I (like everyone) love Denzel, but I hope he isn’t Dormammu.
Specifically because it ruins my, possibly outlandish, fan theory. Cumberbatch did the motion capture for Dormammu in the first film. I always thought it would be fun if Dormammu turned out to be a Doctor Strange variant. In What If we meet a much darker Doctor Strange variant. In Multiverse of Madness we meet a number of variants, all of whom also make dark choices. For me the logical conclusion is that eventually Strange has to battle the darkest variant, Dormammu.
Obviously however I welcome Denzmammu if that’s the case.
In the Loki show, variants aren’t necessarily played by the same actor so Dr. Denz can still be possible.
That’s true. Although if it’s a different-actor variant I think it’s less impactful, since it’s less obviously Strange vs Strange.
Although there isn’t a rule against two Dormammu.
Also (and this is my hope) Denzel could play a different character, and Dormammu is just a fake/placeholder for his real role (which could still be Dormammu-esque.)
Alright ok, you motha fucka ha ha, ok alright Strange it’s like that huh.
- Dormammu
I’m really worried about this one. The second movie was exactly as weird as I would expect a Doctor Strange movie to be. But it had very mixed receptions. A lot of people hated how crazy it got and expected something more standard like the first. And an MCU budget needs to have mainstream appeal.
Not to disagree (but I’m about to), but looking at Rotten Tomatoes for DS1 and DS2, the audience score is 86% and 85% respectively. Not to say that Rotten Tomatoes or it’s reviews (critic or audience) are the ultimately authority.
However looking at the actual ultimate authority, box office (also not the actual ultimate authority), both films did excellent. DS2 actually technically did better, but that’s open for discussion. Suffice to say both did well.
I know there is a lot of distaste for the multiverse online, but looking at the numbers I think it’s fine for them to dig in as part of one last ride. (I’m assuming this film is released before Avengers: Secret Wars.)
Thor 4 has 76% audience score and did $760M and everyone hated it.
I hope you’re right though. I loved a lot about Doctor Strange MoM. The music battle in particular I thought was genius, but I’ve heard from a lot of people that hated it.
But who is the “everyone” that hated it? Where are they? By what metric?
Let’s discuss it for a moment,
I would say Thor was an OK film, definitely a lower point in the MCU (at the time). I would say Thor 2 was about the same, maybe a bit worse since it continued the boring trend of Thor. Thor 3 was a breath of fresh air, making me actually care about the character. Thor 4 was definitely a step down. It had fun moments, but wasted opportunity.
Now let’s look at critic v audience for all Thor films,
- Thor - 77% v 76%
- Thor: The Dark World - 67% v 75%
- Thor: Ragnarok - 93% v 87%
- Thor: Love and Thunder - 63% v 76%
That all roughly tracks with what I said. Maybe the audience was too lenient. Maybe the critics were too harsh. Rotten Tomatoes is just one source, we can look at more, but I think they’re roughly correct.
Also, just for calibration sake, let’s look at Secret Invasion - 52% v 44%.
Part of my point was that Thor 4 was successful by the metrics. But in reality it was hated, to the point where I think it damaged both Taika Waititi’s reputation and the Thor brand.
However, you can look at the box office for some more insight. Because while it did well because of the hype, it’s success was short lived.
Domestic box office total Thor 1-4; DS2
$181M $206M $315M $343M $411M
2nd Weekend Drop Thor 1-4; DS2
47.2% 57.3% 53.5% 67.7% 67.0%
I added Doctor Strange 2 as well for reference. I think Thor 4 mostly benefited from Thor 3’s success in the same way Thor 2 benefited from Loki in the Avengers. And both fell off faster after the initial weekend than their predecessors because word of mouth sucked.
Thor 5 would not do as well, and could quite possibly bomb.
I mean Avengers: Endgame also had a 58.7% drop off on the second weekend, that makes it look similar to Thor 2.
I don’t disagree that there are multiple ways to measure this. This is basically the jobs of multiple people in the film industry.
And of course we’re just talking Domestic, what if a film is more successful internationally? What if it bombs internationally, but is amazing domestically?
Also DS2 and Thor 4 both came out after Endgame, is superhero fatigue real, how do we measure it. Also after the peak of COVID, some reports say theaters still aren’t back to pre-pandemic attendance.
I don’t say all this to discourage discussion. I just think that we (and anyone) can probably use numbers to prove anything.
I definitely agree that as a viewer, Thor 4 was a step down. But I don’t think it turned me off of a Thor 5. In fact after Thor 1 & 2 I had low expectations for 3, I would have said cancel/scrap it and give me something else, but it turned out to be the best one.
I have my criticisms of DS2, but I’m excited for DS3.
Definitely sick of Taika’s shtick these days. Jojo rabbit was good but Thor was aggressively shit and the fact he offered Natalie Portman a role in his star wars movie not realising she was already in a trilogy was a cherry on top for him not really focusing on what he is doing and just importing his same comedy into everything.
