Episode 98 - Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Sam Raimi, 2022)

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Sam Raimi, 2022).

The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!

Chris and Alex venture (back?) into the multiverse in this entirely unplanned episode on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Sam Raimi, 2022), prompted by both a last-minute cinema trip and a desire to check-in once more with what’s happening in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A partner to the earlier discussion of complexity and serial narratives in Wandavision (2021), episode 98 involves a new and improved journey through the MCU’s iterative storytelling to delight in its quantum realms and colliding incursions, including an examination of how contemporary Hollywood cinema is increasingly being driven by the spectacle of intellectual properties; discourses of play, rules, and frivolity that manages the stakes of mulitversal narratives; the ethical element of multi-dimensional travel and repeating existences; how Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness negotiates Wanda’s identity as a ‘villainous’ unruly female within post-Trump America; the relationship between multiverse plotlines, complex narratives, and fan cultures; and what Sam Raimi’s film has to say about the relationship between grief and anger.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

Suggested Readings

• Acu, Adrian. 2016. “Time to Work for a Living: The Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Organized Superhero,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 44, no. 4: 195-205.

• Davies, Chris. “Who Do You Want Me to Be?” Scarlett Johansson, Black Widow and Shifting Identity in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” In Screening Scarlett Johansson, eds. Janice Loreck, Whitney Monaghan and Kirsten Stevens, 81-98. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

• Hunter, Madeleine. 2021. “What Makes a Loki a Loki?: Managing Multiplicity in Loki (2021).” www.fantasy-animation.org, available here.

• Kent, Miriam. 2020. Women in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

• McSweeney, Terence, ed. 2018. Avengers Assemble!: Critical Perspectives on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. New York: Columbia University Press.