Doctor Strange (2016)

I’ve Seen Stranger Things

Like Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins, Stephen Strange went to Asia looking for the cure (unbeknownst to the former doctor, the band resides in England—y’know, Three Imaginary Boys, 1979). Unlike Christian Bale’s Wayne, Benedict Cumberbach’s Dr. Strange has a slick sense of humor (“Just Wong?… Like Adele… Or Aristotle? Drake? Bono? Eminem…”) He didn’t find the cure (but later encountered their black-eyed goth followers). Instead, he got into the world of sorcery, or in his ex-girlfriend’s words, he joined a cult. Just like this movie joining the cult of fairly entertaining but underwhelmingly average MCU movies.

At the outset, the movie looks impressive (i.e., architectural wonders folding and unfolding like clockworks). Marvel definitely put their money where their mouth is—that is, on SFX, bold and capital. Still, Doctor Strange isn’t the Ditko/Kubrick/Miyazaki/The Matrix mind-trip Kevin Feige said it needed to be.  Ditko, sure, a li’l bit from The Matrix and a lot from Inception, minus the well established logic of the latter and the Wachowskis’ stylish kung fu mix. In short, it looks different from all other MCU movies. Yet, for some reasons, it also feels and looks the same—it’s lightweight, jokey, and heavy on CGI.

Doctor Strange isn’t as mind-bending as Kevin Feige thought it should be. Why? Because it takes more than fancy 3D eye candy to be truly mind-bending. It never quite absorbs you into its world in the same way The Matrix and Inception do. In comparison, Thor’s rough sketch of the Tree of Nine Realms was more interesting—yes, it sounds BS—but at least that movie understands no one’s supposed to take it seriously.

But they got Doctor Strange’s character right. Tilda Swinton, who anchors the movie’s more serious moments, disappears into her character as expected. Rachel McAdams, who plays Strange’s ex-lover, is just lovely and fun to watch—too bad she’s underused in the movie.

Nevermind that the villains fell into the typical MCU hole. I liked that Strange made great effort to master sorcery solely for his personal gains—that he studied it the way he did to get his M.D. and Ph.D., only this time learning at a much faster rate since he could pull-off all-nighters while he sleeps. That he learned an important lesson that Tony Stark probably hasn’t learned yet even after Civil War. That he trained in mystical kung fu all the while wondering what the heck was it for. That he was unwilling to fight. And that when the big fight comes, he was barely prepared for it.

Actually, just the first few minutes of it. I mean, come on, this is Marvel, the guys who made averting world-ending scenarios look so cool and easy. Nothing’s going to be really that hard for our hero. And no villain would be so threatening who can’t be easily defeated in the end. The villain’s threat was hardly even felt in the first place. The scenes showing those people in Hong Kong in grave danger gave a hint of that threat, but too little too late. Then we got a final battle that’s quite clever—but is also kind of weightless. (There’s more weight and fun in seeing Tom Cruise try, fail and die in Edge of Tomorrow—a much better movie.) And after Thor showed up in the mid-credits, the said final confrontation felt more like: “Dormammu, just give it up already! So we can get rid of these stingers, move onto the sequels and make more money!”

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Scott Adkins was in this movie?! That guy could kick some serious ass. With him, Marvel could have mixed the sorcery elements with some real martial a… Wait, he’s the guy who died fighting that sentient cloak? Aargh! They just wasted him in this movie.