Another 'solid' movie from Marvel, but not the 'refreshing new take' many claim

Rating: 6/10 (29 October 2016)

Doctor Strange was presumably named as such because Doctor Familiar does not roll off the tongue. However, it may have been a more apt title in a franchise that has become the Toyota of movie franchises with reliability being their cornerstone. A lot has been made about the 'refreshing' nature of this movie, however, this isn't the first time an intelligent, quick witted hero has fought and quipped their way to saving the world in a Marvel movie. Don't get me wrong, this is a solid movie, as most Marvel movies are, however, it hits the same beats as all Marvel movies before it, has the same brand of characters, has yet another bland sound track and puts on yet another impressive, yet heavily CGI visual feast.
Firstly, this movie's plot is written from the exact template that barely has time to gather dust in the Marvel vault before it's whipped out to produce another hit. We have a villain with a clear motive, to bring earth into a 'dark dimension'. Why? Why not? We have a hero who is cocky, head strong and a genius who will prove to be exceptional whilst not missing an opportunity to get a laugh. At first, the hero is somewhat in it for himself, but later comes round to being a team player proving that all it takes to save the world is a good attitude and a good set of friends. Though super intelligence and almost god-like powers doesn't hurt. In the end our hero out-smarts, out-muscles and out-quips his enemies by mastering some relatively vaguely defined spells relating to time and time-looping and using it against a giant CGI monster.
The movie does a decent job of creating its universe and a passable job of explaining its laws. Just enough exposition is given that on first viewing one does not feel the plot is entirely based on a series of screen writer conveniences, however, the movie very much avoids getting too complicated in its explanations and the audience is expected to give a fair amount of leeway to the plot, the ending being an example of this. Perhaps my biggest gripe with this movie, as with almost all movies in the franchise to date, is that it does the bare minimum when exploring its own philosophies. Strange's mentor, The Chosen One (or a title to that effect), espouses, almost off-handedly, that death gives life meaning. Why? The bad guys want to engulf the world in some sort of eternal life in the 'dark dimension'. What that would mean is glossed over. Also, if the giant CGI monster of this dimension lives eternally, does his life have no meaning as a result? If so, why can he even be bothered to try and engulf more and more worlds into his dimension. For a movie to transcend the 'good', it really needs to have more than a physical battle between its heroes and villains. There needs to be a battle of ideology. This movie alludes to this battle in passing before hurrying on to the next jump cut fight on a green room treadmill. Lastly, whoever first jokingly penned the term "sling ring" must have found it hysterical when it made it into the final script!
My next big gripe is with the music of this movie. Tony Zhou, from Every Frame a Painting, did a fantastic video discussing the Marvel Symphonic Universe where he puts a challenge to a bunch of people to sing a single original composition from a Marvel movie. No-one could do it. And after watching Dr Strange I can say I would once again be unable to sing a single melody from its soundtrack. The movie plays it very safe with its music. When excitement is happening, generic exciting music is playing, when something sad happens, generic soft sad music is playing and so on so forth.
Finally, to the visual effects. And yes, these are unusual and one feels like this is where the movie's creators wanted to get people to write their reviews saying "this is a refreshing new take on the MCU". Unfortunately, whilst the CGI is spectacular, I can never quite get over the fact that these are just a bunch of actors running on a treadmill in a green room towards a CGI portal that they really should have just created 2m away rather than 100m and they would have escaped danger easily. The action sequences are frenetic and heavily edited with seemingly multiple cuts a second. Keeping track of where characters are in space and time is impossible, though, to be fair to this movie, that is kind of the effect they were going for. Some of the visuals could rightly be compared to inception and one would assume the visual effects designers took a lot of inspiration from that movie. Yet scenes of people fighting inside rotating hallways just felt more real in Nolan's movie, perhaps because the were filmed in a real rotating hallway. It's the subtle imperfections in the actor's movements through the hallways and the way the light falls on surfaces that just can't be matched by computer generated images. The human eye and brain can always tell the difference.
In conclusion, this movie is good. A solid 3 out of 5. It'll get you from A to B without missing a beat, 'oh what a feeling'. If you want a popcorn flick, it's as good as they get. However, the movie is once again played very very safe. If you were looking for the 'refreshing new look at the MCU' then you're going to walk away disappointed.