Over the weekend I saw “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness,” which opens with Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange attending the wedding of Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams).

Apparently during the five years that he (and half of the planet) was dead,1 she moved on and met someone else, and now he’s trying to be mature about it but is still not over her. The movie is actually pretty fun once it gets going — it has lots of action and adventure and thrills and frights and some laughs — but this longing is supposed to be Strange’s motivating force throughout the movie.

It’s also a great example of my biggest annoyance with the MCU in recent years. Obviously movies about superheroes are not going to be realistic, but good genre stories should take their own stories seriously. But instead, Marvel keeps flirting with the idea of taking this Snap/Blip business seriously — especially at the beginning of “Avengers: Endgame,” but also in snatches of other movies — only to sort of kick…

Slow Boring

Half the population dying and then returning…

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