A colossal work of incredible CGI, in which the script is quite lost, and the actors do a good job playing characters they already know well.
Contrary to my custom, I saw this film directly after the first one. It wasn't my will, it was the TV channel that decided to show them in sequence. And that's good: things are clearer and more understandable if we have previously seen the initial film, which explains the origin of the character and her journey. There are some aspects and details of the script that I didn't understand, but as Marvel tends to chain its films together, as if they were the threads of a tapestry, I believe that what I didn't understand will be related to the number of Marvel films that I still didn't have the opportunity to see it.
The film is directed by Sam Raimi, which immediately raised my eyebrows: after all, he is a truly creative and intelligent director, who has already given us works worthy of praise, although hero films have not gone well for the director in the past. As far as I know, production was extremely confusing and, as we know, heavily affected by the recent pandemic. Raimi took advantage, rewrote a good part of the script and revised everything, in order to create a bizarre, somewhat scary story (he started out as a director of cheap horror films, let's remember), about the multiverse, a concept that has been explored a lot in the cinema of this decade.
As expected, the film was a brutal success, both at the box office and in terms of specialized critics, having registered the fourth-best box office of 2022, and was sacramentally ignored by the Oscars, even in the visual and technical categories where, in my opinion, opinion, he could have had a good chance of winning a prize. In fact, the film is a visual spectacle of supreme proportions, making the most of the multiverse's enormity of possibilities for a visual experience that is worth it in itself. If the first film had already been colossal in terms of effects and CGI, this film surpasses it almost in every way. The sets, costumes, props, makeup, everything was thought out in minute detail and makes good use of the huge budget that Marvel made available. And the work of the stuntmen and choreographers was excellent in the action and fight scenes.
The script brings together two characters from the Marvel universe in the same story: the already known Dr. Strange and the Scarlet Witch, Wanda Maximoff. Before this film, and what came before it, I didn't know them because I'm not a big fan of comics, although I recognize Marvel's exceptional work in this field over several decades. There is also a third character who enters here, America Chavez, a young Latina who, honestly, must be some kind of third-line character, but who assumes considerable relevance to the plot. In general, the script seems weaker to me than that of the first film, and this could be a direct consequence of the immense confusion that was the entire process of conceiving and producing the film, between a pandemic, withdrawals and all sorts of setbacks.
Benedict Cumberbatch returns to his character and does a job well done, although the actor seems to be working with slightly less interesting material and entering a comfort zone that makes things more monotonous. Elizabeth Olsen was also perfectly at ease with her character, as she had already played it in other films in the Marvel universe that I, as far as I remember, have not yet seen. She is quite good at what she does, and the actress's work is convincing. There are also several other actors from the first film who return for a new job: Rachel McAdams and Chiwetel Ejiofor have an easier job, but it seems to me that the film doesn't particularly take advantage of them. Much better luck had Benedict Wong, with impeccable work, and Xochitl Gomez, who made positive use of the opportunity, even without deserving the spotlight.