Doctor Strange

Strange things are happening, and that’s not entirely a bad thing.

Doctor Strange, the newest addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s roster of ever growing superhero franchises, follows Doctor Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), an acclaimed neurosurgeon who, after a terrible car wreck, has his hands crushed and rendered useless, a problem that has devastating consequences for a man in his line of work. With his career as a surgeon effectively over, Strange begins to walk the path of self-destruction and self-loathing, but it’s only after coming to terms with the idea that a solution to his problems may not rest in the material world that Strange finds himself on a seemingly impossible quest to restore his hands back to their perfect “working” condition. Before long it’s clear that Strange has just barely scratched the surface of what our reality is, and as he delves deeper into the multi-verse and into worlds that mortal minds can barely comprehend, an evil group of sorcerers led by Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen) start screwing around with the balance of magic and power, hoping to summon the evil entity known as Dormammu in order to live forever. Now it’s up to Strange to answer the call as a master of the mystical arts and help defend his new life as a sorcerer before something terrible happens that may spell out the end of the world as we know it.

Unlike many of the superheroes running around the MCU nowadays, Doctor Strange as a hero and film benefits from taking itself in a totally different direction than previous movies in the Marvel film canon. Like Guardians of the Galaxy did for the cosmic side of the MCU before it, Doctor Strange eases us into a world full of magic and wonder not seen before in the superhero genre. Starting off on the right foot, the film’s opening sequence immediately shows the audience that we’re in for a fun-filled ride, full of visual wonders and world-building awe, but most of what follows quickly settles into something more familiar and less mind-blowing than where we originally began. It’s a problem many films like these have their first time around – introducing us to something new and weird – that makes or breaks a franchise like this, and while most of this film checks off exactly what one would expect in an origin story, most of what makes the movie great comes down to the flashier side of things rather than the actual story and character side of the equation.

In the grand scheme of things I personally didn’t think the original Captain America or Iron Man films were the best MCU movies, but their sequels (Iron Man 3, not 2) showed that once all that exposition, world-building and origin crap is out of the way, the story decisions, action sequences and character work can take over in order to create something truly unique and interesting. For these first films (Doctor Strange included) it’s all about hooking the audience in during the first go around with various bells and whistles and cool looking imagery as opposed to deep character arcs and story-beats, an approach I don’t necessarily condemn, just one I feel like has run its course at this point. I don’t want to have to wait for a sequel to get the film I thought I’d be getting the first time, and while I love the fact that sequels like The Empire Strikes Back or The Dark Knight expand and improve upon their first films in meaningful ways, the originals still manage to stand their ground with everything that came after. Not so much for Doctor Strange. I get the feeling that the filmmakers held back a bit to make way for the inevitable sequels, at which point I believe we’ll truly be seeing something unique, but with so many origin films running amok with so many of the same story beats (especially in the MCU), I find a lot of what happens in this film to be middling if not predictable.

When it comes to telling a story, there’s nothing wrong with what happens here, I just wish that things didn’t seem so…easy. We jump from scene to scene hitting every high and low point one comes to expect from a story like this, but there never seemed to be any true struggle or any real consequence to what’s going on. Sure there’s the thin threat of the bad guys summoning an end all be all evil presence that’ll destroy the Earth or some such shit, but when it comes down to it, Strange seems to barely have a grasp on his powers or the idea of this new world before he’s pretty much the best of the best. There’s nary anything Strange does that seems all that difficult or compelling when the next story beat, training montage, or exposition heavy conversation is right around the corner. I get trying to move the story along as quickly as possible to get to the real fun of the film, but when you run along at such a quick clip, it’s tough to feel like these characters or scenes they’re in serve any more of a purpose than to fill up space in order to get to the parts where the filmmakers get to show us some more cool stuff. It seemed that the longer I watched the more apparent it became that there’s nothing blatantly wrong with this film, it just felt like almost everything here seems to be doing the bare minimum to work as a coherent movie as opposed to elevating the material in a more effective way, resulting in a film that stands out from the pack.

And while I immensely enjoyed the action and visuals of this film, I was hoping for some more practical effects to really sell the entire scope of what we’re seeing played out before us. I guess a movie like Inception spoils a person with the way it was meticulously crafted and shot, and as amazing as it was to see buildings twist and turn and morph like some kind of drug trip, it was more annoying to see that at every turn there were CG stand-ins for any actual actors. It’s not that the filmmakers have no idea how to handle the subject material, in fact, they did exactly what I expected from them, but the thing that bothers me most is that they chose the tried and true style over substance route when it came to everything else. Come back with some truly masterful and practical action sequences or a few inventive and new ways to film a scene in the sequel, and I guarantee it’ll be hailed as one of the best-shot MCU movies to date. As it stands now, a lot of the wonder and fun is slightly tarnished when I can write everything off as glorified computer generated wizardry. Still fun to watch though.

Like pretty much all origins stories before it, Doctor Strange plays out in a relatively safe and exposition heavy way in order to ease audiences into this new, wacky territory that is the mystical side of the MCU, and while the visuals and inventiveness of the world are both sights to behold, everything else surrounding this film lacks a bit of substance and purpose. A comic book version of Inception this ain’t, but it’s a fun trip into the craziest side of the Marvel Universe yet that makes this film worth your time.