Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 2022
The 28th MCU entry and Raimi's first film in nine years. The group agrees it plays like two movies: a flat, over-explained first hour of MCU deck-clearing, then a gothic-horror second half where Raimi finally gets to do Raimi, with snap zooms, circle wipes, first-person shaky cam, jump scares, a slasher sequence, and Bruce Campbell. Robinson liked it more than most people she knows; Ryan calls the best parts among his favorite Marvel moments and the worst below the franchise's floor. Behind-the-scenes chaos (Scott Derrickson out, Michael Waldron pulled off Loki, reshoots, a schedule reshuffled around No Way Home) shows on screen: Raimi told Rolling Stone he didn't know the ending until halfway through. Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda draws the strongest praise ("the best villain Marvel's ever had") and the sharpest critique, over a trauma-broken-mother arc the hosts find dated and hacked-together. The spoiler half turns on the Illuminati cameos: John Krasinski's Reed Richards, Hayley Atwell's Captain Carter, Anson Mount's Black Bolt, and Patrick Stewart's Professor X, introduced and killed in under a minute, which the group reads as fan service that's also a joke at fan service's expense.