Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

The Mother of All Evil

or

Night of the Walking Stranges

 

Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is not having a good night. In another of those loopy dimensions he goes into every so often that tumble and disorient you, he is trying to get to a mysterious glowing pedestal that will solve all of their problems. 

 

They? Yeah, he has with him a 'tween (Xochitl Gomez) in a star-patched jeans jacket, who supposedly has powers but currently is just having issues keeping her feet. They are being pursued by some "thing" or other (standard Marvel description: "it sure is BIG!") and Strange is hanging on by his pony-tail (he has a pony-tail?) in the fight and makes the decision to sacrifice the kid's powers in order to tray and get them out of it. Woops, bad move. It doesn't work and Strange is killed and the kid gets thrown into another Universe and it looks like the movie, Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, is over before it even gets started.

 

Damn "in media res," anyway! 

No, sorry. It was all just a terrible dream. Yeah. He's a wizard. They don't just have "dreams." Something's going on, and it's not until the good doctor attends the wedding of former flame Dr. Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams), which is a real nightmare for him, that he begins to think there might be something more to this. Christine cuts him down a peg or two by telling him "You always have to be the one with the knife" (which will have some significance later on), and then the reception is crashed by a one-eyed octopus causing a ruckus out in the streets of NYC.

Strange and the Earth's Sorcerer Supreme Wong (Benedict Wong) do battle with the thing and dang if the focus of cycloptopus is the 'tween in a star-patched jeans jacket whose name is America Chavez—this creates a synaptic issue whenever someone says "We've got to save America" and I think we're about to see some canvassing of neighborhoods. A post-octopicide talk with America reveals that she's from another part of the multi-verse, another dimensional version of our space-time, and her super-power is that she can travel between those dimensions, with, she confesses, little control about where she ends up—GPS being on the fritz or something. Strange deja vu's that this was the kid from his dream and they find the body of the other-dimensional Strange and the strange doctor concludes that "dreams are merely windows into our multi-versal selves." Before they can question whether that has been peer-reviewed, they discover markings on the calamari shards of the creature, which are recognized as rune markings and Strange decides to visit another Marvel mage, Wanda Maximus (Elizabeth Olsen), former Avenger, who has been going through her own crises on "Wandavision."

At this point, the exposition should stop or it'll turn as spoilery as Strange's spell in Spider-man: No Way Home. Leave it that things get complicated and that the opening to other Earths and other existences provide motivations, certainly to issues that remain unresolved, and complications. To its credit, the movie does a good enough job of expositioning that you don't feel you HAVE to have seen "Wandavision" or subscribe to Disney+. We get to meet a couple of other distinctive Strange's, another Wanda, a planet that has their own sort of Avengers called The Illuminati (which contains some giddiness-inducing fan-service of what comprises that group and who they are portrayed by—just don't get attached), and there's a marvelously done scene—reminiscent of Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse—that has Strange and America portaling through meta-verse after meta-verse that is marvelously creative for the 45 seconds or so that it lasts.

The best thing about the movie, though, is that director Sam Raimi is back. No, he didn't do the first one— did that—but Raimi did the first three live-action Spider-man movies and basically wrote the template for the Marvel movies, which they would do well to study if they want to make films of innovation and energy. 

It's apparent very early in the film that his style is missed—his movies, be they action or horror, always had a delirious edge to them that would invoke responses of either horror or humor, a cinematic glee embedded in their mise en scène and montage. It's an added zhuzh to the proceedings, just a propulsive nudge with a wink, a comedic snap, that other Marvel movies just don't have. It's at once an acknowledgment of the goofiness behind the super-hero concept (and that we should take it SO seriously), while also trying to push the peril and make it visceral (so that we DO take it seriously).

It's a hold-over from Raimi's origins in horror (as is a cameo from Bruce Campbell!) where the purpose is to make the "horrible" entertaining, but not so entertaining that you dismiss the darkness and the threat that the film-maker means to describe. You can have the "giggle", but it's better that you have it after a jolt, the directorial "gotcha" rewarded by the communal admission that the audience is vulnerable ("yeah I'm only human—you got me") and can be won over. 

Every movie—every theater-piece—is like that. It's a battle to win over the audience. And one can do that either by playing it safe with fan-service (and this movie is guilty of that, certainly) or by challenging—not placating—the audience in order to win its respect. Raimi is still very much of that old school (oh, he'd hate that term!) and after his box-office disappointments with Spider-Man 3 and Oz The Great and Powerful, he hasn't had a feature film made and released for 9 years. And as much as I trashed those movies, I have to say, it's good to have him back.

