Top quality Marvel

Rating: 9/10 (11 November 2016)

Right up with Iron Man as Marvel's best individual origin story and probably just outside their top 5 films in all, beaten out by Guardians, Avengers 1, Civil War, Winter Soldier and the aforementioned Iron Man (not necessarily in that order). Cumberbatch is superb as Strange, fantastically arrogant at the start, then excellently portraying his despair in his brutal fall to rock bottom, then his usual charm and wit as he gains confidence again as he begins to master his new found abilities. He is ably supported by a quality cast. Ejiofor and McAdams make the most of slightly underused roles, Wong is great as Wong, Mikkelsen gives Kaecilius a great sense of menace but also humanity and not a little charm of his own and is in my opinion one of Marvels better villains, though again underused a bit (an extra half an hour could have made this right up there with the best comic book movies of all). But the MVP is Swinton as the Ancient One, which considering the controversy of the so called white washing of the roll is a good thing (but what did they want, the Fu Man Chu type portrayed in the comics). She gives her character a sense of mischievousness and an impish charm instead of the staid wise person you may have expected, and her final scene with strange is both heartbreaking and one of the stand out scenes of the whole film. But of course as everyone who sees this will say, the thing that really raises this film are the visuals. I can't believe how some can dismiss them as having seen similar before in Inception. That is like comparing a toddlers drawing to a Rembrandt. Its not just the way the cityscapes are twisted and transformed, but the way the characters interact with them. And as for the scene where the Ancient One casts Strange through the different dimensions to open his mind, it must be one of the most original, inventive and visually stunning scenes ever projected to a screen. Also the inventiveness of the climactic scenes are something that sets this apart from all of the recent Superhero movies, both in the stunning visuals of having our heroes moving forward through a rewinding world, but also in the way Strange uses his ingenuity and not brute power to overcome his foe.