I shouldn't be surprised by what Marvel Studios produces anymore; with a budget that big, they can do just about anything and gt away with it. Yet Doctor Strange is not unlike Ant-Man in providing a suitable origin story for a new hero (who is unconventional and nauseatingly typical at once) while expanding our understanding of and appreciation for the world of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). Sure, it's got its dull, prideful hero who suffers a loss and spends the rest of the film seeking redemption. Sure, it's got its fake anti-hero villain with creepy eyes and accent who gets disintegrated at the end. Sure, it's got a potentially great female love-interest/sidekick who is woefully underwritten. But it's still a ton of fun.
If you can get past Benedict Cumberbatch's American inflections, he performs flawlessly as the doctor, showcasing his own intellect in a markedly different manner than we've seen before. He imbues some remarkably deadpan comedy to the wealthy, proud New Yorker, even when he has come to the end of his hope. He plays the character not unlike Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark in the first Iron Man, and his best moments are during his training in Kamar Taj and especially its library (his interactions with librarian Wong steal the movie).
Frankly, I was expecting a nightmare of visual effects, like in Ant-Man, as our hero bends reality and traverses alternate dimensions. And while it is largely just that, the filmmakers have a couple of tricks up their sleeve. Most important is that everything feels weighted: great cinematography and sound mixing (and, yes, VFX) keep it all feeling substantial and grounded. While the images on screen begin to look like Inception run amok, director Scott Derrickson (Sinister, The Exorcism of Emily Rose) keeps the action focused precisely and tightly on the actors. He also lets the background chaos order itself into impossible kaleidoscopic shapes; I wonder if the patterns that result are in fact easier for us to watch, allowing both Derrickson and the audience to peripherally absorb it without becoming too distracted.
Doctor Strange might host the best cast of any Marvel movie yet. Mads Mikkelsen plays Kaecilius, the baddie with glowing purple eyes and cracks in his face, and Chiwetel Ejiofor hammers out his Mordo with conviction and the promise of becoming a future anti-hero (stick around after the credits, guys!). Rachel McAdams is not as present as much as she should be, but she proves herself to be a capable and fully-functional heroine in her own right. Of course, the best parts of the film belong solely to Tilda Swinton, the Ancient One who teaches sorcerers in Kathmandu. Ethereal and surprisingly funny, she handles power and control of the film in a way Anthony Hopkins would have liked to in Thor. And then she made me cry at the end.
In context of the other films, this one fits nicely behind Ant-Man for the reasons I gave above. It feels a little disjointed after Civil War -- because dammit I want to know what happened to everybody! -- but it provides several pieces that will come into play later on down the franchise path. It reveals the Infinity Stone of Time and its power. It connects to the "multiverse", which we've heard of before in Thor and in Ant-Man. And it sets up (or, rather, teases) what we might expect in Ragnarok one year from now. The mid-credits scene (which I suspect comes from the third Thor, much like the Civil War scene we saw after Ant-Man was lifted from that film) shows Strange offering to help Thor and Loki find Odin. Which seems a bit, well, strange, since the last time we saw Odin and Loki was in The Dark World, when Thor thought Loki had sacrificed himself, but the latter was impersonating an apparently absent Odin. I guess we'll have to wait a while to find out what shenanigans are happening in Asgard.
One last note: the score in this movie is everything. Michael Giacchino is brilliant.
IMDb: Doctor Strange
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