and the choice was maintained when alternatives were presented.