Hey everyone! Before we start this review let me just tell you that I’ve also recorded a podcast review for Doctor Strange. So if you’d rather listen to a review than read it, check out the podcast. Just click that back button to go back to our main page and you’ll find it right there.
My friends, please read on without fear of spoilers for Doctor Strange. I will assume that you are not some sort of heretic and you’ve seen all the other Marvel movies and thus will not try and tiptoe around plot details for them. Mums the word for Doctor Strange details but it’s open season on everything Pre-Civil War. So there won’t be any spoilers.
Have you ever wondered what Inception would have been like if you dropped acid? That’s Doctor Strange
Marvel has a lot of characters. So many that even some of the most recent movies from Marvel has had the non-initiated scratching their heads wondering who some of these people are. Ant-Man, Black Panther, Quicksilver, who? Heck, before Ironman, people were only vaguely familiar with the name. Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, and Blackwidow were just names that some people knew. Unless you actually read the comics, you may not have even known who any of these people were. Now you do, thanks to the brilliance of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and the fantastic actors who portray them. But that’s not what came out. Instead we got an obscure character (again, only obscure if you’re not familiar with comics) and it worked out beautifully. Here is my review:
We all know what to expect from Marvel movies. While they may have different characters or take place in different times, they all follow the same pattern. Then comes along Doctor Strange who follows the patters perfectly but somehow makes it feel like it’s not. This is an origin story so we know what to expect in that sense so in that way it’s just like every other first movie in a characters trilogy. Just like Iron Man, Captain America: The First Avenger, Thor, Ant-Man, ect, this movie followed a pattern to a T. That’s not really a bad thing but it gets old. Something happens, the character needs to find himself (because let’s face it, so far it’s always been a him), the character discovers/builds/learns his powers, the bad guy is introduced, the character must train to become better, the character learns a lesson, beats the bad guy, and all is good. The question is, is there any other way to do an origin story? Of course there is. You just start the movie where they already have their powers. When Spider-Man: Homecoming comes out, do we really need to see Peter get bitten by a spider and Uncle Ben die again? No, we don’t. In the case of a character like Doctor Strange who may not be as widely known as Spider-Man, you tell the story through brief flashbacks or, heaven forbid, exposition. Is exposition really such a bad word? Why can’t we learn about some of the origin back story though that? There are other ways to endear a character to the viewers. Hell, Marvel did it with Black Panther in Civil War. Here’s a guy, his father gets killed, and he must find the murderer. Done. That alone was enough to get me to care about the character, all that was lacking was development.
But enough about origin story rants. Back to the movie. You all know that I have a very specific set of rules regarding computer graphics in movies. This is a big budget blockbuster so I’d have little patience for bad looking graphics. The good thing is, that wasn’t a problem. Doctor Strange looked beautiful and it was a CG heavy movie so there was a lot of chances for it to go wrong, but it never did. I made that joke about Inception earlier but it seems like director Scott Derrickson (who brought us Sinister) had a major hard on for the 2010 Christopher Nolan movie and decided to take it all one step further. It could have all gone horribly wrong if the right person wasn’t in charge of the graphics. But lucky for us Marvel doesn’t have their head up their butts like Michael Bay does and did a great job.
Okay, quick time out. I read the movie review by wired because I hate Rotten Tomatoes and Meta Critic but still wanted to get an idea for how others were looking at the movie. Wired’s K.M. McFarland enjoyed the movie but seemed to get hung up on the MCU’s lack of women. I’ve seen a lot of people cry about this and I’d just like to point out that this isn’t the current Marvel’s fault. These are all characters created fifty plus years ago when gender and equality were rarely heard uttered on the same breath. I’m not defending the lack of women but if the MCU changed characters just to make sure we’re gender equal it’d just be a pandering insult. Now, in this era, we have more female main characters in comic books and all that will probably come out once we get out of the golden and silver ages of comics. If it’s the right choice for the role, that’s different. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Mordo who’s supposed to be a Transylvanian nobleman but anyone can see Ejiofor is black. They changed the character and then cast Ejiofor which was a great choice. Had they kept him an old Transylvanian dude, but cast Ejiofor, that would have been pandering.