For all the plot contrivances, and the attempts to gin up emotional drama, DrS&MOM (oh, that's funny...) is a good ride where you don't think about those things while you're being manipulated so well. It helps that Elizabeth Olsen is a scary-good actor and that there's a good cast of great thesp's lending support all along the way.

 

It's a big improvement over the first one.

"Eyes will pop out of your brain...when you're Strange"

Moon

Written at the time of the film's release...

"Hello, I Must Be Going"
or
"Travel To Find Yourself..."

Charlie Duke lived for a couple of days on the Moon. In two documentaries,* he's repeated the story of the vivid dream that he had while feverish during a training exercise
.He and his Captain, John Young, were driving in their Boeing-built moon-buggy to an area that did not seem familiar, at least it didn't look like the geography of the place they'd been prepared for. They kept driving, and came across tracks. Tire tracks that stood out on the virgin lunar soil like they had fluorescent yellow stripes painted down them. Somebody had been here before. 

And so we got excited, told Houston, and they said 'Well, follow the tracks.' You could tell by the tread marks that the vehicle was going to the east. So we turned right, to the east. And towards the eastern end of the valley we come upon this car, as we come over the ridge and there's this car which looked very similar to the Lunar Rover and there was two figures in it. So we radioed that we'd found this car, and we start to describe it, and they start to get excited, we're excited. So we turned the car, pointed and turned the TV on, and I ran over to the passenger side and I pulled up the visor and I was looking at myself. But it wasn't like a nightmare - it wasn't like you were dead - whoever it was looked like me but it wasn't me, I'm in this dream and I'm ok, and it wasn't like a premonition. I didn't wake up, it's just me.

He told no one about that dream until after he came back from the Moon.

There's a similar thing going on in the new Duncan Jones sci-fi movie Moon (it seems like we've been inundated with sci-fi films the last few years, but we really haven't—they've been dumbed down fantasies and super-hero flicks). Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is an employee for Lunar Industries, finishing up a lonely three-year stint on the far side of the Moon, supervising and fixing up the robotic rock harvesters providing the Earth with "safe, clean" Helium 3 for energy—by this time (never specified) 70% of the USA's energy comes from Helium 3.

He gets taped messages from Earth from his wife and 3 year old child. He gets occasional updates from Headquarters, he works on his whittled miniature village, gets on the treadmill, and watches old episodes of "Bewitched."  And there's a helpful robot named "Gerty" (voice by Kevin Spacey, channeling the late Douglas "Hal" Rain), that can see to his medical needs, give him updates and generally "make sure" he's safe. He also has a handy cup-holder, and a little emoticon-generator to show Sam his "mood."

Something goes wrong (something always has to go worng!) with one of the harvesters, and Sam goes out to investigate. Lately, he's been hallucinating, seeing people at the Sarang Moon Base and he's supposedly the only bi-ped on the planetoid. One of those hallucinations distracts him and he ends up smashing his vehicle into the side of the harvester, injuring himself in the process.

He wakes up in the infirmary—Gerty solicitously telling him that he needs to take it easy and that he's in no condition to resume his duties, and indeed, he's having trouble walking and remembering what happened to get him there, and he's surprisingly short-tempered. Not only that, Gerty's telling him he can't go outside...at all...he's in no shape to do anything right now, and Earth is sending out repair crews to fix the harvester. But that's not good enough for Sam, so he devises a leak to some system or other, so he HAS to go outside to check the source.

Once he gets out there...well, that would be telling.

Jones sets up a nifty little mystery that could have twenty different sci-fi solutions to it (they've all been dramatized at one time or another on "The Twilight Zone"), and keeps you guessing until all becomes clear. But as with any good science fiction story, it's the implications that are most interesting, and they're delved into, and expanded in a brief audio coda at the film's end. Jones also finds a neat way to set the stage beyond the dull "It was a Dark and Stormy Future" graphics scrawl to explain how "things are different." 

