Doctor Strange

From my Blog:

Hey guys, first film review I’ve written since June, 5 months ago. I believe this is the longest gap I’ve had prior to starting my blog more than six years ago; simple enough to explain why of course. The fervor of youtube production and watching SFV replays while maintaining the channel and communicating with various parties including multiple Capcom Cup participants drove my interest more than writing reviews. The movies that came out this year were also a fair amount less interesting than the ones last year, but I did see Hell or High Water (easily the best film of the year) recently and didn’t write a review for that so this isn’t a functional excuse either.

All of that said Doctor Strange is a great film, it isn’t quite Deadpool levels of excellent but within the constraints of the Marvel template it’s hard to imagine them doing much better than this. There are no less than five exceptional actors in the film and soon enough every actor who walks the earth will have a major role in Avengers 40 billion. Cumberbatch kicks ass, because he’s great in everything ever; even the much maligned Into Darkness. Tilda Swinton is alright is the immensely predictable master role (took me ~2 minutes from the start of the film to see the resolution of her plot arc), though given how much talent she shows in films such as Snowpiercer I guess this one amounts to a paycheck.

Doc Strange himself is much like every protagonist ever in a slightly thoughtful film, that is to say a representation of myself, an eccentric, narcissistic, extremely smart person (always male, often white, usually tall and handsome etc.). Strange has an odd affiliation for being good that I find a special amount of affinity for and which doesn’t generally occur in most “genius” movies because they all take place in something resembling reality. But in this case given the expanded rule set we instead find a rather interesting philosophical point:

At multiple points in the film there is a reference to man’s own insignificance, a perception of oneself as an irrelevant speck in hundreds of millions, even billions of similar specks out there. Anyone with a mathematical mind is of course aware of this, the simple equation of 1 divided by 8 billion results in a number approaching zero for all intents and purposes; but it is interesting that this seems to be the focal motivation of the antagonist as well as what drives Doctor Strange to want to be significant even when faced with the impossibility of such a feat. Luckily with magical spells on your side this becomes less of an issue, but it would be cool to see this demonstrated in a more realistic universe where people strive for absolute power over everything to try to force the issue (though perhaps ultimately still becoming somewhat meaningless, even if the protagonist is someone absurdly impressive like Napoleon, Alexander, or Toyotomi Hideyoshi). It is very rare for a super hero movie to even imagine touching on such a complicated, difficult subject so I applaud the effort here, it shows someone intelligent was involved in the production of the film.

Doctor Strange is certainly one of the funniest Superhero films, even if the humor isn’t continuously entertaining like Deadpool or Iron Man 3, it just has very smart pseudo breaking the fourth wall type of dialogue throughout. Immediate mockery of obviously ridiculous situations makes the transition into them much easier, and once it becomes clear the “cool” moment isn’t just about bending buildings around randomly it all works much better just because the writing allows for you to accept such things. Amusingly Wong, the comic relief character de jour, actually kind of fails at being humorous; instead he’s just Captain Exposition (I must reference the excellent Spoony review of Avatar the Last Airbender here) and when no one is even slightly interested in MCU bullshit he has the worst lines in that regard. Oh, ahem, let me namedrop the avengers for no reason in this scene; oh you’ve heard of Infinity Stones? Let’s ham-fistedly reference those too. Yes the film is ultimately about stupid plot macguffins at its core, but you don’t need to make that completely obvious to me movie, let’s just pretend the shitty corporate mess part doesn’t exist and then we can enjoy an otherwise fantastic film.

I'm excited to see it tomorrow night. I hope it's great! I hated Deadpool though, so hopefully it doesn't hit "the levels of excellence" that film had. Nicely written review!

Loved it, loved it, loved it. Didn't think they'd go there and then they totally went there and it was great. Might be my favourite Marvel movie, but I fuckin love this sort of shit. Definitely between this and Guardians of the Galaxy.

