‘Doctor Strange’ (2016) ***/*****
Nobody told me there’d be doctors like these
For a while there, in the early stages of the superhero movie boom, it felt like every superhero movie we were going to get was going to follow the exact same “origin story” formula, and it was starting to get old. Once Marvel really got the ball rolling and got all of their main players established, that was no longer the case for their films, however. These days we’re so deep into the expansive cinematic universe they’ve created around their superheroes that we haven’t gotten a typical origin story in a while. These days their movies are all about old characters teaming up in new combinations, or if there is a new character being introduced, their origin is so rooted in established locations and histories, not much place-setting is necessary. Doctor Strange is different. Not only does it introduce us to a new corner of the Marvel Universe that we’ve never explored before, it introduces us to a new character who we’ve never met before, and it very much concerns itself with telling the “origin story” of how he went from being a regular guy to becoming a being with extraordinary abilities. Going back to this sort of story doesn’t necessarily feel fresh, but because we’ve gotten a bit of a break from it, it doesn’t feel nearly as tired as it would have five years ago either.
You may not have thought that the world needed another movie superhero, but he’s here anyway, and his name is Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch). Strange is a cocky though capable surgeon who has his high-profile career cut short when a car accident shatters both of his hands, leaving him unable to operate. After exhausting the capabilities of Western medicine trying to fix his malady, Strange gets desperate and turns to Eastern religion. In his search for a miracle cure, eventually he comes across a wise and powerful being called The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton), who not only teaches him to cast aside his ego and experience humility, she also teaches him how to tap into the mystical arts and become a powerful sorcerer. Of course, in addition to having good sorcerers, a movie also has to have bad sorcerers, so a fallen student of The Ancient One’s named Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen) then turns up with a plan to open up a portal to a dark dimension that houses a being of unlimited power who wants nothing more than to consume the Earth. Can a jerk like Doctor Strange get his life together and get all this magic stuff figured out in time to save the day?
Doctor Strange mostly works as a film, and that’s largely because the nuts and bolts of the filmmaking is strong. The first act does a great job of explaining Strange’s character to us — of showing us his prideful nature and his focus on precision, and how much it affects the way he interacts with the world when that precision is taken away — and it does this by showing us his hand washing ritual before surgery, the particular way he gets dressed in the morning, and little things like that. It never lazily has another one of the characters word vomit everything we need to know about him in a clunky monologue. Director Scott Derrickson (Sinister, Deliver Us From Evil) creates a rich world for us to explore, and not just the little bubble world of Stephen Strange’s life, the greater world of magic users in the Marvel Universe too. It turns out they’ve got their own secret hangouts that have a unique kind of mystical aesthetic, and the design work that’s been done on everything from sets, to costumes, to other realms is detailed, imaginative, and expansive.
The special effects work here is detailed, imaginative, and expansive too. From the visual representations of the spells everyone is casting, to the morphing landscapes as the characters bend reality around themselves, to basic action movie stuff like explosions and destruction, everything looks great — but the sequences where Strange travels to different dimensions are what really stand out. They’re not just the abstract kaleidoscope of swirling colors that you usually get in movie sequences like this, they’re the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey if it was on steroids and acid. Every element of the trippy weirdness is meticulously designed, meticulously detailed, and full of ideas. Not only are the other worlds that Strange goes to — the other planes of perception that he’s able to reach — gorgeous to look at, they’re also often disturbing to experience. They truly turn your knowledge of how the physical world works on its head, and that’s a wonderful thing.
One thing that Marvel always gets right is its casting, and they’ve put together another great ensemble here, though the performers don’t all get put to their best use. Cumberbatch looks great as Strange. It’s hard to imagine any other current actor looking anymore like the classic character ripped from the pages of the comic book. He’s got an inherent coldness and intellect that serves the character well for the first half of the film, where he’s condescending as the snotty intellectual, as well. I’m not yet convinced that he handles the big, effects-driven battle sequences as well as some of the other leading men in the Marvel Universe though, as he generally came off as disengaged and wooden when having to run from imaginary explosions that were inserted into the frame later, or when he was conjuring up energy patterns that hadn’t yet been designed in a computer; but that’s usually the least interesting sort of stuff that these movies do anyway. In general, he’s a strong actor and good choice for this character, which makes him a solid foundation to build a new film franchise from.
Cumberbatch’s most notable supporting player is definitely Swinton as the enigmatic Ancient One. What can be said about her at this point? She’s a very singular talent. Her screen presence is so unique, the way she emotes on the screen is so soulful. She’s basically the closest you can get to casting an alien in your movie without actually proving the existence of life on another planet, and giving her the chance to play an all-knowing, all-powerful, bald wizard lady just accentuates those traits further. Swinton predictably steals the movie. Chiwetel Ejiofor shows up playing another one of The Ancient One’s pupils, called Mordo, and he’s also strong in his role, though he’s not given a whole lot to do other than be a sidekick. There might not be an actor currently working who’s better at allowing emotion to play across his face, and the couple of times he’s actually given an opportunity to do that here serve as promises of future riches, as it seems like he’s going to get a chance to play a much bigger role in this series going forward. Rachel McAdams is likable playing Strange’s former colleague and love interest, Christine, but it proves to be a small, thankless role that doesn’t have much importance to the film as a whole, which is disappointing. Unfortunately, roles like this seem to be her lot in life.
Of course, Marvel movies aren’t all storytelling synergy and talented ensembles. They also seem to be unable to shake the same few criticisms that get thrown at them each time out, and those problems haven’t been completely addressed here either. One of the big complaints about Marvel movies is that, with the notable exception of Loki in the Thor movies, they generally feature uninteresting villains. That’s certainly the case here. Mikkelsen’s character is the prototypical, generically evil Marvel villain, whose sole motivation seems to be that he needed to be evil and needed to be trying to bring about devastation because the movie needed a plot. We get no real sense of who he is or why he’s doing what he’s doing, and if Mikkelsen wasn’t so effortlessly smarmy and punchable, the villain would have probably ruined the film. As is, it’s just kind of a downer whenever he and his goons show up and things devolve into generic fights.
Which brings us to another big complaint about Marvel movies — that they all build up to the same disappointing and visually similar climax, every time. Some kind of glowing thing is happening in the middle of a city that’s going to destroy the world, the heroes have to shut down this glowing thing before it’s too late, and they have to battle through a bunch of faceless goons in order to get to it. Rinse and repeat. The scenario is played out, and it never amounts to much more than a flashy light show. Doctor Strange does build to this very same climax, and it does look very much like it’s aping the ending of so many superhero movies that have come before it, but it should get credit for actually finding a different way to resolve the situation. Instead of fighting to the center of the chaos and breaking the MacGuffin, Strange takes a different path to addressing the conflict, and it’s one that feels true to his character and true to the particular corner of the Marvel Universe he inhabits — a corner where wrapping your mind around heady concepts is much more important than being able to punch things with your fists. At least in that regard, this new hero is unique, and pretty cool.
Doctor Strange doesn’t have the wit and charm of Marvel movies like Iron Man or Guardians of the Galaxy, and it’s not able to pull off high-stakes action like the original Avengers, or the Captain America sequels, which makes it a little bit drier and slow-moving than a lot of the other movies that have come out of this universe, but it just looks so dang pretty that it holds together as an entertaining film anyway. Hopefully, now that the origin story is out of the way, they’ll be able to come up with meatier things for these actors to do the next time they don their sorcerer’s togs. Doctor Strange is okay, but if it’s able to expand on everything that worked in this first film and get even weirder and even more esoteric, Doctor Strange 2 could be amazing.
