It’s like Inception through a kaleidoscope whilst on a sh*t-ton of acid, especially if your watching it in 3D. Doctor Strange is the fourteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Canon that’s filled with money and the crushed dreams of DC fans, which follows the stellar Phase 3 opener that was Captain America Civil War. The big question is, how does Marvel’s first foray into the psychedelic world of the Sorcerer Supreme shape up? Upon first reflection, it’s very much more of the same, but strangely different.
So the story follows Doctor Stephen Strange, a brilliant but arrogant neurosurgeon whose head is so far up is own arse that the resulting a**holery finds his hands crippled after a near fatal car accident. Spending his vast fortune trying to find a cure, he eventually finds himself in Katmandu training with Tilda Swinton playing the One Punch Man as he learns the ways of the mystic arts to become Marvel’s first master of the dark arts.
First things first, you have every person with a speech-impediments favourite actor Benedict Cumberbatch playing the title role, and Cumberbatch is Cumberawesome and is another example of Marvel’s great casting choices. As previously mentioned, we have Tilda Swinton perfectly paired with Cumberbatch as the wise old Ancient One who may or may not be hiding a few anti-aging secrets from the people at Olay Regenerist. White-washing aside, she has the perfect balance of calm and wisdom for such a role.
Director Scott Derrickson, the man behind stellar horror films such as Deliver Us From Evil and Sinister, plays well within the Marvel Universe, giving us some rich settings, good little jump scares and a type of humour that grows on you by the end of the film. We have some great little additions such as the Cloak Of Levitation which is almost a character within itself to the point where I really just wanted to see even more of it throughout the movie.
Now your overall enjoyment of the film may be based on your tolerance for the Marvel movie template because as I said at the beginning, the film is different, but strangely the same.
The case of underused villains once again rears it’s ugly head and Hannibal fans might be particularly upset with how underutilised Mads Mikkelsen is within the main villain role - there’s just not enough for him to chew through with motivations only slightly elevated from Christopher Eccleston’s villain in Thor The Dark World (you know the one… what’s his name… the one with the pointy ears… he was angry for some reason… never mind). However, despite a lacklustre main villain, the film is setting up some very complex villains for possible future instalments that could see the Marvel villain curse broken.
We have Rachel McAdams in the traditional thankless female lead role, just see Pepper Potts or Jane Foster for a quick, easy reference. She has some fleeting moments throughout the film and a forced love-interest narrative which is ultimately superfluous to the overall story (once again check out Gwyneth Paltrow in any of the Iron Man movies) - although McAdams does have one moment to save our heroes life.
Some people have drawn comparisons to movies like Inception and Batman Begins and whilst I can see some links between the films, they are very tenuous and Doctor Strange is very much its own thing with respects to these influences. The Batman Begins references are very superficial and take a back seat to some really interesting dynamics between Doctor Strange, The Ancient One, Baron Mordo and the librarian Wong. Whereas the Inception references are merely a starting point for the incredibly layered and complex moving parts that demand more that one viewing just to absorb how much has been brought to the screen after Christopher Nolan’s physic bending epic.
The climax of the film has, yet again, the Marvel “death from above” trope - which in of itself is disappointing because after some amazing sequences during the film’s second act where characters were falling upwards, sideways, back-ways and every other angle in between, it was clear that death didn’t necessarily have to come from above. It seems like Hollywood just has this fascination with getting their actors to look up into the sky. Yet despite this being so familiar, much like Guardians Of The Galaxy, Derrickson and the team have managed to resolve the climax in a way that’s clever, funny and different from other Marvel movies - and this is clearly where Dan Harmon, the creator of Rick & Morty makes his influence felt when he was brought on for rewrites.
Finally, your tolerance may be tested yet again by how similar the character of Doctor Strange is to Tony Stark, you know, another arrogant smart-ass who makes pop-culture references when dissing a supporting character and has some distinguished facial-hair. Not that there is anything wrong with this, and it is very much in line with the character from the comics, but for general movie-goers, characters like Doctor Strange, Tony Stark and Star-Lord may all be blending into one and just become more of a Robert Downey Jnr off (and the only person who wins in a Robert Downey Jnr-off is Robert Downey Jnr…)
Now this is not me making a list of my own personal complaints of the film, personally, I love the Marvel movies and probably have a bit of an unfair bias towards these movies due to a childhood of reading countless comics, but there is no denying that the films do run the risk of becoming stale.
Overall, Doctor Strange introduces us to a new mystic world within the forever expanding Marvel Universe and even with the interesting mix of same, same but different, there is no denying that this exciting movie opens up a world of opportunities for other characters in the MCU - and if you want know more, as always, stay for the end-credit sequences.
Doctor Strange gets Three and a Half out of Five Stars (or Three and a Half out of Five eye-melting acid trips through an Inception wonderland that really shouldn’t be visited on a full stomach)
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