And he has an able ally in Sam Rockwell, who is becoming one of our most gifted film actors. Here he has to do double duty as actor and re-actor (Spacey was recorded at another time, so Rockwell had to react to, basically, nothing) and he manages to do it—as he always does—in the most low-keyed, least grand-standing way possible. His own performance manages to stave off early speculation of "wot's hoppenin'" and with the sophistication of film-goers to the tricks of film-makers, that's a rare commodity. Almost as rare as moon-rocks.
Those who come to these for special effects jollies will see a return to old-school model effects (good ones!) and the very little amount of CGI (mostly in the realm of photo-manipulation). The sets are industrial-functional with a bit of future-pre-fab thrown in.

It's a good film, B-level science fiction, nicely thought out and carried out with sophistication, but nothing to radio Mission Control about.

* For All Mankind and In The Shadow of the Moon (in the out-takes)—each has a different perspective, and are both highly recommended. It's hard to believe, it's the 50th Anniversary of the first lunar landing.

Sunshine (2007)

Written at the time of the film's release.

"...They went at night."

Our sun is dying. Mankind faces extinction. Seven years ago the Icarus project sent a mission to restart the sun but that mission was lost before it reached the star. Sixteen months ago, I, Robert Capa, and a crew of seven left earth frozen in a solar winter. Our payload a stellar bomb with a mass equivalent to Manhattan Island. Our purpose to create a star within a star. Eight astronauts strapped to the back of a bomb. My bomb. 

Sunshine is Danny Boyle's homage to 2001* while serving up an environmental metaphor in a sci-fi setting, a dissertation on the uses of faith, while also landing in the "Incredible Mess" subcategory of films.

It goes like this: Our sun (as they say) is dying. Seven years ago, the spaceship "Icarus I" headed out for the sun to drop a payload the "mass" of Manhattan Island to re-ignite it and stop the new Ice Age developing on Earth. The ship disappeared mysteriously, and so, "Icarus II" was launched, same mission, same payload. You'd think with the luck they had with the first one, they wouldn't name the second ship the same thing. Plus, if you're going to the sun, "Icarus" might not be the most inspiring legend to name your ship after.**

Be that as it may, the ship is as "green" as can be, with its own eco-system/garden (overseen by Michelle Yeoh) providing oxygen for the ship. But it wouldn't be much of a space drama if things went smoothly, now, would it? And before you can radio "Houston, we've got a problem," people get hot under the helmet-collar and things start to come apart faster than an "O" ring on a chilly day. The ship's shrink may be getting a bit too much sun. The "payload expert" (Cillian Murphy) and systems engineer (Chris Evans) are not getting along in what the pilot (Rose Byrne) calls "an excess of manhood breaking out in the com-center," and a slight miscalculation by the navigator creates a series of unfortunate events, and turns him suicidal.

Geez, folks, go outside. Get some sun.

Danny Boyle can be counted on to breathe new oxygen into any genre, like Trainspotting for the "kitchen-sink" film, 28 Days Later for the "zombie" movie, but Sunshine has so many echoes of Kubrick's 2001 right down to color schemes, ship designs, POV shots, "Icarus's" somewhat fussy computer behavior, freeze-frames in vague situations and close-up eye shots that A Space Odyssey is never too far from his frame (Murphy even has a slight resemblance to Keir Dullea). 

The dynamic of the crew is right out of Scott's Alien, and the denouement is subject to interpretation (after the "multiple endings" debacle of 28 Days Later). One also suspects that to secure a rating, or due to some preview-audience's expressed discomfort, some make-up effects have been toned down to near-imperceptibility. But, by and large, its a fascinating exercise in a genre that, if it asks too much of a leap of faith from its audience, can become laughable. Sunshine is far from that. It's always a little bit exhilarating to see a sci-film that obeys the laws of orbital mechanics, knows the dangers of space-travel (where math can be fatal), and doesn't have one ray-gun.

Best to see it on a big screen, though, as it's full of little details that won't translate on video.

* in fact, it's a bit scary how many little ties to 2001 there are. Why, you'll even see a black monolith or three in this film.

** In his acceptance of the D.W. Griffith Award from the Director's Guild in 1999 Kubrick evoked the Icarus story to talk about D.W. Griffith's rise and fall in the film business. "I always felt the message of the 'Icarus' story wasn't "Don't fly too high," but, rather, "Do a better job on the wax and feathers!" You can see that speech here.

