Great climax, promising beginning and plain oatmeal in the middle

Rating: 7/10 (2 November 2016)

A massive amount of effort and money went into rebuilding this dusty old property from the Marvel library.
You merely have to look at the John Mills film version -- or any of the forgettable animations -- to see the scope of the challenge.
Part of the problem is that when Lee and Ditko first conceived Strange, neither had much of a clue about mystical stuff. So they came up the Eye, and Nightmare (probably the next movie) and the world's most forgettable villain Dormammu. Even the spelling of the name should tell you how quickly the original story was thrown together back in the day.
However there are few problems on this planet that millions of dollars cannot fix. The casting of Cumberbatch was brilliant. OMG he looks exactly like the original character, right down to facial bone structure.
However at the end of the day you have just another Marvel "origin" story cleverly designed to permit either future individual stories or, as a last resort, to merge the doc into the Avengers. Wherever there is the most profit, I presume.
The beginning is above average -- Tilda Swinton brilliant as always -- and the ending is BRILLIANT.
In the middle you have a lot of sound and fury signifying mainly nothing. Astonishingly A-list stars Ejiofor and McAdams are completely wasted. Papier mache figures could have played these roles, they are so poorly written.