The Avengers namedrop was a bit hokey, but I guess it's a sensible reference for someone coming from a world where the Avengers have been doing some crazy shit for a while now. The infinity stone one was appropriate, and is an easy justification for why the Eye of Agamotto can do what it does.

Also (spoilers):

Pretty much loved it. You can gripe about minor things, but the positives are so much more.

It was fine. The story is very basic and the vilain way underwritten, but the visuals were fun.

Anyone feel like it was basically a better version of the Green Lantern movie?

Maybe the first Marvel movie where the villain actually had a pretty good justification for his actions.

I feel like they had to make it explicit that the Eye of Agamotto is an infinity stone, otherwise the climactic battle makes no sense at all because it would be far outside of Strange's powers at that point.

I somehow got this far without seeing another superhero movie this year, but yeah, it sure is one of those. It was fine, but I guess I'm a little indifferent to Doctor Strange's vaguely-defined bag of mystical magical wizard kung-fu powers, even if the visual effects themselves were pretty dang cool. That said, will there ever be a MCU movie with a villain other than Loki who isn't totally forgettable? Because boy, Mads Mikkelsen sure is underutilized.

It was Ok. After seeing Ant-man, which was the last origin story super hero movie i saw, this seemed very formulaic. The action wasn't that great, it looked cool at first, but it wasn't really enthralling and the ending was very anti-climatic imo. I did like the rewind thing right when they got to HK but I was kinda confused how all that worked out.

Surprised how many times this movie reminded me of The Matrix.

It was OK. Like most Marvel movies, the villain was bad (They got Mads Mikkelson for that?!?!?) and some of the jokes didn't hit for me. Ultimately the movie felt kind of pointless except for a few very cool reveals.

3/5

I like pretty much all the Marvel movies but I was quite disappointed with this one.

It isn't a bad film but I'd say it's one of the weaker Marvel films. I think it may be a case of diminishing returns; we've seen arrogant but brilliant man become hero before (and done better in my opinion).

How connected do they try to make this film to the MCU? Dr. Strange and his powers seems great but I am just so tired of the MCU. I genuinely believe that most of these modern hero films would be way better watches if there wasn't some need to tie it all into all some shared universe.

@adequatelyprepared: Not very, actually. There are nods here and there, but this one is very much a self-containef story.

Of course, there's always the post-credits stinger, but you can just ignore that and enjoy the movie on its own.

Marvel has perfected this formula of superhero storytelling that I liked this one too even if it doesn't do anything too memorable. It's got a clever climax, and it's probably the most visually interesting movie in the entire MCU, that's for sure.

But yeah, it's still pretty sad that they can't make compelling villains outside of Loki. I guess the reason for that should be pretty obvious though!

My fear is that they end up doing the same for Thanos. He should be super charismatic.

I'm glad they maintained the psychedelia of Dr. Strange since I'm pretty sure Steve Ditko came up with the whole thing while on mind altering substances and Stan Lee stole the credit while smoking a jay.

There was great casting but these Marvel movies are all well done if a bit samey. My only two complaints about the Marvel movies are the villains aren't interesting and the musical scores aren't memorable. They wasted Mads Mikkelsen as the villain just like they wasted Hugo Weaving, Christopher Eccelston, Mickey Rourke, Guy Pearce, Tim Roth, and Lee Pace to name a few. All incredible actors wasted as forgettable villains. The Netflix Marvel shows get it right. The Purple Man from Jessica Jones might be one of the best villain performances from recent years. Plus you can't forget how much Kingpin and The Punisher added to Daredevil. Hell Luke Cage had three great villains in Cottonmouth, Diamondback, and Black Mariah.

As for the score I thought they took a step in the right direction with that cool prog rock track that fit with the whole Dr. Strange motif. Here's hoping they do more interesting stuff for the new Spider-Man and Thor sequel.

