Multiverse in Modern Media
When you wake up on a sunny California Friday with NPR in the background, you’re at a red light with an iced coffee, and suddenly a historical event happens, it feels a little like a cliché. I felt out of my body on June 24th, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade like I was suddenly inhabiting a character in a movie because this isn’t what was supposed to happen. So after a blurry day of disbelief and doom scrolling, I needed to tune out and finally watched Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. While Dr. Strange had a similar experience at Christine’s wedding, I was snapped back into my body when he asked: “Are you happy?” Unfortunately, like Strange, most people and I would say no. So while the 2010s were flooded with dystopian stories, where people sought a catharsis, the 2020s are flooded with alternate universe stories. Yes, we are dissatisfied with the world, but rather than looking to the past or the future, we’re looking to the side?
The top earners to put forth this narrative are; Into the Spiderverse, Spiderman No Way Home, Multiverse of Madness, Everything, Everywhere All at Once, and Matrix Resurrections. Notably, most were released after 2015, and clearly, they’ve struck a chord. As many political issues decades in the making come to a head, and once-in-a-lifetime events happen kind of… a lot, people have been asking, “what if” and “how did I end up in this reality?”
At the beginning of “MoM,” both Wanda and Dr. Strange are on the outside looking in at the life they want but can’t have. Dr. Strange moves inward out of fear of loss, while Wanda is determined to solve her loss by any means necessary. What they both learn is to let go of an alternate reality. A similar scenario can be seen in Spiderman No Way Home. Both where Andrew Garfield redeems himself from his universe in Tom Holland’s and Tom saving his friends by losing them. Andrew finds redemption in knowing a version of himself has what he can’t and moves forward, while Tom accepts a similar fate and starts from scratch. Into the Spiderverse, Peter B. Parker, through his reluctant mentorship of Miles Morales, rediscovers that fear of loss should not prevent you from trying.The Matrix franchise has always been a story about living in an alternate reality. Yet, in the 2021 reboot, Neo is disillusioned with his perfect life in the Matrix because of a missing inner need that only real love could awaken. Everything, Everywhere All at Once is a story about combating nihilism and finding beauty in the present rather than being lost in the road not taken.
These films remind us of the saying, “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” We want to dream walk or VR into a reality where we have powers. Or are still with lost loved ones. Where we are rich or chose a different job or a different partner. Perhaps someone else had won an election, or we all have electric cars, and Google Glasses took off. The reductionist viewpoint would be classic escapism. But I argue the answer is much more hopeful. Yes, I chose a Marvel movie to tune out, but the catharsis wasn’t found in alternate universe cameos but in the resolutions. The characters did not overcome their circumstances, more often than not they ended up alone. The victory wasn’t external but internal. Yes, I cheered when Andrew caught Zendaya’s MJ, but Emma Stone’s Gwen is still gone. The catharsis isn’t that our heroes won but that they moved forward.
We are yearning for guidance and hope from our films. Trying to believe that if our heroes can overcome, so can we. If they can choose to return to their broken reality, move on, change, and start over, we can look around and find the strength to water our grass. If we spend our energy consumed by what should have happened and rage against our black mirrors that everything is wrong, we will get bitter, not better. There is hope that something broken or lost was something worth having. As we watch our superheroes return to their reality to try, perhaps it’s time we did the same, one historic event at a time.