The multiverse of movie madness!
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00:00 As we've most recently seen mainly looking at Marvel movies, we know that everyone loves a bit of the multiverse.
00:06 It's a very cool concept, the idea of there being so many infinite universes where there could be another us,
00:11 maybe an even cooler us, in fact, most likely a much cooler us.
00:15 But the point is that the multiverse doesn't start and end with Marvel, there's much more out there,
00:19 and to that point, there's much better out there.
00:22 So, if Doctor Strange just isn't hitting the mark for you, then we've got you covered.
00:25 I'm Amy from WokCulture, and here are the 10 best multiverse movies ever.
00:29 10. Spider-Man No Way Home
00:31 It is impossible to discuss multiverse movies without bringing up by far the most commercially successful
00:37 and zeitgeist-grabbing of them all, the MCU's Spider-Man No Way Home.
00:41 Whilst certainly not a perfect movie, No Way Home proved how the multiverse could be harnessed
00:45 to deliver massively crowd-pleasing fan service by colliding three cinematic eras of Spider-Man into one single movie.
00:52 The presences of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker's of course stole the show,
00:56 though seeing the likes of Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin and Alfred Molina's Doc Ock in the mix was also a ton of fun.
01:02 If introducing the multiverse to the MCU does feel a bit like opening Pandora's box,
01:06 something the very messy Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness seemed to prove,
01:10 at least No Way Home made good on its fan-serving promises.
01:13 Beyond the obvious nostalgic appeal of seeing Maguire and Garfield back in these roles alongside Tom Holland's Spider-Man,
01:18 it also gave the two former Spider-Men a chance to say goodbye to these characters after their respective runs ended,
01:24 and we've got to be happy for them there at least.
01:26 9. Donnie Darko
01:28 Multiverse movies don't get much weirder than Donnie Darko,
01:31 one of the definitive cult classics of the early 2000s,
01:34 starring Jake Gyllenhaal as the titular teenager who narrowly avoids calamitous death
01:38 before learning of a grim prophecy that the world will end in 28 days.
01:42 Unlike most movies on the list, Donnie Darko doesn't hold your hand through its multiversal hooey.
01:47 In fact, it kind of takes this a step further, enough that you really need to read an extra feature on the director's cut DVD,
01:53 an excerpt from The Philosophy of Time Travel, a book featured in the film itself, to truly fathom what's going on.
01:58 Even if you don't understand it entirely, though, you'll probably feel Donnie Darko
02:02 and appreciate its spectacularly weird, inventive take on both time travel and parallel universes.
02:07 Armed with a small budget of just $4.5 million,
02:10 debuting director Richard Kelly, who made the film at a mere 25 years of age,
02:14 proved the possibilities of the multiverse movies on a smaller scale with no less intelligence or intrigue.
02:19 8. Star Trek 2009
02:22 J.J. Abrams made extremely clever use of the multiverse in his 2009 Star Trek reboot.
02:27 Whilst most fans, pre-release, expected Abrams to give the flagging IP a full reboot,
02:32 he ingeniously decided to set the movie in a parallel universe to the prime Star Trek universe,
02:37 meaning that the adventures of the Enterprise's original crew still happened within this continuity.
02:41 Better still, Abrams managed to have his cake and eat it too by having Spock end up in the alternate universe
02:46 and help the alternate Captain Kirk vanquish the villainous Nero
02:50 but by getting Spock to interact with the new Enterprise cast and even Spock's own younger self,
02:54 Trek '09 delivered giddy fan service in a clever and, at the time, wildly original way.
02:59 That the multiverse aspect felt like an organic part of the story,
03:03 the Kelvin timeline having been created by Nero after he travelled through a black hole and destroyed the USS Kelvin,
03:08 thereby changing history, was just the icing on the cake.
03:11 7. The Last Action Hero
03:14 You won't often hear it referred to as a multiverse movie,
03:16 but Arnold Schwarzenegger's gonzo cult classic action satire The Last Hero is totally a multiverse film.
03:22 The movie revolves around a teenage boy called Danny Madigan,
03:25 who, courtesy of a magic cinema ticket, is inadvertently transported into the world of his favourite action hero, Jack Slater.
03:32 What follows is one of the most riotous, adventurous and downright clever action films of the 90s,
03:37 albeit one that was apparently too forward-thinking to be appreciated at its time.
03:41 Beyond the fun conceit of Danny hanging out with Slater in Slater's own over-the-top action movie world,
03:46 Last Action Hero indulges in some outrageous snake-swallowing-its-own-tail metaness,
03:51 such as revealing that in Slater's world, Sylvester Stallone played the lead role in Terminator 2.
03:55 To squeeze the most references out of this meta-concept,
03:58 the film's villain Benedict also suggests he's going to use this magic ticket to bring the likes of Dracula,
04:03 King Kong, Freddy Krueger, Hannibal Lecter and Satan out of various movies.
04:07 Though luckily, he's stopped before he's able to go through with it.
04:10 As a film where every movie ever made is effectively its own universe,
04:14 Last Action Hero was a truly original and ahead-of-its-time take on the multiverse.
04:19 6. The One
04:20 Look, nobody's going to say that Jet Li's The One is a work of high art,
04:24 but it is a ludicrously entertaining take on the multiverse concept,
04:27 and one which feels rather prescient in retrospect.
04:30 Back in 2001, long before cinema audiences were used to hearing the word "multiverse",
04:34 The One spoke it aloud.
04:36 The film follows rogue multiverse authority agent Gabriel Eulor,
04:39 who attempts to kill all 124 versions of himself across the multiverse
04:43 in order to absorb their energies and become the titular unstoppable god-like entity.
04:48 The final variant, Gabe Lor, consequently vows to stop him,
04:52 and so the obvious appeal of the movie lies in watching Jet Li face off against himself.
