Seems as if so many movies that have come out recently, from:

Everything, Everywhere All at Once
Spiderverse

to movies that are coming out soon, such as:

The Flash

are using some sort of multiverse as a plot device. Are you getting tired of it? Are you fine with it as long as the story is told right? Is it a cliche to have it nowadays?

What do you think?

"Multiverse" has replaced "the character has split personalities and is really the hero and the villain" and "it was all a dream or hallucination" as they go-to twists. We're reaching the point where a multiverse reveal is expected. Someone is acting strangely? Must be an alternate universe doppelganger!

no suspense as character deaths are cheapened when they come back as John from Earth 2

Or they're a skrull!

I think it's fine, it's just a way to get more fanservice and unite otherwise separate shows/movies. Which is pretty much the same way it was used in comics.

I don't get the character death thing, have we had that happen yet besides Gamora?

It can be a really great plot device. See: EEAAO, Infinite Crisis, Mirror Mirror, et cetera.
All plot devices hinge on a question: Is this used to examine something deeper, such as character or theme?

Bringing back someone from the dead? Tired.
Seeing a different actor play a beloved character? Lame.

Contrasting how a character or relationship may have turned out in circumstances different from the Prime-verse? Interesting.
Re-examining ideals held by characters in a different context? Neat.
Confronting how chracters messed up or how the world could be better/worse based on decisions? Welcome the the Many Worlds Hypothesis!

Just like you can have an antagonist that challenges the viewpoint of the protagonist in interesting ways/challenge the protagonist out of their comfort zone or an antagonist that simply is an asshole for no discernable reason, it depends entirely on how it's written.

Not in movies, but variations of it have occurred quite a bit in comics. In fact the current Superman is actually the "old" Superman, while the New 52 Relaunch Superman died.

In the case of The Flash, it seems as if DC's solution for spending the last several years producing disappointing superhero movies is to use this film to bring back all the superior and/or loved versions of the characters.

Right, but death is meaningless in (superhero) comics with or without multiverse shenanigans.

Also I think the DC rebirth thing is a lot more complicated than that because a lot of the other characters are no longer really New 52 versions either.

That's a publishing issue though, not story so much. I mean, it also impacts the story, but the motivator is profit, not story.

And yes, I think you're right. They mixed and matched (which they even did with the New 52), so Wonder Woman is still Zeus' child, but Lobo is "classic" or... something. I can't keep up with it anymore.

Yeah, you can definitely do multiple things simultaneously. I've been avoiding Flash spoilers, but it seems like Keaton's universe is possibly a result of Flash mucking with time travel, so you're exploring him screwing stuff up for personal gain and will get a look at how his life would be if his mom was still around.

Yeah I said it in the Flash thread but I really hope Keaton is an actual multiverse and not "Flash screws up the timeline so much that Bruce Wayne is not only older, he's a completely different person." I know there's precedent in the comics as was pointed out in the thread for Flash going back in time and messing the whole timeline up, even stuff he couldn't possibly have influenced, but meh.

I am sick of it but then again you are asking the wrong person

Creating a multiverse means that now they can do pretty much whatever the fuck they want to and blame it on an alternate reality.

Which is really what they had been doing all along and it only really comes up when there's (supposedly) strict continuity between movies. Like we had trilogies and things of similar size before but even then things like James Bond were loosely connected. But the MCU changed all that. Again, same with comics, the multiverse was just a way to try to reconcile all the disparate comic stories/characters.

I think the idea of a Multiverse is fun. Gives opportunities for classic actors to return to roles which can be hit or miss but is cool when things do work out well. Like Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Michael Keaton in The Flash.

Caveat: I've never really read any comics, so I don't know how (or how well) they are handled that way.

So far, I've enjoyed the multiverse stuff. Some of it has been really good (Spider-Man NWH). Some of it has just been pandering to fans of older franchises (Dr. Strange MoM). While I did like the Dr. Strange scenes, it didn't really do anything necessary. I can see my opinion on multiverse stuff changing depending on how it's all handled going forward. If it ends up being a cheap way to bring back characters over and over again, or removing all stakes from any actions performed by heroes or villains, I probably won't like it near as much.

It’s fun. It’ll keep the MCU stakes escalating beyond Endgame. Not sure what happens after the multiverse saga. Are there any comic arcs that get bigger?

My disappointment is that the storytelling so far hasn’t been as chaotic and dense. It is largely for family entertainment.

The multiverse is just a storytelling tool. Like anything, it can be used to tell good stories and it can be used to tell bad stories.

Where I take pause is when it's just used as an excuse to dig up old characters as a way to hook audiences who like to remember things. Like, I would have absolutely no intention of seeing the Flash, but I'm curious to see Michael Keaton. I know it's likely going to suck and I'm going to be mad I wasted my time, but here we are and ultimately that's on me. Maybe I'll be proven wrong next week, but I doubt it.

Even a good example of multiverse storytelling like Everything Everywhere has something like the Wong Kar Wai style scenes which do have a storytelling purpose, but with a side helping of "I get that reference!". That one gets a pass because it's not specific enough and the reference isn't really the point, but unfortunately that seems to be the exception to the rule. Typically (or at least recently) it's just a lazy device to show us things we've already seen before in place of actually telling a compelling story.

I don't think it'll necessarily be used all that much to reverse deaths. The Gamora thing is a weird one, and I don't think Gunn even wanted that to happen. Maybe they do it to allow someone else to take up the mantle, but I don't see them wanting to reverse a death and pay an actor big bucks again if they wrote them out originally.

But yeah, a lot of this is definitely just fan service. I'm not going to complain if we down the line get another Superman movie with Cavill because of it.

Waiting for all of the James Bonds to meet each other when the 007verse has a multiverse crisis.

I've been used to multiverse stories since I was reading DC Earth-2 crossovers as a kid back in the 70's, (it used to happen every summer in the Justice League comics, an event I looked forward to) so it's not something I even give a second thought about at this point. (although I do remember a seven year old me initally being confused seeing two Supermans, a young and an old one, in the same story, until I grasped the whole Earth-1/Earth-2 thing.

I mean...

I tried to convey this in my post, but you said it better.

Many mentions of the MCU, correct me if I'm wrong but hasn't the MCU always been based on an alternative "Ultimates" Marvel history and not the Main one? I know this comes up from time to time.

Not really. The biggest thing they got from that was Sam Jackson as Nick Fury. Which is a good thing because as much as it was lauded when it came out (and there was merit in having a more "grounded" Avengers), Mark Millar's writing hasn't really held up to the test of time.

All of the major story beats including Infinity Gauntlet, Civil War, Winter Soldier, etc. were adapted from the mainline Marvel universe.