Annihlation (2018)

Morph and Mindy
or
Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes (Turn and Face the Strange) 

There are flashbacks within flashbacks in Alex Garland's adaptation of "Annihilation" (the first book of Jeff VanderMeer's "Southern Reach" trilogy), part of a school of speculative fiction dubbed "The New Weird" and is one of those novels considered "unfilmable"—mostly because the book is written as a first-person journal of an expedition and is short on details (names, for instance) to the point where VanderMeer didn't get around to fleshing out the characters, which garnered criticism for the casting due to its lack of specific ethnicity, the clues to which didn't occur until the second book was published.

It's also an experiment in making its readers do the hard work of imagining, the literary equivalent to radio's conceit of a "Theater of the Mind,"* where suggestion sparks completion in that venue, creating a wily co-conspiracy of writer and reader. This has its dangers because "fans" (especially these days) take a personal stake in these things and become vocal (or take to what is ironically called "social" media) if their "vision" is not represented—not that anybody knew what that vision might be. This puts Garland in a touchy situation as it his job to make concrete what has previously been merely "airy-fairy" to the point of being deliberately vague. Every director has to do this to a certain extent, and producers put up the money for the "vision" that will make a return on their investment.** The business dictates that the only "vision" that matters be tinted green.

Best, then, to start with the basics; the first scene is a "just the facts" de-briefing between the protagonist (Natalie Portman), here named Lena, and three guys in hazmat suits who have a lot of questions. "What did you eat?" "What?" "You had rations for two weeks. You were there for four months." "I don't remember eating..." "How long do you think you were in there?" "Days. Maybe weeks." "What happened to Josie Radek (Tessa Thompson)?" "I dunno..." "What happened to the others?" "I dunno..." "What DO you know?" 

Not much, evidently. But, we do know that she's the sole survivor. Call her Ishmael.

With the mystery properly whetted, we cut to a comet heading for the Earth from the comet's perspective. VenderMeer never gives a cause for what becomes known as "the Southern Reach," but here it's a comet that strikes an area of beach with a lighthouse on it, it's impact causing no damage...not yet, anyway.

Cut to a cell dividing. In a classroom, Portman's character is talking about the process, but not in clinical terms of interphase stages or chromatin condensation. She's talking philosophically, not telling her class anything they don't already know, making the point that it's a single organism in the Universe, poor thing. Lena has a lot on her mind and she rebuffs an attempt by a comrade (David Gyasi) to attend a get-together. We learn that her husband has been missing for a year with no explanation of why, where, how...nothing.

But, that night he (Oscar Isaac) shows up unannounced...and without a word of explanation. She badgers him with questions, but he can only look at her hollow-eyed and be vague about where he's been and what happened to him—he doesn't know. All he knows is he was outside their house and it looked familiar. He takes a drink of water, and begins spasming, coughing up blood. An ambulance is called, but before they can get to the hospital, they are overtaken by a clutch of anonymous vehicles and forced off the road. Lena is knocked out.

She awakes in a spare hospital room and greeted by Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) with "You must be feeling dreadful." Yeah, but Ventress is evasive about anything that her husband is stabilized but his organs are shutting down and they don't know why. But, over the next few days, Ventress will open up: her husband, Kane, was part of a mission to investigate "Area X"—they're in a facility outside "X" right now—and he is the only person to have emerged from the evacuated area. Something has happened in "Area X," what, they don't know—Ventress murmurs something about "a religious event, an extraterrestrial event..." what, she doesn't know, exactly—but "Area X" has been around for a few years...and it's growing, having already taken over an earlier compound in the swampy area. She's sent a team in, contact was lost, but only Kane emerged, and Ventress wants to know what's inside what she calls "The Shimmer" and what happened to the other men—were they killed or did they kill each other?

She assembles a team of soldier-scientists: herself—she's a psychologist, Anya Thorenson (Gina Rodriguez) a paramedic, Cass Sheppard (Tuva Novotny) an anthropologist, and Josie Radek (Tessa Thompson) a physicist. She needs a biologist and as Lena has a job teaching that at Johns Hopkins, Ventress asks that she join the team. Lena accepts—she wants to know what happened to Kane—but she keeps that information from the other team-members. Ventress, agreeing with the decision, maintains her silence about it.

The five enter "The Shimmer" and it is disorienting. Compasses don't work, radio's get scrambled, the flora and fauna are weirdly exotic and not entirely knowable, plus they have a tendency to lose track of time. Nerves are high, but they're able to focus on the routine. At a dilapidated boat-house, Lena is able to take some samples of the exotic vegetation vining around the house, but as she starts to take a closer examination, Josie is pulled into the house and she starts screaming.

