"Doctor Strange" Review

Doctor Strange is a superhero fantasy action film directed by Scott Derrickson, written by Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill, and Jon Spaihts, and starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, Mads Mikkelsen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, and Benedict Wong. It's based on the Marvel comics character and is the 468th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now that the Earth-based (Avengers, Captain America, Iron Man) and space-based (Guardians of the Galaxy) aspects of the MCU have been established, Doctor Strange continues Thor's delving into the mystical realm, this time revolving around Eastern mysticism instead of Norse mythology. The movie itself follows Steven Strange (Cumberbatch), a successful, arrogant neurosurgeon who suffers a debilitating car crash that leaves him in only marginal control of his hands, effectively ending his entire career. After Western medicine fails him, he travels to Nepal to attempt a sort of healing possible only through the spiritual realm, and is introduced to the Ancient One (Swinton), who leads a spiritual resistance against a rogue ex-student of hers (Mikkelsen), who is bent on enveloping the natural world in the dark realm, an existence outside of time where life is eternal, but miserable.

Doctor Strange is, appropriately, probably the strangest Marvel film thus far in terms of subject matter. Yes, Guardians had a talking tree and raccoon and was fairly innovative in terms of tone when it comes to superhero films, but Strange decidedly goes for a more fantastical setting and tone than any previous Marvel film to date. And it gets extra points for embracing that and running with it to entertaining degrees. What remains is an exceptionally entertaining, if still a bit formulaic, Marvel movie. But don't write it off from that sentiment alone.

Unsurprisingly, Benedict Cumberbatch does a wonderful job as the character Strange, who is almost grossly arrogant and callous to his girlfriend (McAdams) in the film's opening scenes, and yet somehow manages to come off as likable and a genuine hero to root for. McAdams, Ejiofor, and Swinton all deliver superlative performances as well, elevating their characters into the realm of the third dimension beyond the typical cookie-cutter action flick characters they could've been. Mads Mikkelsen does a great job as the villain whose name escapes me, but as the first clause of this sentence might have tipped you off to, the villain is unfortunately under-written, under-developed, and Mikkelsen's acting chops mostly remain untapped. His scenes are effective, but they are few and far between.

In regards to the action and spectacle, I actually preferred the treatment of these elements to this year's other Marvel outing, Captain America: Civil War, mostly for choosing to be more visually creative than most Marvel films (as well as having the first Marvel musical score, written by Michael Giacchino, that I actually actively wanted to listen to later). While Derrickson's direction of the hand-to-hand combat leaves a lot to be desired (if someone with more of a hold on effective martial arts fight choreography had helmed this film, it could have had some of the most enthralling action scenes in the MCU), the setpieces for the action are stupendous. Even if not as innovatively shot or involving as they could've been, each action sequence makes use of new developments of the world in the film, and are creative and entertaining, especially a fight taking place between two spirits in a doctor's office and one involving time moving backwards around our characters.

And the visual effects are bonkers - if it weren't for The Jungle Book this year, I'd give Doctor Strange the Best Visual Effects Oscar. Some of Doctor Strange's most entertaining sequences involve kaleidoscopes of bizarre imagery straight out of an acid trip, tesseracts, and shapes folding in on themselves as the characters' spirits and minds hop across dimensions. From folding New York City streets into cubes to trapping characters inside of walls as buildings reconstruct themselves in backwards-moving time, computer-generated imagery is used as it should be in Doctor Strange - to create dazzling, mind-bending images that are truly transporting and impossible in the natural world.

What mostly bogs down Doctor Strange is the fact that this is yet another superhero origin story, and it hits all those notes as it should. The screenplay is competently written, with plenty of set-ups and payoffs, some effective humor sprinkled throughout, and my second-favorite ending of any Marvel movie thus far (the first being Civil War, so it's nice to see Marvel is beginning to branch out beyond "villain creates giant glowing thing in the sky to destroy a city"). I actually think the movie should've gone on about 20 minutes longer. Strange's training in the mystical arts is largely skipped over, and we don't get to see much of an evolution of him as a sorcerer. He goes from being unable to doing basic tasks to being one of the most gifted students in what is told to us to be several months, but in reality is only about 5 minutes of screen time. Beyond that, the film mostly plays by the numbers of any other superhero origin story, so if you're completely sick of those, you may not have a lot of fun with this film. Luckily, the mystic aspect keeps the film mostly fresh, even if its screenplay isn't as tight, subtextual, or carefully crafted as Civil War's.

I feel like I'm being overly harsh when I really enjoyed this movie. Trust me, being a well-done superhero origin story is not nothing, and this film has plenty of wonderful things going for it. In the end, Doctor Strange is visually resplendent, well-acted, and satisfying middle-ground addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It doesn't reinvent the wheel as far as superhero film formula, but it has just enough surface-level shake-ups to keep me invested in Marvel's crazy decade-long crossover mania. I look forward to seeing Strange and Tony Stark trading snarky quips in the upcoming Avengers movie.

Grade: B+