No originality. Style over substance

Rating: 4/10 (26 September 2017)

Doctor Strange is boring and has some of the worst acting I have seen in a Marvel movie. The best thing about the MCU is that it makes consistently fun films, but Doctor strange just falls completely flat. Don't get me wrong this film is no Suicide Squad but it is such a cookie cutter movie that has bad acting and terrible dialogue by the main character that I found it very hard to enjoy.
Let's look at the bad things first and then lead with some good things the film does right. The reason I hated Doctor Strange himself was partly due to the fact that Cumberbatch played him terribly. The US accent he uses when he is playing Strange is inconsistent at best. Honestly it sounds like a guy from Hammersmith doing an American accent. At no point in the film was I sitting there thinking he's not English. It took me out of the film so many times that I dreaded the bits with him in.
Stephen Strange is very poorly written in this film. He starts off as an arrogant a**hole and doesn't change at all throughout the film. His demeanour would be fine if he was charismatic or a little funny but all of the jokes he has written for him are painfully unfunny and fall flat. The Beyoncé joke he has with Wong is just BLEH and a classic example of terrible dialogue that is throw into this film.
With superhero films you have to make them relatable and at least funny in some scenes. Iron man does this very well as Tony Stark is an a**hole, like Strange, however Stark has charisma and was written with funny lines that made him relatable as a character. Stark is good and tries to put others first which most audience members share and this is how the audience relates.
Strange cares for himself and no one else, making him hard to relate too and making him unlikeable. He doesn't change at the end of the film; he just comes to the realisation that it is okay to loose sometimes. He doesn't even stop being a selfish di*k head so there is little character development for our MAIN CHARACTER!
Tilda Swinton plays the ancient one. I will not go into whether I think Swinton's character should have been played by an elderly Asian man like in the comics, I will let the SJWs get hard over that one.I personally don't care that much; as I have not read the comics so I'm not that attached to the character. Swinton is okay and does know how to portray a wise woman well I guess. Her character can sometimes be a boring wooden character sometimes but not to the point where it ruins the film. That's all I have to say on her.
The plot is a simple cookie cutter plot that Marvel likes to use again and again. Honestly the plots in some marvel films are so samey that you really have to wonder about the originality here. Doctor Strange follows the same conventions of most superhero movies like a big fight at the end with a powerful bad guy, sidekicks turning evil and a treasured mentor dying. While there is nothing wrong with conventions it would be nice for marvel to break this chain and deviate from the norm.
The CGI was good in this film. The scene where Strange is first shown the mystic arts and the "dream sequences" where the worlds are turned upside down are great visually. CGI is great and can really help a story along when a character is explaining the magic used. This film is a good example of that and when Tilda Swinton is explaining these principles to Strange it is at least fun to watch.
The other technical parts of the film are barely noticeable. I have no opinion on the music because I wasn't really paying attention to it at all. That is a shame as it shows that it was not used to the effect that music can be used in film. The cinematography, as well, fell short and went practically unnoticed by me. In fact the CGI is the only thing worth note in this film from a technical point of view which is sad. This film is a Marvel "filler movie" that, on its own, is easily forgettable and does nothing to advance the MCU in any way.
Unfortunately the MCU loves to play it safe with these "filler movies" like Ant man, Incredible Hulk, Iron man 2 and Doctor Strange these movies are just there to keep us interested so everyone will go and see the new Avengers film or another Thor film.
This film could be better if they had just made Strange a likable hero instead of an as*hole and Benedict worked on his accent. It is sad but it is true and it is the main reason why this film is bad. The other characters are fine but hardly anything to write home about and the whole movie is a bit on the mediocre side of things. The CGI is good, well done effects team, but it is that classic case of style over substance.