‘Doctor Strange And The Multiverse Of Madness’ Is The 6th Worst-Reviewed MCU Movie

This article was republished on 5/7.

Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is being described as “very Sam Raimi,” its director that gave us Evil Dead and Tobey Maguire Spider-Man. And while reviews overall are positive, and audience scores are high, Doctor Strange 2 is not reviewing well for an MCU movie, in the overall context of generally very well-reviewed universe.

Currently, with well over 200 reviews in, Doctor Strange has a 77% on Rotten Tomatoes. That has it tied with the original Thor as the sixth worst-reviewed movie in the MCU, out of a total of 28 movies.

Here is the list, as it stands, updated with Multiverse of Madness:

1. Black Panther – 96%
2. Avengers: Endgame – 94%
3. Iron Man – 94%
4. Spider-Man: No Way Home – 93%
5. Thor: Ragnarok – 93%
6. Spider-Man: Homecoming – 92%
7. Guardians of the Galaxy – 92%
8. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings – 91%
9. Marvel’s The Avengers – 91%
10. Spider-Man: Far From Home – 90%
11. Captain America: Civil War – 90%
12. Captain America: The Winter Soldier – 90%
13. Doctor Strange – 89%
14. Ant-Man and the Wasp – 87%
15. Avenger’s Infinity War – 85%
16. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 – 85%
17. Ant-Man – 83%
18. Captain America: The First Avenger – 79%
19. Captain Marvel – 79%
20. Black Widow – 79%
21. Iron Man 3 – 79%
22. Thor – 77%
23. Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness – 77%
24. Avengers: Age of Ultron – 76%
25. Iron Man 2 – 72%
26. The Incredible Hulk – 67%
27. Thor: The Dark World – 66%
28. Eternals – 47%

Again, there is only one true “big” miss in the MCU, Eternals with its rotten score (I am an Eternals apologist, and think it’s better than at least the bottom third of the list). The Doctor Strange scores are a bit of a surprise, however, given that the trailers looked impressive. But it’s 12% lower than the original Doctor Strange, and worse-reviewed than Wanda’s WandaVision Disney Plus series, certainly. We already know it’s another cameo-filled outing, similar to Spider-Man: No Way Home, but overall, that doesn’t seem to be working as well this time around for many critics without a solid core story.

It’s possible this could still go up or down with more reviews coming in. Again, audience scores are pretty solid, an 89% so far, though it’s no surprise that most audiences rate most of these films higher than critics (with a few exceptions).

We’ll see what the box office does, but generally speaking, this doesn’t look like a clear-cut win for the MCU, given the other films it’s reviewing alongside, which are not thought of very fondly in the overall MCU.

After this, we move on to Thor: Love and Thunder in July, and I’m already willing to bet that’s going to do a bit better than Strange here.

Update (5/7): Since I published this, the score of Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness has slid another 2% with another few dozen reviews coming in after release, and is now at 75%. That breaks the tie with the original Thor and means that’s it’s also dipped below Age of Ultron, meaning it’s the fifth worst-reviewed MCU movie out of 28 now, the bottom 17% of releases. With 300 reviews in, it does seem unlikely that it will drop all the way down to Iron Man 2’s 72%, so this is likely the position it will stay.

It is surprising, but does follow at least a little bit of a trend in the MCU, where some of the second films based on a hero have struggled compared to their predecessors. You’ll note that Thor 2, Iron Man 2 and Avengers 2 are all in this bottom section, albeit sometimes thing go a bit better, like with Captain America: Winter Soldier or Ant Man and the Wasp.

Doctor Strange has sparked a debate about Sam Raimi’s filming style and whether or not it was appropriate to do a sort of Marvel horror movie for Multiverse of Madness. Some are praising that it’s different from other MCU movies, others claim it just doesn’t work. Given how similar most of these movies have become, I am kind of looking forward to seeing something different. Though that didn’t work out well for Chloe Zhao’s Eternals, which was trying to also be unique in its own way. It’s a risk! But still, we should note that the vast majority of audiences (88%) are indeed liking the film.

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