Just another average film assembled from the Marvel Factory

Rating: 7/10 (14 November 2016)

After seeing Doctor Strange I am honestly shocked at how high it is rated. This is the third Marvel movie released this year so far and it is honestly not even remotely close to thee quality of the two before it.
To start, Doctor Strange in itself is not a terrible film. It isn't particularly great either, but it is at least somewhat competently made. It's just that compared to earlier Marvel universe films released this year and even before, it is extremely underwhelming and honestly didn't impress me too much.
The acting is mostly decent overall. While I have never read the Doctor Strange comics before, I can safely say myself that Benedict Cumberbatch completely owned the lead character. He is a perfect mix of arrogance and perseverance. While his character's mannerism is very similar to that of Tony Stark's, he is still very entertaining to watch and is probably the most enjoyable part of the film. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Mads Mikkelsen are also great, but their characters feel underdeveloped. It would have been nice to know more about these characters and their motives considering they take up quite a bit of screen time. My favorite character from the film was the Ancient One played by Tilda Swinton. She completely sells the almighty powerful and hair-lacking ancient warrior. While many have complained that she is not the same race or gender as the Ancient One from the comics, she still does a great job. Seeing her character effortlessly fight off countless baddies wielding her spell weapons and dressed in her golden yellow cloak is absolutely awesome and leads to some of the film's most enjoyable moments. Rachel McAdams' character however is grossly underdeveloped and seems to serve no purpose to the story whatsoever. The love story portion of the narrative felt so forced and clumsy that it would've been better off without it completely. And this is bad, even for a Marvel film.
The story is also extremely underwhelming. Doctor Strange's story is basically just a cookie-cutter copy of all Marvel films before it but just with a magic and sorcery filter over it. I understand it is a character origin story and it is based of the comic, but no effort was made to make the story stand out or be any different from literally any other superhero origin story. There were even times between the fight scenes where the movie was even boring. That surprised me considering that most of the Marvel films are entertaining and fun, but Doctor Strange's story was not at all compelling or interesting enough to completely hold my attention the entire time. But this is between the fight scenes. Those are a whole different story.
The fight scenes and visual effects almost make up my entire score. Doctor Strange is undoubtedly one of the best looking films of the year. The visual effects are stunning as they even manage to make flipping buildings and morphing cities look realistic. And yes, it does look a lot like Inception's mind bending visuals, but that doesn't make it any less spectacular. There are so many memorable fight scenes in Doctor Strange that it might be hard to find brawls on a linear battlefield interesting from now on. Also if you were debating whether or not Doctor Strange is worth seeing in 3-D, let me just say that it is the best 3-D I have ever seen. While I may not see many movies in 3-D, I cannot imagine it being much more impressive than it was here. The effects were mesmerizing and the fight scenes were a ton of fun to watch. It is just a shame that the film slows to a crawl after these fight scenes are over.
Doctor Strange doesn't flow very well at all. The film's momentum is all over the place and I found myself losing attention many times throughout watching. We would be treated to a spectacular fight scene but then after that is all over, we were brought back into the boring and uninspired story. There are quite a few good fight scenes however, but the balance is still off, which led to some genuinely unenjoyable stretches of bland dialogue, boring story and mediocre humor.
Overall, Doctor Strange isn't completely terrible but it certainly isn't as good as critics or IMDb users are making it seem. It is worth watching because of the special effects, fight scenes and Cumberbatch's portrayal of Doctor Strange but I was still left unsatisfied at the end. While it is certainly not the worst of the Marvel Universe movies, it is tied with Captain America: The Winter Soldier for the most overrated.