Doctor Strange (Review)

I never saw Doctor Strange in theaters, by the time it had come out I was far too burned out on Super Hero movies to care. Not to mention the whole "magic" angle always seemed silly in a realistic setting. And yeah I know Thor is technically "magic" but at least he's jacked.

That emotion your feeling is envy.

Then my friend told me that Doctor Strange isn't just a moniker, he actually is a doctor and his name is Steven Strange. I laughed out loud.

When the film finally popped up on Netflix I gave it a watch and while I enjoyed the visual effects the plot was a mess, the characters were boring, and with the exception of the actually pretty cool encounter with the villain at the end, the movie was dumb.

Like really dumb. Like "what happened? I thought this was a Marvel movie" dumb.

I know that Marvel movies aren't always Shakepeare, but they're usually at least entertaining. Age of Ultron and Iron Man 3 were both incredibly convoluted and ultimately unsatisfying, with the rock-stupid Guardians of the Galaxy just feeling empty.

For a while I thought Ant-Man was going to be the make-or-break for Marvel but in the end Ant-Man actually reminded* me a lot more of the near-perfect Spider-Man movies from the early 2000s which to this day set the standard for superhero films in my mind.

*Ant-Man was not "near perfect" but it had a similar style to the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films.

So where does this leave the badly cast and made for TV feel of Doctor Strange? Somewhere in space, I don't know.

Dormamu (I'm guessing that's how it's spelled, I'm not looking that bullshit up) is one of those bad guys who doesn't do anything until the last 10 minutes of the movie. And I don't mean to say, he's in his lair plotting. I mean he literally isn't involved with the plot until he's summoned by the surrogate bad-guy in the third act.

I bring this up now, because the only compelling part of the movie once the main plot goes off the rails is the confrontation with the villain which, to my pleasure, was resolved in word-play, not violence. This is great because normally when a villain is "all powerful" he gets defeated by someone weaker than him beating him up. And it sucks. In Doctor Strange, however, the limitless power of Dormamu is actually limitless. He CAN'T be beaten in a straight up fight. He's a cosmic destroyer.

Next on the hit list is the acid trip scene that happens towards the beginning of the film. It's cool to look at, and someone with more time than myself could probably make some sick wallpapers with it, but ultimately its just eye candy and it'll most likely look dated in a year or two.

Plus the studio didn't even make this scene. Apparently all of the visual effects for this scene were outsourced so....

Despite really only liking him in one movie, I acknowledge that Benny Cums is a good actor. He is. But here he just feels like he's trying really hard to be Dr. House. In fact, I suspect that's how they directed him. It just bums me out that all the super heroes need to be young enough to be "sexy" RDJ notwithstanding, and so Hugh Laurie didn't get a call. Hugh Laurie would've been better, and it would've been nice to get some variety in the ages of the heroes.

Mordo on the other hand, sucks. While both Doctor Strange himself and his black sidekick are pits of charisma, Mordo is something else. For some reason Marvel is afraid to have a movie be "too white" so invariably every white hero gets a black sidekick. Iron Man has Roadie, and Captain America has Falcon. Ant-Man mixed it up with a latino, so at least they're being less transparent there.

The issue I have is that HE SUCKS. If you're going to continue a trope at least make him likeable. Don Cheadle and Anthony Mackie are really awesome actors. They're fun to watch. You care about them. Chiwetel Ejiofor is a snoregasm. it's as simple as that. And as much as I dig Tilda Swinton, she kind of sucked in this movie too.

I don't know if it was the direction, or the script. Probably a combination, but this movie should've been left in the 70s.

Dormawmoo I've come to bargain.