A friend of mine loves comic book films and wants me to join him this weekend to see the film in the cinema. While I enjoy the action in this movie genre, I absolutely can not keep up with the endless number of Marvel films that are released.
If I know nothing about Doctor Strange except through Wikipedia, do you think I’ll enjoy the film as a popcorn flick? Or, will I feel like I crashed a party?
I read this review yesterday. It says, in part:
More than any other Marvel movie besides Avengers: Endgame , Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness does not work as a standalone film – and this is a frequent criticism of the connectedness of MCU projects, that it requires audiences to be at least semi-familiar with about two dozen other titles.
Now with the prolific release schedule of MCU streaming releases on Disney+, that’s nearing three dozen.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a direct sequel to WandaVision and a cursory scan of the streaming show’s Wikipedia entry isn’t going to give you an understanding of the emotional stakes of this movie.
Especially as one of its strongest points is Olsen’s hefty performance, doing almost all the heavy lifting from a character arc perspective, and if you don’t have the full backstory to it, it’s not going to have the same weight and impact.
I agree that watching WandaVision, and the first Doctor Strange film, will probably help a fair amount. The other film which seems to be at least tangentially relevant is Spider-Man: No Way Home, though likely not as much as WandaVision.
I’ve seen it yesterday. It does build quite a lot on earlier movies, and if you haven’t seen those, a number of appearances and references will go over your head and you will miss some of the fun. (I will not elaborate, as that would spoiler you).
But if you don’t mind that, I think you can suffice with knowing the plot of Avengers Infinity War and Avengers Endgame (particularly Wanda’s and Dr. Strange’s actions), as well as the general plot of the first Dr Strange movie. Now I think of it, they actually make an effort to explain who all the characters are that return in this movie (it is handled quite subtly), so you could get away with a superficial idea of who Thanos is and what happened to him in Endgame, and pick up who the others are when they are introduced in the movie. You do not need to know the last Spiderman movie. The film still works if you don’t know about it. It is useful if you have some idea of Dr. Strange’s shenenigans in that movie and in his What If episode, but you can simply take for granted that he did what people in the movie say he did.
WandaVision, however, is really important. If you can’t watch it on Disney+, you should attempt to find YouTube videos that explain what happens in that series.