@bartok: Well, developing villains in a TV show usually works out better due to the time-constraints of a movie. Especially these origin stories, where you're trying to build a new character so building two is a little much. Though Loki being great makes sense since his origin took place side-by-side with Thor.

In theory, the sequel after the origin story should produce more interesting villains since you can spend more time with them (like The Dark Knight did) but it does continue to be an issue with the MCU.

I don't really think you need to spend that much more time building them up. It's enough to just have them behave differently. They don't have to always be dour made up dudes or dull businessmen. Loki would be great even if he had no relation to Thor because he's fun to watch and has relatively unusual superpowers. Take Malekith. He's pretty fun in the comics! He's kinda Loki-like, and campy and shapeshifting and very elf-like. He's got a fun, harlequin-like design. He travels not with spaceships, but by moving between shadows and darkness. But he's weak to iron. Specialized strengths, defined weakness, uncommon design. What do they make him in Thor 2? A dour, serious, heavily made up dude in black and white armor with a big scar who travels with spaceships and attacks with vague energy bullcrap and Babidi/Zant-style portals to other places. They don't fuck up villains by not giving them enough screentime, their mistake is making them all as dull and un-comic-like as possible.

I haven't seen Doctor Strange yet, but Mads Mikkelsen's make up sure is Ronan/Malekith. I've heard Dormammu is in it, and I have zero hope that he looks or acts remotely like himself.

When "Feels So Good" came on in the operating room, I knew what it was and laughed to myself WHY I knew what it was. Thank you CD-i's "Name That Tune" and Giant Bomb.

Aside from the crazy visuals, the movie was fairly by-the-numbers, for better or for worse. I will say I did enjoy the ending though. Strange trapping Dormammu in an infinite time loop forcing him to make a deal was actually a somewhat more interesting resolution to the plot compared to most of the Marvel movies, where they just blast the villain with coloured beams.

As someone who is beyond bored of the Marvel movies, I found Doctor Strange to be really refreshing. I got a big Iron Man 1 vibe from it. I came away incredibly impressive.

I guess I'm the only one here who was thoroughly disappointed. Even for a Marvel movie the CG was so over the top that most of the climactic scenes looked like a weird cartoon. My issue wasn't even the magic, more the set dressing and environment being almost entirely CG gave those scenes a real sterile, plastic look that just completely killed it for me. I legit fell asleep twice. Also Cumberbatch's American accent was bad, like really bad. It almost sounded like he was trying to do his best Keifer Sutherland impression.

So, one of the things I liked about this movie is that the much hyped smartest guy in the room actually out thought his opposition in the end. I liked that his actions were built on what they had established about him being willing to bend rules because he is smart enough to see a direct route to a solution and being motivated by his beliefs as a doctor that he shouldn't be fighting and killing people. It's simple but it is the kind of narrative execution that is usually missing in action/adventure movies in favour of simple, brute force solutions.

Please for the love of God, superhero movies, stop with villains trying to summon portals in major cities to unleash alien monsters that want to take over the world.

Venture Bros ruined Doctor Strange for me. I won't be able to sit through the movie and not think about Doctor Orpheus.

@flakmunkey: My opinion is the complete opposite, if anything there wasn't enough CG. I really don't see a point in making a Doctor Strange movie without 70's style psychedelic effects. It's supposed to look like a weird cartoon. I do somewhat agree with the plastic look, but for me it was the effects like flight seeming like they were completely static, there was no feeling of motion to it.

@lackingsaint: I mean it's to the character right? Captain A fights foreign governments and political corruption, Iron Man and Ant Man fight technological monstrosities and dangerous science, Thor and the Guardians fight aliens, and Doctor Strange fights the dark dimension and powers from beyond the physical realm.

I thought this was one of the better origin stories in the MCU. I'd have to put some more thought into where it would actually end up but it would probably be Top 5 for sure and possibly Top 3. I thought Mads Mikkelsen's character was a pretty good villain and how they worked Dormammu into the story was really well done too. The two after credit scenes were both great so I can't wait to see what comes next.