04:56 It's a stupid good premise that the movie largely delivers on,
05:00 even if this certainly isn't one of the more nuanced takes on the multiverse.
05:03 It is simply a kick-ass action movie with a brilliant gimmick and a ridiculous new metal soundtrack.
05:09 Yeah, sure, the soundtrack does date the film very obviously, but today it's kind of charming.
05:14 5. Source Code
05:15 Duncan Jones's Source Code is one of the most original sci-fi movies of the 2010s.
05:20 A thrilling, secret multiverse movie in which US Army Captain Coulter Stevens is tasked with
05:25 repeatedly entering a digital simulation of a train bombing in order to discover the bomber's identity.
05:29 Now, for the bulk of Source Code's runtime,
05:31 we don't actually know that we're watching a multiverse movie,
05:34 because it's only later revealed that the simulations are, in fact,
05:37 parallel universes created by their experimental titular machine.
05:40 Source Code is at once a fast-paced time-loop movie,
05:43 a rip-roaring Hitchcockian suspense picture,
05:46 and a provocative existential sci-fi flick, all of them being superbly executed.
05:50 While the universes we see throughout the film aren't particularly adventurous as far as multiverses go,
05:55 much of the fun lies in the tiny variations between
05:57 Stevens' different runs through the bombing scenario.
06:00 It's incredibly different from Marvel in that aspect,
06:02 but it's nice to note that multiverses don't need to be flashy in order to be entertaining.
06:06 4. Run, Lola, Run
06:08 Somehow making Donnie Darko seem comparatively well-budgeted,
06:11 1998's German experimental thriller Run, Lola, Run was made for just $1.75 million,
06:17 yet offers up a brilliantly energetic take on the notion of the parallel universe.
06:21 The story follows Lola, who has just 20 minutes to come up with 100,000 Deutschmarks
06:26 or her low-level criminal boyfriend, Manny, will be killed.
06:29 Director Tom Tykwer chronicles three separate attempts by Lola to save Manny,
06:33 each distinguished by minor variations which end up causing wildly different, and often fatal, outcomes.
06:38 Tykwer doesn't linger much on the metaphysical machinations of the situation,
06:42 but rather revels in the beauty of the butterfly effect,
06:45 demonstrating it perfectly in each high-tension, fast-paced 20-minute sprint.
06:50 It begs audiences to consider how their lives could branch off in aggressively
06:53 divergent directions with just a minor change,
06:56 and that you never know which moment in your life might be a major nexus point for the future.
07:01 3. Coherence
07:03 And now we get to outdo both Donnie Darko and Run, Lola, Run on the budgetary front
07:08 by bringing you Coherence, which was made on a budget of just $50,000.
07:12 Coherence follows a woman, M, who begins to encounter strange occurrences whilst
07:16 attending a dinner party with friends on the night that a comet passes overhead.
07:20 It's best going into the film whilst knowing very little about it,
07:23 but basically the film's conceit revolves around the notion of duelling universes,
07:27 and the utter chaos it causes for a group of unsuspecting people.
07:30 It may not be the most visually remarkable film you've ever seen,
07:33 but the brain-melting ideas it prevents about the multiverse
07:36 more than compensate for the lo-fi production.
07:38 As surreal as it is ultimately terrifying,
07:40 this is a singular take on the cosmically horrific potential of an actual multiverse scenario.
07:46 2. Everything, Everywhere, All at Once
07:49 Multiverse movies are all the rage at the moment,
07:51 and whilst the Marvel Cinematic Universe has inarguably cornered the market on
07:55 mega-budget, universe-hopping fare,
07:57 they've been categorically outdone on a quality standpoint by a new movie made on a fraction of the budget.
08:03 It follows Chinese-American laundromat owner Evelyn Wang,
08:06 who's suddenly charged with saving the multiverse from a malevolent threat
08:09 by slingshotting her consciousness into other universes,
08:12 acquiring her alternate self's skills, and then using said skills to battle her enemies.
08:17 Everything, Everywhere, All at Once is a frantically-paced, hilarious,
08:20 and totally insane film that somehow manages to balance out its surreal,
08:24 absurdist action with genuinely heartfelt, character-driven drama.
08:28 At once shamelessly silly and totally earnest,
08:31 this mesmerizing film tackles the multiverse with peerless levels of imagination,
08:35 and hopefully the Academy won't forget about it next year.
08:38 1. Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse
08:41 Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse was the movie that pre-empted the MCU in introducing mainstream
08:46 audiences to the multiverse,
08:48 and it basically proved to Marvel Studios just how lucrative that could be.
08:51 Refreshingly led by Miles Morales's version of Spider-Man,
08:54 this Oscar-winning film was one of the most visually stunning and dynamic animated films
08:59 of all time, seamlessly blending disparate styles into an exciting and impressively coherent whole.
09:04 Though, for most, of course, the true joy lies in witnessing a bevy of diverse Spider-Man
09:09 iterations team up, including more traditional Peter Parkers,
09:13 voiced by Jake Johnson and Chris Pine, Gwen Stacy's Spider-Woman,
09:16 the fantastic Spider-Ham, Penny Parker, and Spider-Man Noir.
09:20 The result is a film that acutely understands the playful potential of multiversal stories,
09:25 and manages to fold its surrealist style into an emotionally engaging whole.
09:29 Truly, it's an all-timer as animated movies, superheroes, and indeed, multiverse movies go.
09:35 And on that note, we've reached the end of this list of the 10 best multiverse movies ever.
09:39 Were there any others that you would have put on this list instead? Let us know in the comments
09:43 below. And check out WhatCulture.com for more lists and articles like this every single day.
09:48 As always, I've been Amy from WhatCulture and I'll catch you next time.