Unusual Marvel Movie

Rating: 7/10 (26 March 2017)

Dr. Strange is a sorcerer and this is his origin film. There have been enough super hero movies, that we all understand how this works. Someone kind of normal (but who has either extraordinary smarts or nobility) gets gifted (or troubled (the Stan Lee vision)) with extraordinary power and must overcome personal consideration to accept the now famous maxim best articulated by Uncle Ben, "With great power comes great responsibility".
Stan Lee was to comic books in the 1960's what Bob Dylan was to music. He churned out an exceptionally wide and diverse set of genre expanding works. I've always found that origin tales, like the first Spiderman, the first Ironman, the first Captain America are can't miss movies because the stories are simple hero stories and Stan Lee and his team created a number of great characters who's stories just convert directly into a movie so well. I have to admit that I don't really know or remember the Dr. Strange origin story, and am not that familiar with the character from the comics to judge how directly this movie correlates to the old comic.
And to me, that gives us the first of a number of problems with this movie. We've seen this before. An arrogant self-absorbed super genius. Basically the Tony Stark of doctors.
The next problem is how rushed everything seems as we run down the super hero to be checklist. 1. Establish a villain with a prologue. 2. Establish the vanity / flaw of our character. 3. He gets taken down by fate. We get about a five minutes for each one. It seems very rushed Then he heads off to solve his problem. He goes from a green recruit, not accepting and humble. boom...they throw him a curve-ball and he overcomes it. boom...next time we look somehow (because of his natural aptitude) he is top of the class. boom....just when he figures he go-ts what he wants...the villain shows up. (This is slight spoiler: Actually as he is saying the words, "I didn't do this to become part of some cosmic war". The cosmic war starts.) So, they have compressed the whole narrative into the most linear story they could.
I think that they could have alleviated this by using a flashback. In this case, Dr. Strange could have been battling the villain at the beginning, and then they could have taken us back through the process it took to get him to where he winds up. This especially would have worked since this time, time is an important element in the plot of this movie.
The CGI special effects didn't win me over. First, Dark City and a few other movies have worked this M.C. Escher twisting physical reality concept before, and all though visually stunning, they come across as slightly silly at times. I give them some leeway here, because like I said, I don't know the Dr. Strange backstory well enough to know if these visuals are a sweet spot for fans of the original comic. I assumed they were.
The cast of this movie is absolutely tremendous, and it's unfortunate that none of them get enough screen time or an expanded enough character to really shine. But, these actors are great throughout and they definitely don't hurt the movies credibility.
There are a few small tie-ins at the end to the bigger Marvel Universe and the Infinity Stones and the coming war.
Nothing wrong with this movie except the rushed feeling of the story and the linear cookie cutter steps it takes us down. but...hey, it's about a Mystical Super Hero.