Matt Reviews: Doctor Strange

WARNING: SPOILERS for DOCTOR STRANGE follow. Enter at your own risk.

If you take anything away from watching Doctor Strange, it’s that texting while driving can turn you into a superhero.

Stephen Strange (played by Sherlock actor Beetlejuice Crumblecake) is a vain neurosurgeon who can no longer perform in his job when his hands are damaged in the mother of all car crashes. (Seriously, the thing FLIPS OVER THE SIDE OF A CLIFF and he walks away with just shaky hands. By all accounts, he should be dead.) Looking for a way to cure himself, he ventures to the hidden city of Kamar-Taj, where he becomes a pupil of the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) in the arts of mysticism. While he trains, he is sucked into a magic war involving Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen), a former pupil of the Ancient One who wants to use magic to stop all death by summoning the demon Dormammu and his timeless Dark Dimension to Earth. Nothing can go wrong with that plan, except making Kaecilius and his followers look like bad Jem and the Holograms cosplayers.

Alright, let’s talk about what everyone praises in this movie: the visuals. Yes, they are beautiful, probably some of the best effects I’ve seen in a superhero movie. Yes, they are trippy. Anytime someone uses magic to bend the world around them, they’re also bending my mind. The little mind-trip that the Ancient One sends Strange through is one of the acid-est things I’ve seen on film.

I’m not a big fan of 3D in film – because a lot of the time I think it’s largely unnecessary and only costs more and adds more headaches – but I made it my mission to specifically see this movie in 3D just for the effects. And in my opinion, it was worth the extra bucks. Now I have no idea if the DVD is going to have any 3D features (or if DVDs even do that), but if you have any conceivable way to see this in three dimensions, do it. Or four dimensions, even. Now THAT’S a trip.

*Inception BWONG*

 As for the story itself, it’s pretty much your basic superhero origin plot. It has shades of Iron Man in there and a little bit of Ant-Man, but it’s not a complete paint-by-numbers job. They have fun with the premise of a superhero origin, like Marvel always does.

They change a few characters from the comics, but I think it’s mostly for the better. Wong, Doctor Strange’s manservant from the comics, has been changed to the drill sergeant of the sorcerers of Kamar-Taj, thus making him a much more active role and taking away any unfortunate implications of him being an Asian manservant to a white man. Baron Mordo – here just called Mordo – has gone from the cackling, world-conquering supervillain to a more believable, sympathetic future antagonist. The film does a good job showing his fall from grace and how hypocritical he views the teaching and limitations set by the Ancient One.

 Kaecilius probably got the biggest overhaul, going from a minor minion of Baron Mordo in the comics to the main antagonist, with a surprisingly sympathetic backstory. One can easily see where his evil actions are coming from – wanting to prevent any more death after losing his own family – and his anger towards the Ancient One’s hypocritical use of the Dark Dimension’s powers (forshadowing Mordo’s own turn). However, while Kaecilius shows promise of fixing Marvel’s problems with underdeveloped villains, they don’t go as far as they should have with him. His backstory is only briefly glossed over, and while interesting, it doesn’t make up for the fact that he spends much of the rest of the movie as your typical, bland, “take over the world” Marvel bad guy. Honestly, I thought Mordo was the better-developed antagonist here, and that’s not even the role he plays.

"Guys, I thought we all agreed to ominously look in the same direction."

The film certainly follows in Marvel’s light-hearted, jokey superhero film formula, which admittedly, was a breather after some of the superhero films I saw in 2016. However, sometimes I feel like it was a bit too jokey and quippy. It’s not that I wanted Doctor Strange to be super grim and serious, mind you, but it was a similar problem I had with Age of Ultron. Sometimes the quips were a bit much and distracted from the more serious moments.

One of these comedic elements that I am still torn about is the choice to make Strange’s Cloak of Levitation living. Basically, it’s the MCU’s equivalent of the Carpet from Aladdin. On one hand, it is kind of cute, and it ties into the whimsical, mystical side of the movie. On the other hand, it kind of undermines the gravitas of Doctor Strange when a sentient sheet of fabric is fighting his battles part of the time. It’s one of those things Marvel did to appeal to younger audiences, so I really can’t get too mad about this, but I definitely have a love-hate relationship with Doctor Strange’s cape. (Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d type…)

Speaking of Strange’s magical arsenal, I think the name “Sling Ring” is really stupid. There, I’ve said it. All of the other magical weapons have these ancient, grandiose names. The Cloak of Levitation. The Eye of Agamotto. The Staff of the Living Tribunal. And…Sling Rings. These are a respected, ancient order of magic-users, and they transport around the globe using something that sounds like it was made up by a Hasbro executive in the 1990’s. They were specifically created for the film by the director, and trust me, they stick out like a sore thumb if only in their name.

There’s some romance in this movie and it’s…okay. Rachel McAdams plays Strange’s fellow surgeon and former lover Christine Palmer, and let me tell you, I could watch Rachel McAdams all day in any role. She is adorable and charming and has such good chemistry with other actors, including Bubbagump Christmastime in this movie. However, the romance doesn’t really go anywhere. Honestly, I wasn’t super invested in the romance from the get-go because I was always thinking that it didn’t matter who Strange was attracted to in this movie if he’s eventually going to marry Clea down the line like in the comics (hopefully). It’s not the worst superhero movie romance I’ve seen, but superhero movie romances have gotten so stale to me that you need to bring something really new to the table to keep me invested. Then again, maybe Deadpool just set a really high standard.

Ruffles have ridges.

 Oh, and Dormammu’s in this movie. As the movie was progressing, I thought he was just going to be in the background; the great, unseen master of Kaecilius who is often mentioned but is such a big threat that they’re saving him for the sequel. Nope. Strange confronts him at the end. And defeats him. See, it’s like the Cloak dilemma again. On the one hand, the scene where Strange outsmarts Dormammu is funny and clever, using an infinite time loop to annoy a demon into submission. A breath of fresh air after other Marvel movies end with a physical fight. On the other hand, a huge threat like the Dread Dormammu really shouldn’t be delegated to the last ten minutes of a movie. Kaecilius should have been the final foe fought (where, in the actual movie, he’s pretty much forgotten so Strange can Groundhog Day Dormammu), and the Dread One should have been saved for the sequel, where more time could have been explored with him. I’m sure they’re still going to have him in the next Doctor Strange movie, but after that finale, it may feel like a letdown or a retread now that Strange has already defeated him once using a magic rewind button.

Also, they changed his design pretty significantly, going from a flame-headed demon to…purple. And apparently he is the Dark Dimension and has no real physical form? Or something? I guess this makes him look less like Ghost Rider – who is now an official part of the MCU – but Marvel already has an über-important purple big bad that doesn’t really do a whole lot.

"These cheekbones aren't gonna sharpen themselves, Scott."

 But for all my gripes, I really did enjoy Doctor Strange. The visuals are probably it’s biggest drawing point, but it is a fun, enjoyable super hero movie despite it’s numerous plot holes. The cast really makes these characters come alive too, with special mention going to the performances of Tilda Swinton and Bounsweet Charjabug. And it’s cool to see magic finally introduced into the MCU. And I mean magic-magic, not Thor’s “alien technology so advanced that our feeble human minds perceive it as magic”-magic. Let’s see the Asgardians do this stuff with their elvish TIE Fighters or whatever.

Final verdict: 8/10

Now how long will it be until Marvel makes a movie where Doctor Strange and Everett Ross from Civil War meet up to solve mysteries together in London?