In the early 1960s, Steve Ditko—one of the many artists working for Marvel, and co-creator of Spider-Man with Stan Lee—went to Lee with the notion of a superhero who used magic and spellcraft to fight the bad guys, inspired in part by the old radio show Chandu the Magician. Since the character was to appear as a backup feature in Strange Tales, they decided to call him Dr. Strange (since calling him Mr. Strange would be too much like Mr. Fantastic in Fantastic Four).
He quickly became a mainstay of the Marvel Universe, adapted into a TV movie in 1978 and then brought into the Marvel Cinematic Universe 38 years later.
Ditko’s magnificently psychedelic artwork combined with Lee’s perfect ear for ostentatious dialogue to make Dr. Strange into a cult hit, quickly taking over the front of Strange Tales, which went from monster comic, to comic featuring the Human Torch, to a double feature of Strange and Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Eventually, Fury was spun off into his own comic and Strange Tales was retitled Doctor Strange.
Strange has occupied an odd place in Marvel Comics lore. He’s only occasionally been able to support his own title. Doctor Strange was cancelled in 1969, though he then appeared in Marvel Feature, in which he joined with the Hulk, the Sub-Mariner, and the Silver Surfer to form the “non-team” the Defenders, who continued, with Strange as a regular presence, into the mid-1980s. He again got his own series in the 1970s and 1980s, and then shared a new version of Strange Tales with Cloak & Dagger. In the twenty-first century, Strange has been part of the Secret Defenders and various incarnations of the Avengers, consistently acting as the sorcerer supreme of Earth, and master of the mystic arts.
Strange is another Marvel character who bounced around from studio to studio, including New World, Regency, Savoy Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Dimension Pictures, Miramax, Paramount, and finally settling at Marvel Studios. At various times the following were all attached to (or at least pitching) a Doctor Strange film: Alex Cox, Wes Craven, Benecio del Toro, Michael France, Neil Gaiman, Bob Gale, David S. Goyer, Stephen Norrington, Chuck Russell, and Jeff Welch.
Scott Derrickson lobbied hard to be chosen as director, going so far as to write and storyboard a twelve-page sequence based on Doctor Strange: The Oath, which was later used in the final film. Derrickson worked with his collaborator C. Robert Cargill, with Marvel hiring Jon Spaihts for rewrites, which were done in consultation with Derrickson.
The story followed the basics of Strange’s comics origin—which was not actually revealed until his fifth appearance, as he initially appeared as a fully formed master of the mystic arts. Dr. Stephen Strange was a well-regarded, and incredibly arrogant, surgeon who suffers nerve damage in a car accident that will keep him from performing surgery ever again.
Desperate for a cure that modern medicine can’t provide, he travels instead to Asia, hoping for aid from the legendary Ancient One. While there, he learns that he has skills in the mystic arts. The Ancient One’s disciple is Baron Mordo, who is secretly plotting against the Ancient One. Strange learns of the deception, but Mordo silences him with a spell. So Strange offers to also become the Ancient One’s disciple—and only then does he learn that the Ancient One knows of Mordo’s treachery, but is following the “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” dictum.
Mordo would go on to become one of Strange’s most implacable foes, along with Dormammu, Umar, Mephisto, and many others. (One of Marvel’s best Dracula stories was in a Roger Stern-written run of the 1970/1980s Doctor Strange comic.)
The movie makes many alterations to the comics canon. For one thing, the mystical-cure-in-the-mysterious-Orient trope has aged pretty badly, plus medical science has come a lot farther in healing nerve damage. In addition, Strange has an Asian manservant, Wong, a stereotype that has aged really badly.
And so in the movie, the mystics we meet are a bit more globally representative. Mordo is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nigerian by ancestry, and the Ancient One is played by a bald Tilda Swinton (last seen in this rewatch in Constantine), rather than an old Asian dude. Wong is a fellow mystic, Strange’s peer rather than his servant, and played by the appropriately named Benedict Wong.
Strange is played by Benedict Cumberbatch, who almost couldn’t take the role due to scheduling issues. However, when the movie’s release date was bumped from the spring of 2016 to the fall of 2016, he was able to make it work. (The studio’s second choice was Joaquin Phoenix, but he was unwilling to make the multifilm commitment Marvel Studios requires.)
The existence of Strange was actually seeded back in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, when Jasper Sitwell mentioned Strange as a person of interest that Hydra had flagged and was keeping an eye on. (Of course, at that point, he was just a famous neurosurgeon, but that could still put him on Zola’s algorithm’s radar, plus it may have been able to predict his future role in superheroic things.)
Rachel McAdams plays Christine Palmer, a physician colleague of Strange’s, based on one of the many women who was “Night Nurse” in the comics. The original plan was to do Night Nurse in the Netflix Marvel series, but because of this movie, they changed the character to Claire Temple, who was a doctor in the comics, but a nurse on screen. Palmer was a nurse in the comics, but she’s a doctor on screen. Balance, I guess? Also, casting McAdams gives us someone who’s played Sherlock Holmes (Cumberbatch in the BBC’s Sherlock) and someone who’s played Irene Adler (McAdams in the Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) together.
Also present are Mads Mikkelsen as Kaecilius—a minor antagonistic sorcerer in the comics—as the main bad guy, who uses some elements of Mordo’s comics background, Mordo himself being a more sympathetic character, at least at first; Michael Stuhlbarg as Dr. Nicodemus West, a rival surgeon to Strange, based on a character in The Oath miniseries that Derrickson used to pitch himself as director; and, back from Avengers: Age of Ultron, Chris Hemsworth as Thor in the mid-credits scene (which was taken from Thor: Ragnarok, which we’ll cover next week). Cumberbatch also provides motion capture and voice for Dormammu.
