Marvel Studios’ “Strange” New World

Doctor Strange Takes The MCU To A New Interesting Place, But Cuts Corners Unnecessarily

Doctor Strange, Marvel Studios’ latest addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) franchises, isn’t the risk some may have thought it could have been. That risk had already been mitigated to some extent by the blockbuster success of Guardians Of The Galaxy and, to a lesser degree, the success of the more comedicly tinged Ant-Man. Both films had expanded the format of the comic book film in terms of what audiences would accept at face value (Deadpool as well though that is not an MCU film) However, even Guardians can thank the Thor franchise for expanding the realm of the comic film with the introduction of Asgardian lore. So by the time Marvel turned to magic and sorcery with Strange, audiences were more willing to go where they might not have gone if Marvel had attempted this film in Phase 1 of the MCU.

But it still was a bit of a risk from a particular standpoint. Two of the previous three Marvel films had been ensemble tent pole Avengers blockbusters (Age of Ultron and Avengers 2.5 aka Captain America: Civil War). The risk was in over conditioning audiences to expect the “big film” more and more and the standalone film less and less.

Doctor Strange is that kind of standalone film. It’s a new film head to toe with new characters and new concepts and yet it doesn’t feel new. Marvel has gotten so good and had so much success at doing the comic film even the unfamiliar feels familiar to the viewer upon first viewing.

Hey, I accepted men with metal armor who can fly, Norse gods, passive/aggressive green monsters, guys who can both shrink really small and grow very big, talking trees and raccoons, Samuel L. Jackson with an eye patch wearing a Cardigan… Sorcery? No problem!

See what I mean.

So the concept was never that much of a stretch for Marvel under the circumstances. But selling it well would come down to casting. Throughout its history Marvel has rarely struck a bad note here as far as casting the heroes is concerned (the villains? That’s another matter, unfortunately). Benedict Cumberbatch seems like the only logical choice Marvel could make to play Stephen Strange…once Stephen Strange started acting more like the Sorcerer Supreme and less like what we got for 2/3 of this film.

Mind you, I don’t fault Cumberbatch’s performance any and I fully acknowledge in an origin story you are going to have to go from point A to point Z and that necessitates a character that evolves as that journey unfolds.

But this journey needs to flow well. In Doctor Strange it doesn’t. Strange is the second shortest origin film in the MCU clocking in one minute longer than the first Thor film. However, most of the MCU’s origin films come in around the same running time, give or take 10 minutes. I doubt that is just a coincidence.

Regardless of whether Marvel has a hard time limit it likes to adhere to for origin films, Doctor Strange is the first MCU origin film I felt needed more time to tie everything off properly.

For most of the film Strange just wants his hands to work and wants no part of defending the Earth. Then he flips in the last 20 minutes and takes on Dormammu? It is possible for a character to flip like that but it needs to be believable. I felt the change was both rushed and awkward. Strange gets a new outlook on life courtesy of a one on one on the Astral Plane with a dying Ancient One. At least that’s what’s supposed to happen. But I just didn’t buy it. It lacked in authenticity and credibility.

So did Mordo flipping and going bad. It’s one thing to say the reckless behavior of the Ancient One in drawing upon the powers of the Dark Dimension and Strange in disobeying the rules he’s supposed to adhere to give Mordo severe discomfort in the path he is on. But how we go from there to “too many sorcerers” are the problem and an evil course is the right way…is never adequately addressed. Adequately addressed? Forget that…it’s not addressed at all.

Both of these critical plot points could have played out better had the film been given the running time to adequately address them.

Another thing that would have benefited from a longer running time was the relationship between Strange and Rachel McAdams’ Christine Palmer character. Palmer floats through the film like a dangling participle. We know she’s tied to Strange but the nature of their relationship is too vague and halfway through the film I started feeling like her main purpose in the film was more for patching people together in the hospital than to flesh out Strange’s character more.

In looking at the MCU’s long line of villain disappointments, Kaecilius falls somewhere on the “more well rounded” side of the spectrum…closer to Ultron, Zemo, and Loki than the Red Skull, Cross, or Malekith. But he could have been better. He was pretty one dimensional…but, then again, it’s not like there’s a massive comic backstory on the character for the film makers to draw from. Indeed, when the internet deduced that Kaecilius was in the film, there was a lot of collective head scratching going on precisely because he was such a minor level villain in the books.

Still, when you have an actor of the caliber of Mads Mikkelsen, he can take an apparent non-entity like Kaecilius and make him at least interesting. I found the exchange between a temporarily captured Kaecilius and Strange to be one of the better parts of the film.

There was a lot of grumbling about casting the Ancient One as a woman. I never understood that. We’ve seen so many cinematic retcons in comic films…some more necessary than others…that getting your knickers in a twist because Tilda Swinton is playing the Ancient One seems like nit picking. I had a far bigger issue with the Ancient One getting killed so easily by Kaecilius than I did with casting the character.

While I am convinced that Doctor Strange would have been a better film if it had been a little bit longer, I am cognizant of the fact that my view may not be shared by everyone. This was driven home when I saw the film for the first time with a friend and I remarked about how short it was. My friend felt the film dragged in spots and felt long. My friend was not raised on the comics the way I was and hasn’t seen every MCU film out there. I once made the mistake of taking my friend to see Captain America: Civil War not knowing that they had not yet seen either Captain America: The Winter Soldier or The Avengers: Age of Ultron; which is akin to taking someone to the third Lord of the Rings film when they haven’t seen the first two. They were hopelessly lost.

The point I’m making here is that being invested in the franchise can be both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing in that you are going to look at the film in ways others won’t and get more out of it than they would. It’s a curse…pretty much for the same reason; you’ll be blinded in not seeing things the casual observer will experience.

There has been much buzz about the effects in Doctor Strange. Some have compared the Escher-esque scenes in this film to Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Now, I love Inception. I felt it deserved the 2010 Best Picture Oscar because it was operating on a whole different level from every other film that came out that year and it forced the viewer to accept a complex, non-traditional style of storytelling we have not seen as effectively rendered to screen since Pulp Fiction.

Having said that, I feel to draw parallels between Doctor Strange and Inception does a disservice to Strange because, by comparison, this film has the outlines of the look of parts of Inception only pumped full of steroids and cranked up to 11. Under the circumstances, direct comparisons are silly.

Some viewers’ eyes may start to glaze over at some of the eye popping sequences…particularly when at least one sequence doesn’t lead to a plot point payoff but just…ends (Mordo and Strange being chased by Kaecilius and his minions). This could make some feel like some sequences were there for show and little else. I can see that point. A little more exposition on what those sequences mean in terms of how and why it’s happening would have helped mitigate that, I think.

Overall, I would say in terms of MCU origin films I would put Doctor Strange somewhere between Iron Man and Thor — above Ant-Man and Captain America: The First Avenger but below Guardians of the Galaxy. Some have remarked about the Stark-ian parallels between the protagonist in Iron Man and the protagonist in Doctor Strange. I can see what they are talking about though I would point out that narcissism and arrogance still cripples Tony Stark after six films while by the end of this film Strange has largely left those traits behind. Apparently.

But as with all the MCU origin films, Doctor Strange is good enough to keep the ball rolling and integrate Strange into MCU proper. As we were shown in the mid-credits scene, that integration will take place a lot sooner than later.