Even though the critical consensus has continued to drop, with the movie now sitting on a 75 percent Rotten Tomatoes score to rank as the fifth worst-reviewed entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe on the aggregation site, audiences can’t get enough of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
After spending just five days playing on the big screen, Sam Raimi’s bonkers reality-traversing sequel has crossed the $500 million barrier at the global box office, which is a significant milestone for a number of reasons in the age of COVID-19.
In less than a week, Multiverse of Madness has surpassed the lifetime hauls of Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, Uncharted, Black Widow, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Eternals, Godzilla vs. Kong, and Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and it ranks as the fifth highest-grossing Hollywood film to arrive since the end of 2019.
That’s an incredible achievement in such a short space of time, and to further reinforce the unstoppable nature of Kevin Feige’s franchise, the next blockbuster that’s even got a chance of replicating those numbers with such speed just so happens to be Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder.
It’s another feather in the cap for the bulletproof MCU, then, with the sheer scope and scale on offer in the second Doctor Strange solo flick evidently drumming up plenty of repeat business, on a similar (albeit smaller) scale to that of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which fans were happy to devour as many times as humanly possible as quickly as they could.
