Another great movie from the marvel universe

Rating: 8/10 (28 November 2016)

Doctor Strange is the fourteenth film brought to us by Marvel and I have to say it is probably the most daring due to the complexity of it but Scott Derrickson and his team have brought us a great movie here. It is essentially another origin movie and you can guess what is going to happen but I do love the Marvel films, with exception to a few and a lot of people don't agree when i say Iron Man 3 was pretty bad. This movie however doesn't go into a lot of depth involving the characters and goes more for the special effects to amaze the audience. The movie starts with a quick scene introducing Kaecilius (Mikkelsen) stealing a page out of a book owned by The Ancient One (Swinton), there is a fight scene involving a lot of magic and Inception type buildings moving before Kaecilius escapes with the page. Kaecilius is a former student of The Ancient One who has turned evil and is looking to become immortal, he believes the only way to do this is by teaming up with Dormammu, the ruler of the Dark Dimension. We then move to the movies protagonist, the brilliant and arrogant Doctor Stephen Strange, we are shown how brilliant a mind he has while performing surgery and showing off his 70's music knowledge before setting off to save another patients life who has been declared brain dead. With most origin movies the hero usually finds himself after the death of a family member but not with Strange, his family are never mentioned and the only person he was ever close with. Christine Palmer (McAdams) is still alive and working with him. Dr Strange is one of the best neuro surgeons in the world but his life is suddenly turned upside down, paying less attention to the road than he should be he is in a life threatening crash which leaves his hands so damaged he will never perform surgery again. Strange goes into a desperate state of trying everything from stem cell treatment to physiotherapy and spends all the money he has in the process. During a physio session his physio tells him the story of a man who would never be able to walk again and stops going to physio, one day he walks by the same man in the street. Dr Strange doesn't believe this story and the physio shows him the patients files, Strange tracks doen this patient who tells him where he was healed. In a last hope for Strange he sets off and ends up in Kathmandu where he meets Mordo (Ejiofor), he takes Strange to see The Ancient One and this is where the real special effects of the movie kick in, Strange is subjected to an experience that throws him through an experience he can only explain must be caused by LSD, he is thrown through an attack of colours in the screen that will leave you thinking what just happened, not to mention when his hands grow more hands. His training with The Ancient One begins and here there are a few funny scenes with Mordo and the library keeper Wong (Benedict Wong), the jokes and the one liners do keep coming from Strange and Benedict Cumberbatch does a good job of pulling the character off. As the movie goes on Kaecilius attacks and he and Strange end up fighting and here he comes by his Cloak of Levitation, I do like the fact they don't take the film too seriously and joke about things like the cloak. As the movie goes on we are subject to more special effects including an astro projection fight and the introduction of the dark universe and the Dread Dormammu, we learn things about certain characters that will escalate in the sequel and that The Ancient One may not be all she claims. The film does come to a climax with Doctor Strange facing off with Dormammu and bending time and space in a funny but dark way. I did really like this film, it was an origin story that didn't go too much into the depth of the characters, they didn't try and explain why The Ancient One was a woman and not an old Asian man, there is a funny scene at the start when Strange mistakes an old man as the ancient one. Derrickson could also have done more with Mikkelsens character, Mikkelsen is a really good actor and he has proved this but wasn't given much to do in this film. I will hand it to Derrickson and his team though as this was always going to be a hard film to pull off with the effects and the spells and everything else from the Dr Strange comics. I would highly recommend anyone who hasn't already seen this film to go and see it now.