You could certainly write a functional script in which every tedious cliche is justified within the narrative, but it's still a tedious cliche. I thought Doctor Strange was all about bending our understanding of reality, and then the last half of the story had a carbon-copy threat and core conflict as multiple superhero movies including one released this year!

I mean, that's my general critique of the film. Sure, every Marvel movie to an extent is a market-adjusted, inoffensive factory-line product. That just stuck out a lot more in a movie which explicitly says on multiple occasions that it's going to "blow your mind" (ps by "blow your mind" we mean some cool cgi).

@lackingsaint: Sounds like you have a fundamental misunderstanding of Dr. Strange then. Dormammu is one of his biggest arch foes, possibly the most well-known?

Sounds like you have a fundamental misunderstanding of my comment. "Dormammu is a well-known foe of Dr Strange" means nothing to me as a person watching a movie. It doesn't matter if he's got a legacy behind him if, in the movie, he's a boring, one-dimensional character with a cliche, overdone plan. Red Skull is probably Captain America's most well-known foe, but the first Cap movie is still easily the worst of the trilogy.

Solidly entertaining. The caliber of actors on display was crazy, which helped elevate the run-of-the-mill Marvel experience while the writing itself was about as good as a non-Joss When superhero movie could possibly be. I'd give it 4/5 stars.

My dormmamu dawg! #FGCjokes

@hmoney001: Doctor Strange with the easy infinite in the corner #stolenfromrkappajokes

@lackingsaint: I don't understand. So are otherworldly threats just like, off-limits then? You can only have terrestrial threats? That seems needlessly limiting. Do you get annoyed when the Guardians of the Galaxy fight enemies... in the galaxy?

Execution, Not Premise. I don't care what the threat is - I didn't even specifically address Dormammu until you brought him up - I just want interesting villains with interesting plans. The 'Cult Of Followers Summon Alien Monster Portal In Major City' set-piece for sure is not an interesting plan (used multiple times this year, even multiple times IN PREVIOUS MARVEL MOVIES), and the one-dimension-at-a-push Dormammu we got certainly ain't an interesting villain. Your argument is disingenuous, like saying "You have a problem with the Joker in Suicide Squad? So, what, you don't think gangsters should ever be villains??". Besides, I complained about the first Cap movie literally in the comment you replied to - you'd have to be intentionally missing my point for that to translate to "My problem is extraterrestrial threats".

5/10 for me. Probably the most unique and impressive looking of the Marvel movies so far but I'm getting so tired of origin stories and this one was just too formulaic for me at this point. We start out hating the guy, break him down, pity him, have him learn humility, master otherworldly powers way too quickly all in time to save the world from screenfuls of CGI by the end of the two hour mark. I didn't love the cast so I didn't leave this movie hoping to see more of the characters in new adventures, just kinda wanted them out of my life by the end of the thing. I thought some of the humor was really lame and way too topical: Beyonce, Drake, maybe a social media joke or two, I can't quite remember. I just watched the first Thor recently, it was the last MCU movie I still hadn't seen, and enjoyed that more than this. It had a brighter, more energetic tone with a cast that lights up the screen for me and had me looking forward to 3 even though Dark World was dull. For me Dr. Strange was an overly dark, overstuffed origin story didn't leave me craving more.

Dormammu, I've come to bargain.

Couldn't agree more with this sentiment.

@lackingsaint: I saw Dormmamu as a force of nature, a being that exist above us, and that he's working multiple agendas at once. This earth just was just ripe for the taking because of Mads character opened him the door.

He didn't plan shit, he doesn't have to, the universe will present him with opportunity again and again. He'll be back.

@utterances: How is Dr. Strange dark? I found the movie very hopeful with Strange making the ultimate sacrifice in the hope of taking on Dormmamu. He had a plan, but would it work? He could never be 100% sure of it