Movie Review: Doctor Strange

Doctor Strange

I finally got around to getting a DVD and watching Doctor Strange! A good four months after it hit the theaters. I think this is the latest I've watched a MCU movie after it's released. I've seen bits and pieces of the movie in Youtube or whatever, of course, and I'm familiar enough with Dr. Strange as a character that I more or less know what's going to happen in the movie... but that doesn't make this movie any less enjoyable. 

A while back, I reviewed Iron Fist, the fifth installment of Marvel's Netflix TV show series... and it's not until I sat down to review this movie that I realized how similar Dr. Strange and Iron Fist's stories really are. Rich arrogant child (or manchild, in Stephen's case) finds themselves in a really bad spot, ends up finding enlightenment in a zen, oriental-based society, and ends up inheriting the mantle of the society's greatest protector. Also, somewhere in-between all this is a villain, and an ally magician/kung fu master that spends the entire movie/series fighting alongside the protagonist, only to break away from him in disgust and become a villain himself.

Only, unlike Iron Fist, this movie is actually good! It relies more on 'show' instead of 'tell', and we actually get to see Stephen Strange's fall from grace from arrogant douche doctor into a skeptic into someone intent on mastering magic, before his reluctant introduction into the huge war between the Sorcerers Supreme of Kamar-Taj and the forces of the dark lord Dormammu. Oh, and we get huge introdumps to the magical side of the Marvel Universe after movies that rely mostly on sci-fi both hard and soft, with even the Asgardians in Thor operating more on 'technology so far advanced it's magic'. 

Is the movie predictable? Hell yes. Is it like every other superhero or even fantasy story out there? Perhaps so. Hell, definitely so. But unlike Iron Fist, Doctor Strange actually is an enjoyable ride through and through. And yes, part of it is simply because Benedict Cumberbatch is just such an awesome and charismatic actor, and another part is because of the absolutely impressive visuals of the Astral Realm that a bigger budget movie can afford to do (holy fuck, that hand-and-hand-and-hand sequence)... but at the same time, Doctor Strange knows what it wants to do. It knows the story it wants to tell, it knows what it's going to do to get its main players in place and the tribulations and character growths they're going to go through, and this focus makes the journey through Kamar-Taj and the various wards and astral places a lot, lot more coherent and enjoyable. 

And even in a sense, the more introductory feel of the movie, with Stephen Strange going from skeptic to confused to a full practitioner of magic, really works well with the fact that it's the first Marvel movie to feature magic. Stephen Strange himself is a very interesting character. Like Tony Stark, doctor Stephen Strange is an absolutely brilliant, yet arrogant surgeon. He doesn't do anything particularly evil like, say, murdering puppies, but between being a total douche to all his work buddies other than his ex, and picking only cases that's "interesting" for a man his caliber to do, and his general demeanour, karma strikes in the form of a car accident that shatters the man's wrists and fucks up his nervous system. The movie delivers a very, very great way of showing his downward spiral from a montage of his desperation to contact everyone else and be denied for the same reasons he denied some patients before. He pushes away people closest to him, and can't even write his own name properly. In desperation he reaches Kamar-Taj with nothing but the watch he keeps as a memento from his girlfriend, and stumbles not on a zen alternative medicine, but a school of mages. Basically Hogwarts and Shaolin Temple combined into one.

The Ancient One and Wong are absolutely hilarious yet still retain an air of sageness to them, and Stephen's fast friend, Mordo, is likewise charismatic. Between the 'Wi-Fi' line, and the Ancient One and Mordo arguing about whether Strange is dying or if he will succeed all add an air of hilarity to what would otherwise be an unremarkable training montage. Also the large amount of random magical artifacts being used and name-dropped just makes me happy even if I don't know what half of them does. 

Yes, maybe the movie could've been better if it hasn't been so formulaic -- it's basically the character arc from Iron Man, and the plot from Thor (although it's a mortal thrust into a magical world instead of the other way around) mixed together. But at the same time, while it's not super-innovative it's still a lot of fun to watch, and at the end of the day, isn't that what superhero movies are supposed to be? Fun. Not all of them can be the Dark Knight or the Winter Soldier.

There are several very weak parts of the movie, of course. Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams) tries her best to be relevant, but other than the brief scenes earlier in the movie, she ends up feeling more of a distraction than anything, an easy way to get some hospital scenes going on. Kaecilius, the movie's 'main' villain, as well as his band of recurring but nameless cultists, is a very... boring villain. I honestly wished they actually had Dormammu actually show up and wreck stuff, but Dormammu wasn't super-developed either. Kaecilius isn't actually as bad as some of the MCU's worst offenders like Malekith or Ultron, but he's still a pretty bland villain. He's got a couple of great arguments with Dr. Strange (especially the name exchange), and he tries to point out how hypocritical and totalitarian the Ancient One's rule is as Sorcerer Supreme, but it's just not quite enough. Both the Ancient One's usage of darker magic and Strange's own usage of time-reversal magic ends up convincing Mordo to desert the Kamar-Taj at the end of the movie, which is actually fairly organic as far as these things go -- he has been a strong proponent against Strange's methods ever since he wants to use forbidden magic. 

Wong's easily my favourite side-character in the MCU. Such a hilarious fellow. He gets like a dozen 

lines, but he makes all of them shine. 

What else? The cape was hilarious and awesome. I like the cape. Dormammu is... okay, kind of whatever, and as a greater scope villain that Kaecilius is trying to summon and/or feed he honestly lacks much interest similar to how Galactus or Parallax from other derided superhero movies were, but the very... unorthodox method that Dr. Strange deals with Dormammu with the time-reversing Eye of Agammotto is actually something I found hilarious. A bit anticlimactic, sure, but the movie has always been on-the-nose about the plot. So yeah.

Overall, it's a perfectly above-average superhero movie. You won't find anything particularly groundbreaking in this movie, but a combination of impressive visuals, and a very charismatic performance by Benedict Cumberbatch, makes this movie actually one that I enjoyed more than I thought I would. The absolutely psychedelic visuals just make this a lot, lot better. Definitely recommended. 

Also, I think I liked the stinger with Thor and the ever-refilling beer mug more than I should.

Going to watch Guardians of the Galaxy 2 tonight. Will review it probably some time next week.

MCU Easter Eggs Corner:

I'm not super-knowledgeable on the actual Marvel comics, so I'll keep this specific to just the movie continuities.

• The Eye of Agammotto, of course, is the next in a series of Infinity Stones. It's honestly a bit obvious considering its power, and is confirmed offhandedly by Wong briefly near the end.
• The "Air Force Colonel who crushed his spine in an experimental armor" that Strange's assistant mentions is definitely a reference to James "War Machine" Rhodes, right? This movie takes place around or after Civil War, and Rhodes was said to have a crippling spine injury, so it definitely fits.
• Dr. Strange himself was briefly mentioned by Hydra agent Jasper Sitwell as one of the people they were keeping tabs on during Captain America: Winter Soldier, but it's ambiguous when the events of this movie happened. MCU movies tend to happen relatively similar to when they're released in real life, so maybe Sitwell is just... keeping tabs on a particularly smart surgeon? Huh.
• Stan Lee shows up as a passenger in a bus, of course.
• We can see the Avengers Tower prominently in the New York skyline.