Doctor Strange - B+

Quick Hit: A good addition to the MCU.

So, I’ve watched this movie several times, and I’ve come to a few conclusions right off the bat. First, Marvel took a gamble by putting out Doctor Strange. The idea of a mystical, time bending, person who inhibits other dimensions is pretty out there. However, they did the right thing, hiring a director that has a good reign on visual effects, and then they casted Benedict Cumberbatch, which I thought was terrific. I had been really pulling for him, so it was cool to see that something I wanted happened.
Second, Marvel took a really big gamble with Doctor Strange’s ending. I’ll talk about it in a minute, but I can’t put spoilers right up front. What kind of a reviewer would I be?
And I was right about Benedict by the way – Cumberbatch is terrific in the role. He has exactly the smarm and condescension that you would want from Doctor Strange. He also controls those things to make it so that he is not hateable. I mean, I know in the beginning you kind of want to punch him in the face for being pompous, but it’s all part of the transformation. And for those that detracted on this film for being an origin film, I’m sorry, but it was necessary. It may be old hat – but you can’t just have a dude with magical powers show up and start tossing people into other dimensions and have the audience enjoy it, or connect to it.

The overall plot has times that go faster than others, and I enjoyed the occasional humor that sneaks into the movie. I thought that Chiweter Elijofor did a good job as Mordo, and that the universe did a good job as setting him up as a future bad guy – including the credits scene. Tilda Swinton was an interesting cast as the Ancient One, but she has enough confidence that she pulled it off pretty well. Mads Mikkelsen as Kaecilius was a bit of a waste. He was just turned into "generic bad guy with reasons to be bad". I would have liked to see more out of him, because he is a terrific actor.

Anyways, most movies I focus more on the acting than everything else, but here, let’s talk about the effects, which were obviously the star of the show. Something I recently talked about in the film Inception were the rotating building effects, which were obviously used here too. But wow – there are some really tremendous effects. I really liked the look of the sling ring portals, and I really liked the way that the people handled their classic shields. I may have thought the camera lingered a bit too much on Strange’s money shots – aka, the one’s where he nearly poses for the camera and the things that ended up in the trailer – but it was still really good effects…

But I did have a bit of a problem with Dormammu. I’m going to talk about the ending now, so spoilers!

Seriously trippy.

*************************************************spoilers**************************************************************

Dormammu may have looked better than say, Parallax from Green Lantern, or Galactus from the Fantastic Four film, but he was still just a purple cloud with eyes. That’s a bit upsetting, because look at the comic book drawings of this guy!

Instead we got this.

Anyways, I thought it was extremely bold to have this ending. To have what is normally a huge, CGI’d battle go down without the good guy throwing a punch is something that may rub people the wrong way, but I liked it a lot. It shows that there are sometimes better ways to get things done.

The movie was good – I think it will please most fans. I’m giving it a “B+”.

For more on this movie check out IMDB.