Stan Lee: That is hilarious!

Rating: 5/10 (3 March 2017)

Doctor Stephen Strange is by my count now the third rich and arrogant jerk to be run through the Marvel blender and come out the other side a superhero. These stories of redemption are easy suckers because the heroes are merely sitting on the other side of our affections and all it takes is a little goodwill and roughly hewn smirk for audiences to be won over. Robert Downey Jr. played fast and close to his real life persona, and Chris Hemsworth more than looked the rugged part, but also spoke with natural confidence. For all the detractors of the MCU and the criticism it attracts for being formulaic, Doctor Strange knew it would hit a home run by simply retracing the paths of this formula. Anyone who's seen Sherlock already knows how condescending Benedict Cumberbatch can be - it was just a matter of shaping him towards looking out for the greater good.
But real pitfalls don't really exist in Doctor Strange. The arc of the arrogant man brought to his knees by unfortunate circumstances and made to defrost and learn a little humility is a crowd pleaser, as the studio's track record has already shown. Yet Strange happens to casually master every spell-bending, kung-fu kicking lesson thrown at him, and by day two he is already sneaking into the library and speedreading all its ancient formulas (he has photographic memory, as you do). You can't simultaneously humble a protagonist but keep prodding him forward as the chosen one, destined to bring balance to the force or protect the Earth or something. Strange keeps reaching for his plotted redemption, attempting to swallow his ego and think about someone other than himself for once, but how can he do that when magical capes of levitation are throwing themselves at him and ancient immortal beings are passing on enormous burdens for his shoulders to carry?
There is an abundance of excellent actors here - Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Wong, Mads Mikkelsen, the painfully under-utilised Michael Stuhlbarg - and barely a solid character between them. Wong is Wong, guardian of the library and a master of the mystic arts, but is quickly relegated to being the straight counterpoint to Strange's comedic quips. Marvel's humour is by now purely fan service, one-liners served on a platter directly to the audience, crafted via scientific method to elicit the most laughs. When someone mentions Beyonce, Drake or wifi passwords, they're addressing the audience through the screen, and the movie's characters treat these moments as required formalities. Yes, Wong silently humming Single Ladies is a nice touch, but why reduce his role in the climax to one reeking of bathos, as if he's become the giggling punchline to a long running joke? Between that and having his corpse being pulled from the rubble via time-reversal, he hasn't been given a single capable moment.
Mikkelsen should feel the most maligned of the cast - the screenwriters have resurrected a D-level villain for the purposes of a single film, and him to become the unfortunate victim of Strange's origin story. Kaecilius sports edgy, alien guyliner and monologues morosely of his noble purposes for seeking power from the dark dimension (yep, that's what it's actually called), but the script doesn't bother to throw some flashbacks or even the name of a dead spouse to bolster his motivations. Eventually he's swept aside for the big gas cloud baddie in the finale. Strange's method of attack here is clever, but the scene descends into what is essentially a gag reel. The story builds up to the moment by stressing the need for Strange to finally act selflessly, but the endurance act isn't the eternity of torment that it needs to be. It's supposed to test his newfound resolve, but instead of gritting his teeth as the death beam incinerates him, he's rolling his eyes and mouthing "not again" like a Looney Tunes character about to succumb to gravity. After all that, the movie pretends to warn us of the fatal dangers of playing with time but then uses it as a precursor to what will eventually happen - it's an exposition stepping stone, designed so that his mastery of time manipulation doesn't feel too strange.
Doctor Strange bursts at the seams trying to squeeze in all its new rules, villains and mystical powers into yet another piece of the Infinity War puzzle. Marvel deserves praise for pulling off something magnificent and unheard of in bringing unwieldy comic material to life, and joining all the strands together. Yet looking closely these movies are only loosely cobbled together by whispers, cameos and the infamous post-credits scenes. One of the most inexplicable moments in Civil War comes when Spiderman and Ant-man suddenly pop out from behind the greenscreen to take their place on opposing sides of the skirmish. All the comic book fans cheered, but what about those of us in the audience that wanted some motivation?