Back to the movie once again. The acting. Ah yes, the acting. Let’s talk about that. Spotted Dick Bandersnatch did a great job as a cocky American doctor. Cocky isn’t a big stretch for him since he does play Sherlock Holms so well, but he was able to make Dr. Stephen Strange different from Sherlock Holms. And it was weird hearing him speak without an accent. He did an amazing job hiding that. Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave) had a one dimensional feeling to his character for a good chunk of it, but that was no fault of his own. He did a good job but there just wasn’t much to Mordo until closer to the end when he got to show more about what drives him. Tilda Swinton (The Chronicles of Narnia) did a great job as The Ancient One who’s complexity I can’t dive into because of spoilers, but I do wish they would have fleshed out her character more. The Ancient One could have been so much better.
Rachel McAdams is a great actress who was woefully underused. Her character served no purpose. There are a couple things about Christine Palmer that affected Doctor Strange during his quest, but she could have still be easily taken out and had another character fill that gap. All she was good for was a laugh and there were other characters who could have taken her place. Palmer isn’t even a character from the Doctor Strange universe. She’s from a Marvel series called Night Nurse. The first Night Nurse, Linda Carter, once teamed up with Doctor Strange and was also his love interest. Why not use her? Why use the third Night Nurse that has nothing to do with Doctor Strange whatsoever. She has more to do with the X-Men than she does Strange.
The last actor who did the best with what little they were given was the bad guy Kaecilius played by Mads Mikkelsen (Casino Royale). I like Mikkelsen a lot and we’ll be seeing more of him in Rogue One: A Star Wars story, but as for his role in Doctor Strange, he did a good job but the character sucked and he could have been so good. Think back, think way back, to when I was talking about using exposition to deal with origin stories. Exposition was the enemy in the case of Kaecilius because of another case of showing vs. telling. Any good writer knows the difference between showing and telling and also when to use them. Scott Derrickson apparently doesn’t fully grasp these rules. Kaecilius could have been a very very good character despite hardly anyone knowing who the hell he was. But instead we were just force fed his background and his character wasn’t given any chance to express why his backstory drives him. Instead he’s just another crazy pants McGee.
The story was good but felt like it did more to set up a sequel then it to be a standalone movie. I really hope Doctor Strange and his villains play a bigger role in Avengers: Infinity War OR that more Doctor Strange movies are planned because they did such a good job of establishing the universe and setting up two future bad guys for everyone’s favorite sorcerer to face.
I saw this in 3D because I hate having money and look for every opportunity to spend it. I figured that if any Marvel movie was going to make 3D worth it, it would be this one. But it didn’t blow me away. I was really hoping that the 3D would look great and it would blow me away and make me so glad I paid the stupid surcharge. But I wasn’t. I enjoyed it. It sure was a pretty looking movie. But not enough was gained from seeing it in 3D for me to suggest to anyone that it’s worth it, which is a true shame. There were parts where the 3D was great and even more parts where the 3D was as useful as a swear jar for a mute.
Before I wrap this up and tell you my score, let me just say this. If you’re watching a Marvel movie, always stay until the very end. A lot of times there’s a mid-credit scene as well as a post-credit stinger. I don’t know how more people forget this fact. Either that or everyone in the theater was some mouth breather who couldn’t be bothered to sit around and watch the extra scenes. Always sit though the credits because there’s almost always something. If you absolutely can’t be bothered to stay through the credits unless you know there’s going to be a stinger because your time is sooo important, then check out a website called media stinger. It will tell you if a movie has any mid or post credit scenes. But don’t be a punk, sit through the credits.
So when all was said and done, when the stinger ended and I walked out of the theater and stood in the parking lot mulling over the movie with my friend Nick and I realized that the movie was good. Not great, not terrible. It was good. It was good enough to own and watch again but not good enough to watch again in theaters. Doctor Strange is further proof that Marvel knows what they’re doing and that Disney is smart to stay out of their way and let them do their thing.
Doctor Strange was a very fun movie that made me laugh quite a few times and was a great spectacle to behold, but it lacked that extra something that Civil War or Captain America 2 had. This is a solid movie that is very enjoyable and unfortunately it falls just short of being great.
Doctor Strange gets an 8 out of 11.