That Michael Waldron, creator of Loki (since 2021), was inspired by a famous James Cameron movie, highly esteemed by lovers of horror and science fiction, for the text on the most brutal sequence that we find during Doctor Strange in the multiverse of madness should help the audience understand certain features of his craft. And so, Sam Raimi’s film affects the story of a possible future villain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

What viewers don’t understand about moving-image adaptations is that you can’t translate a story as a writer presents it to us in a book, comic, or video game. On the one hand, the seventh art has specific narrative needs, and not those of literature, for example. So there are always changes for this reason. On the other hand, filmmakers are authors of their own work and make it their own as they wish or can.

In addition, being a collaborative activity, the head of the executive producer Kevin Feige also appears out there. Marvel’s supreme guide and keeper of the saga’s essential coherence must have approved that the dreams in it are now fleeting glimpses into the lives of the other versions of the characters in the multiverse unleashed by the Doctor Strange sequel ( 2016). Which could change the details about Nightmare’s dominance a lot.

Doctor Strange in the multiverse of madness, a big problem for Nightmare

Created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko for Strange Tales #110 in April 1963, this demonic being rules the Dream Dimension, formed from the collective unconscious of humanity—a concept alien to the science of psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung. —and where he wanders on the back of a jet-colored horse with antlers. The Marvel comics also determine that he exists because of the human need to dream, without which people would fall into dementia.

But, of course, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is supposed to have suppressed said dimension as a real space in which it is possible to move, reducing it to a simple connection between parallel universes. Which essentially undoes Nightmare. And, therefore, it makes it impossible for Kevin Feige and his writing team to alter his origin, attributions, and purposes. So that they square without problems with the situation that concerns him in the Marvel franchise.