What a mess of a film that undermines its own potential...

With Wong's constant hair-style changes in between every scene he appears in, Cumberbatch's ridiculous wig, and the completely inconsistent tone the film strikes throughout (though Wanda wrecking the Illuminati and the evil Strange with the zombie was all pretty cool), this film was an absolute mess.

It was obvious two films were fighting each other throughout, and it had a hard time maintaining focus.

They should have dialed back on the ridiculous CGI fight-scenes in some sequences and focused on Wanda's character development. It's interesting because Elizabeth Olsen practically had to shoulder the entire thing on her shoulders.

Cumberbatch didn't quite sleepwalk through the role, but you could tell he was doing his due diligence; the Mexican chick was just flatout annoying. The guy playing Wong was passable; the Baron seemed confused; Patrick Stewart was the only one acting like he was in a serious film with Olsen, and Rachel McAdams really needs to go back to acting school (or maybe it was because she just didn't have much to work with?)

Also, McAdams' too-pristine hair even during all the running, jumping, and fighting was horribly distracting.

It's weird but all of the special effects in the film looked outright horrible save for the zombie Strange and the cool ghoul sequence. That had some serious Evil Dead vibes.

Anyway, this film would have been so much better had it been able to get out of its own way.

I think anchoring the plot more on Wanda's trauma and the Darkhold's seduction into manipulating its power SHOULD have been a much stronger focus and should have been outlined much better, similar to how Rami wrote the Necronomicon in the Evil Dead series, or how the Symbiote was portrayed in the Spider-Man comics and cartoon. It was hard to tell how much was Wanda just being crazy and how much was the Darkhold being evil.

A much clearer distinction of its lure should have been detailed, which we only partially got with the sinister version of Strange, which seemed rushed and was -- once again, undermined by an awful CGI fight scene.

I think this film was more frustrating than anything, because you could see a seed of potential and a glimmer of something great, but it was such a mess. The entire American Chavez subplot also made zero sense, given that what would have mattered if Wanda killed her when there were a BOATLOAD of people who died anyway? Were all their lives worth that annoying Chavez Macguffin?

Ugh. Worse yet is that now it seems like they're going to try to shove that walking, talking diversity checklist into her own film or have her take over Strange's next film.

Marvel really seems to be shooting itself in the feet and cutting off its own potential at the knees. This could have been an easy 8/10 fantasy-horror film if written and paced right, but no... they had to go all in on the ridiculous woke-writing and diversity checklist instead (Also, anyone notice how McAdam's character was marrying some lowly looking black guy? They didn't look right together AT ALL and he didn't seem like someone she would be marrying in any capacity. It stood out like a sore thumb and was horribly distracting to an already jarring and disjointed film).