A mostly excellent film with just one or two flaws

Rating: 9/10 (7 November 2016)

(Note: I'm trying to go spoiler-free with this review, and have clicked "spoilers" just to hedge my bets in case I fail.)
I went into this movie with *very* high expectations; not since 2013's"Pacific Rim" have I been this excited about a movie. Maybe it's my own fault that I left the theater with a faintly bittersweet feeling. There's nothing *wrong* with the movie at all (save one detail which I'll mention toward the end of this writing); I found it enjoyable on nearly all possible levels. But something very small seemed to be missing. Maybe I'm just spoiled, demanding the impossible and then complaining when the merely extraordinary is delivered. Maybe the film is a slightly more cerebral experience than I'm used to, and failed to deliver as visceral a thrill as I'm used to getting (meaning that it didn't fail, it simply wasn't trying to do the same thing as most movies, and should be lauded for that originality). Maybe the film's remarkably exciting trailer, by showing nearly every one of the most dazzling scenes in the film (with just two major exceptions that I can think of; again, I'll address them shortly), used up so much of my potential "wow factor" that I was left with little sense of discovery. Or maybe this flick is a fine illustration of a puzzling phenomenon proposed by YouTube's Nostalgia Critic: the "So Good It's Bad" film, whose very perfection dooms it to elude true greatness. Whatever the reason, I was slightly underwhelmed as the eye-popping title card sequence, and the first of the film's two post-credits scenes (a highly amusing exchange which clearly exists to set up the MCU's next entry), were replaced with the utterly prosaic full credits. I spent the time these were rolling largely "checked out", reflecting on all that I had just seen. As I mentioned above, if you've seen the trailer, you missed very little of consequence from the actual movie; the opening sets up Doctor Stephen Strange's initial characterization quite ably, and the process of getting him turned into a mystical superhero takes a bit long, but is by no means boring in the process - there's a workmanlike competence to these scenes which isn't exciting, but gets its job done well. A highly unusual fight scene in the middle is one of the signs that this isn't just another superhero flick; one of the few things about the movie which isn't hinted at by the trailer at all, this scene stands out as one of the movie's absolute highlights, lending further credence to my theory that the trailer may have revealed a few too many of the film's mysteries, and thus be partly responsible for my slightly lukewarm feeling as it ended. The other big, impressive scene (which actually did manage to blow my mind a little, while most of the rest left me feeling sadly jaded) is the final confrontation, and you can probably guess who is involved; I won't name the character, just in case you'd prefer to try and be surprised by their eminently predictable inclusion, but I will say that they were *much* better done than I expected, diverging from the relatively underwhelming comic book version into something truly inspired. Without revealing too much, I can say that this moment really tells us who Doc Strange is as a character ("It's *Doctor*", he would himself insist); the way he deals with his foe is classically fitting for this character, and makes the difference between him and typical superhero fisticuffs eminently clear. (The rest of the movie hedges its bets a little in this regard, but at least they did it right in the place where it really counts.) So like I said, everything was looking great as the credits wrapped up, even manage to amuse me more than a little with something that certainly wasn't meant as a joke. (It's the last line of text on the screen, you can't miss it.) And then came our final glimpse of the film's universe, up until its inevitable sequel. This has the distinction of being, to the best of my recollection, the first time that an end-credits sequence has actually significantly changed my opinion of the movie it's attached to. Without revealing exactly what happens, I can say that it takes something which was very well done earlier in the film, and sours it in a way I found extremely unsatisfying. Given that I suspect my "less-than-perfect" verdict, as mentioned above, is largely my own fault and not the movie's, I'd probably have felt comfortable ranking the film as a 10 (since IMDb doesn't allow "9.5" as an option). This one scene outright costs the film its tenth star (or 8.6th and up, to be more accurate); I feel that the entire Dr. Strange franchise would have been better off without it. Bottom line, very good movie; perfection eludes it, possibly from a lack of restraint among the marketing team, but more likely because of one poor decision in the vein of "twist endings" (which, many of my favorite pop-culture commentators have observed, often were not well thought out, causing problems with the movie as a whole). Absolutely worth your time to see at least once; I advise that you not make the mistake I did, of saving a few bucks on the ticket and watching the normal film. While I cannot comment on the technical quality of the 3D, it would at least have shown me a more impressive version of the scenes I'd already seen in the trailer, so that I'd have spent less time partially tuned out by their familiarity. Given that I was already paying a high ticket price (this was not a cheap theater), $3 would certainly be worth it, for what could be a far more memorable experience.