Very Well Made Action-Thriller

Rating: 8/10 (5 November 2016)

Doctor Strange is one of Marvel's most visually impressive films featuring the strongest introduction to a new MCU character (other than maybe Ant-Man (2015)). As to be expected this movie has all the bells and whistles of your average Marvel movie: high stakes, interesting side characters, topnotch action-suspense and a rocksteady heroes journey that doesn't skim too much on all the world-building detail. It certainly seems like a tall order to add on a multiverse travelling sorcerer into the same cinematic space as a boatload of advanced super-humans, mechanical amazements, and virtual Gods. Rest assured they make it work; putting just enough mind-bending, reality-altering mumbo-jumbo into the soup to keep this Marvel train chugging to its inevitable climax. Not that you could do a lot to stop it to be honest.
Doctor Stephen Strange (Cumberbatch) starts as a supremely talented but vain neurosurgeon whose use of his hands are tragically limited because of a serious car crash. Alone, frustrated and quickly running out of funds, Strange takes a trip to Nepal where rumor has it a secluded monastery may just have what he's looking for. Meanwhile a powerful sorcerer named Kaecilius (Mikkelsen) and his disciples have stolen the pages of a mythic book that have the potential to end time, reality, basically the whole world as we know it.
Doctor Strange installs itself as yet another well-oiled carnival ride in a world filled with well-oiled carnival rides. Assuming this is a good thing, those familiar with the MCU and its eventual endgame will once again be rewarded with a layered milieu of competent cinematography, kinetic fight choreography and a familiar mix of light-hearted gags. Look out for Strange's stylish and spunky levitation cloak as evidence of Marvel's ability to get a laugh even in the direst of situations. Furthermore, as a Marvel property, Doctor Strange features not one, not two but five Academy Award nominated actors each giving the film enough gravitas to create its own event horizon. Cumberbatch in particular does a splendid job dressing up a character of incredible intelligence and ego who, let's be honest he can do in his sleep by now. I'm not going to lie the possibility of him interlocking with the similarly pigheaded Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) is getting me giddy with anticipation.
Yet for those of us expecting a little more - perhaps a little something closer to the acid-trip psychedelia of the original comics the movie sorta-kinda doesn't deliver. Don't get me wrong, all the components are there: stunningly surreal images, eastern philosophical pseudo-intellectualism, alternate dimensions etc., yet nothing really sticks with you after the credits role. Every time we plunge into the deep end as far as visual splendor, we're immediately shuffled through like a hurried tour through a black light painting exhibit. It's a shame too because if the film dared to slow down, the daunting visual homages to MC Esher, Roger Dean, Storm Thorgerson, Rene Magritte and whoever did King Crimson's album covers would have been properly internalized like Inception's (2010) hallway fight scene.
Part of the problem is it feels a lot like the car is pulling the horse. Marvel Studios have found a malleable director in Scott Derrickson who up to this point has made moderately successful horror films and one particularly wrongheaded remake (cough cough Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) cough, cough). Derrickson manages to insert some flourishes of his own into the script as a co-writer but as a director he's completely railroaded by the studio. It's like he's playing with borrowed toys and doesn't want to scuff them up for the sake of maybe telling a better story.
Overall however, Doctor Strange is a taut action movie that delivers exactly what you'd expect and then some. Far from being completely safe, the film features some incredible action set-pieces including a show-stopping battle sequence while a city is being destroyed in reverse. That in itself, along with Strange's first encounter with the supernatural is worth the price of admission. Marvel has ushered in their expansive universe into a new age where magic can exist with science without someone from the Thor movies explaining it away as science that's "just more advanced". At this point it's hard to say if an audience member can just come in from the cold and watch Doctor Strange without knowing a little something about the rest of Marvel's hero gallery. But at this point it's hard to find anyone not familiar with the franchise. Plus since they made what could have been a hall of funhouse mirrors into yet another roller coaster, if you're not already sold on Marvel, once you've seen one, you've seen them all.