Lena and the others run into the house which has been partially submerged in the swamp and are able to get Josie out fast, but, guns drawn, they see a huge albino alligator emerge from the house sink into the swamp and then turn and attack the party. Lena distracts it by firing at it, but the thing lurches towards her and she determinedly fires round after round point blank into the creature before it finally dies. An examination of the creatures mouth shows that it's teeth are more like shark's teeth. The party starts to be a bit freaked out. The Shimmer has somehow mutated the plants and animals inside it, scrambling GPS and radio waves, but also the very DNA of the flora and fauna. If that's so, then what is it doing to them?

To talk about it any further will be to rob any brave, potential viewers of one of the very palpable things that makes Annihilation work—its ability to evoke unease. I could mention a couple things and get away with it, but the element of surprise—and the dread of surprise—in such an environment really sets the nerves on edge. The unseen and unknowable is more tension-inducing than the seen and given the icky eerie imaginings in that place which have the "what else could happen" creepiness of the original Alien set in a landscape that is just as enveloping and throbbingly tense as those of Deliverance, Southern Comfort, and Apocalypse Now and you have an exercise in dread that takes you right down to the cellular level.

"And then, people start dying." Maybe, they're the lucky ones. It becomes clear that "The Shimmer" is messing with their DNA, and as nerves and minds becomes strained and the survival odds get lower, the team decide to "bug out"—if they can make it, but their judgment of time and distance doesn't make the job any easier. For Lena, the key to it all is the lighthouse at the center of it, and she's determined to get there. If not to find answers, hopefully, to find a solution...maybe, a cure.

And that's where things get really interesting. Not explicable, perhaps, but very interesting. In fact, more questions are raised than are probably answered, but there is an all-purveying sense that things have changed...irrevocably and there's no "reset" button to go back to pre-"Shimmer" days. You hope for the best in the outcome, but you're never really sure what "best" might be. Once Annihilation "hits the beach" everything is done by suggestion and imagery just specific enough to keep the momentum going, but there's no narration or voice-over to explain what is going on and that may unnerve the already nervous. But, it gives you a definite sense of the "unknowable" while telling its story purely by what you see.

It's challenging, both for the viewer, but also for the writer-director. Garland's job in this is to make what was suggested in the concept concrete. He has done that, while preserving a sense of "the definite ambiguity" in the film. I remember my first experience of watching 2001: a Space Odyssey and not having a clue what was going on and running to Arthur C. Clarke's book to get the answers. Clarke provided them. VanderMeer, not so much. I think that readers of the book may be just as confounded as those without the CliffNotes (which could make some backlash—along the lines of the way fans of Stephen King's "The Shining" were put off by the changes made in Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation. 

It makes me wonder how audiences will react to something this challenging (but worth it). I tend to see movie audiences being really dumbed-down these days from having been force-fed solutions and explanations, while, at the same time, being capable of handling ambiguity and "woo-woo" concepts that might stagger the imagination. Annihilation says a lot of things about embracing change and adaptation, while also being a thinly-veiled comment on accepting the immutable, like, say, global disaster. While not a complete invitation to blind acceptance, Annihilation will appeal to folks who like their science fiction scrambled rather than over-easy.

* My favorite story of "Theater of the Mind" is when Rod Serling (speaking of speculative fiction) was asked whether he preferred writing for television or radio and he mentioned that if he wrote "there was a castle on the hill" for television it would go to the budget department, then to the production department, to the art department, to the drafters, to the carpenters and set-dressers and painters and finishers and scenic decoration and at the end of it he'd get one castle on one hill. "But if I write 'there was a castle on the hill' in a radio script, it costs nothing and I get a thousand castles on a thousand hills."

** Garland had final cut and a producer (Scott Rudin) powerful enough to guarantee it, which he did when Skydance Productions demanded that Natalie Portman's character be made more "sympathetic" and the final parts of the film made more...oh, what's the word?..."obvious" (Reports say that it was considered "too complicated" and "too intellectual") after an earlier test-screening did not produce the approval numbers that were hoped. Rudin scotched that idea, forcing Paramount to set up a distribution deal with Netflix in the international markets. Paramount kept the domestic market distribution.