Doctor Strange
is directed by Scott Derrickson and stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Stephen Strange,
a very successful but arrogant doctor who after a debilitating car accident,
can no longer use his hands this is life now… that would suck. And when Western
medicine fails him, he turns to Eastern medicine, and discovers this monastery
of sorts, in which he learns about magic, sorcery and many different dimensions
he never knew existed. As well as a mystical war that is raging, and he tries
to find his place in between these two warring things.
My best way to
describe this movie, I gotta say, I got to give the writers of this movie major
props, because Marvel has once again introduced a very strange (pun intended)
and obscure comic book character into the MCU, and made it work. I thought Thor
and Asgard was going to be hard, I thought Ant-Man was going to be weird. One
of the reasons this character works so well is because of Benedict Cumberbatch,
in fact it is the biggest reason. He really gives a lot to this role, he has
the perfect level of arrogance, comedy and confusion, especially confusion. But
what I loved about his character was how passionate he was about bettering
himself. He’s someone who takes his intellect very seriously, arrogantly so,
but at the same time, he's also someone who just wants to learn everything he
can to get better at whatever he wants to do. It’s one of the reasons why his
character was such a successful physician, and it's one of the reasons he
becomes such a successful sorcerer, because he wants to better himself in every
way he can, and so that aspect of the character I really latched onto, and
really appreciated.
What really blew
me away in this movie where the visuals, this was a very remarkable 3-D
experience. I do actually recommend that you see in 3-D, normally that's not something
that I focus on, but the 3-D definitely added something to these city bending,
world moving sequences that really made my jaw drop. The action sequences in
this film are fantastic, except for one thing, I don't necessarily think Scott
Derrickson handled some of the hand-to-hand combat sequences as effectively as
he could have it's not shaky-cam, there was just a level of intensity missing
from the simpler action sequences, that were given to the incredible visual
effects heavy sequences. Which by the way, I say visual effects heavy, but I
never really looked at something and I was like ‘man that’s such a computer
image, I don’t buy any of this for a second’. These are class-A visual effects,
some of the best I've ever seen in a superhero movie. And yes it is going to
draw comparisons to Inception and The Matrix, that's inevitable but Doctor Strange
as a comic, has been around for a while and this aspect of that world has been
in those comics for a while but it's clearly drawing inspiration from
Inception. People jumping on walls and the gravity-defying elements, it's just
that there's a lot more of it in this film.
I loved Chiwetel
Ejiofor as Mordo, he was a lot of fun. Tilda Swinton was very good as the Ancient
One I thought she was great in the movie; it would have been nice to see that
character portrayed by someone who is actually the ethnicity of the character
in the comic I’m not gonna sit here and complain about it because she was
really good in the movie. And one of my favourite actors; Mads Mickelson, oh my
god I loved him, he was so good in this movie. His character could have been
given a little more though, I would have appreciated a little more depth behind
him. Another thing I really appreciated about this movie is it does feel very
different from the other films in the MCU. Certain elements of the third act, it's
extremely different from the way most of these big superhero extravaganza of
visual effects beam in the sky, people blow up everything movies now. I love superheroes,
I love comic books, I love comic book movies, but it was just nice to see one
that fits into the world that has a similar warm colour tones and tongue-in-cheek
humour and visual effects, and amazing action sequences. But it was nice to see
one that genuinely felt of its own world.
As for
negatives, I feel that the first act is a little bit clunky, in setting up the
character and getting to the place where he eventually meets the Ancient One.
The second she touches his forehead, from that moment on, I was in, I was
locked into the movie, it was a really fun from there, but getting to that felt
a little blocky, just a little bit, the pacing could have been a lot better. There's
some humour also that doesn't always work. I would say it's about 70:30 for me
in regards to humour and jokes that hit and it does kind of. Though some of his
training aspects, you feel like there should be a little bit more, there are
comparisons to be made to Batman Begins. Because with Bruce Wayne, that movie
travels to this faraway land and learns all these mystical magical things. And with
this one, it's a lot more literal in regards to the magic, but in Batman Begins,
it was just paced better, and you felt that world building, and this movie, it
kind of wants to get to Doctor Strange getting his red cape, The Levitation
Cloak and everything being really cool and awesome. And it's cool to see
everything happen, and you're excited that it's getting to that point, but I do
feel like his training was rushed just a little bit.
The movie also
suffers from a lot of exposition, and that's one of the biggest flaws. I would
say of this movie, is the need to explain so much to us because it's such a
weird different world from the other MCU films, that there are many scenes in
which our hero is standing there listening to people explaining things to him,
and we're gonna need some of that, and I wouldn't say that it wasn't
interesting, i would say that it was mostly always fun and compelling to watch
and learn about this world, it just does get really bogged down on exposition
sometimes. As for visual effects in this movie, everything was mind-blowingly
great, except for one visual effects character that I was just kinda like ‘That's
a cartoon! I don't believe that's real!’ Also, I really liked Rachel McAdams in
this movie, she plays the love interest of sorts of Stephen Strange, they have
some off and on’s together, but I liked how he had to keep going back to her at
certain points for help, it added a lot of humour to the movie, that mostly
worked very well.
In the end
Doctor Strange has incredible visual effects, a very cool hero, a very fun
backstory that does get bogged down in a lot of exposition, mostly working humour,
and a character that I can't wait to see more of. It’s not one of the best in
the MCU, I wouldn't say it's one the worst, it's not as good as Deadpool and
especially Civil War, but I had a lot of fun with this movie and I love
Benedict Cumberbatch as this character and I'm excited to see him in other
films.
Grade - B+
The post-credit scenes also set up the MCU fairly nicely
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