Cumberbatch and Hemsworth will next appear in Ragnarok. Wong will next appear in Avengers: Infinity War. Swinton will next appear in Avengers: Endgame. McAdams is confirmed to be appearing next in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness in 2021, and it’s possible that Ejiofor will next be appearing there as well.
“Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain”
Doctor Strange
Written by Jon Spaihts and Scott Derrickson & C. Robert Cargill
Directed by Scott Derrickson
Produced by Kevin Feige
Original release date: November 4, 2016
In Kamar-Taj, a haven for sorcerers under the tutelage of the Ancient One, a former acolyte, Kaecilius, along with several of his followers, invade the library, behead the librarian, and remove the pages from the Book of Cagliostro. The Ancient One confronts them, and holds her own against them. Kamar-Taj has portals to three sanctums: in London, Hong Kong, and New York. Kaecilius and his people escape to the London sanctum. The Ancient One gives chase and sends them all to the mirror dimension, an adjacent, equivalent realm where the landscape can be manipulated without affecting the real world.
However, Kaecilius is able to effect an escape, having taken the instructions for a particular ritual with him.
In New York City, Dr. Stephen Strange is performing an operation while playing “name that tune” with an MP3 player on shuffle. His colleague (and ex) Dr. Christine Palmer calls him to consult on a case in the ER: Dr. Nicodemus West has called someone dead, and Palmer doesn’t think so, but needs a second opinion. Sure enough, the patient is still alive, and Strange saves him, to West’s abashed annoyance.
Palmer tries to convince Strange to work in the ER, but he’s not interested in saving one life at a time, he’s interested in cutting-edge surgery that has the potential to save hundreds of lives. Strange then tries to convince Palmer to be his date for a speaking engagement, but she’s not interested, telling him that she never enjoyed doing it when they were dating, because it was always all about him.
He drives off to his speaking engagement, which apparently involves driving his sports car on a mountain road—which means it has to be in western New Jersey or eastern Pennsylvania, as there are no roads like that anywhere near New York—and it also starts raining. His assistant is providing him with possible cases, and when he finds one he likes after rejecting several, the assistant sends him the images to his phone. He glances down at them, taking his eye off the road, hits another car, spins out, and goes flying over the cliff.
He’s airlifted to the same hospital where he practices, which is weird, as you’d think they’d bring him closer to where he crashed, but whatever. He has catastrophic nerve damage to his hands, which means he’ll never be able to perform surgery again. Over the course of his recovery, he researches and proposes several experimental treatments, which either don’t work or are too risky for any surgeon to try. During physical therapy, Strange rejects the encouragement of the therapist, asking if he’s ever seen anyone come back all the way from an injury this bad. To Strange’s skepticism, the therapist tells him about a guy who had a shattered spine, who he later bumped into on the street walking around. Strange doesn’t believe him and demands to see the file. The therapist says it’s in the archives, but he’s willing to dig it up to shut Strange’s arrogant ass up.
Palmer has been trying to help him, but he doesn’t want her pity, and he eventually throws her out of his apartment.
Strange gets a copy of Jonathan Pangborn’s file, with a postit from the physical therapist saying, “TOLD YOU SO!” Strange tracks Pangborn down, where he’s playing a pickup basketball game. Turns out Strange was one of the surgeons Pangborn went to for treatment, but Strange turned him down. Pangborn said he went to a place called Kamar-Taj in Nepal.
Having burned through his savings, Strange spends the last of his cash to get himself to Kathmandu, where he searches for Kamar-Taj. Eventually, he’s mugged for his watch—one that Palmer gave him when they were dating—but he’s saved by Mordo, who takes him to Kamar-Taj.
It turns out to be a ramshackle structure down an alley, but it’s much bigger inside. He meets the Ancient One, who tells him about magic—truly, the manipulation of energy. In the past they called it “spells,” but the Ancient One says that you can also think of it as the source code for the universe.
Strange is skeptical right up until the part where she forces Strange’s astral form out of his physical body. She then sends his astral form on a journey through the multiverse.
And then she kicks him out, because he’s too arrogant and too skeptical and too hidebound in his view of the world.
At the end of his rope, Strange just sits outside the entrance, as he has nowhere else to go. The Ancient One eventually lets him back in and starts training him. He learns martial arts and is shown the ways of manipulating magic, though he struggles with the latter. However, he also makes use of the library, surprising Wong, the new librarian, with how quickly he is going through the tomes.
The hardest thing for him to learn is manipulating a “sling ring,” which can open portals that enable you go anywhere in the world instantly. The Ancient One tries to make him understand that he can only control the sling ring by surrendering control—which makes no sense to the very rationalist Strange, but the Ancient One explains that not everything does make sense.
She opens a portal to Mount Everest and abandons Strange there. He has to get back on his own. She and Mordo wait for him, Mordo muttering, “Not again,” making one wonder how many neophyte sorcerers are lying dead of hypothermia on Everest.
But Strange finally manages to activate his sling ring and make it back. After that, he uses his sling ring to take books out of the library and studies on his own rather than working with the teachers. The Ancient One and Mordo each castigate him for his arrogance.
Strange looks at the Book of Cagliostro, and notices the missing pages. Mordo and Wong also each tell him about the different artifacts, including the Eye of Agamotto, which can manipulate time.
He also learns about Kaecilius. One of the many dimensions in the multiverse is the Dark Dimension, ruled by a powerful being named Dormammu. Kaecilius serves Dormammu, wanting to achieve immortality by having Earth be the latest realm to be absorbed into the Dark Dimension.
Strange experiments with the Eye after reading a text about it, and is able to alter an apple from being half-eaten to all eaten to uneaten. He also reconstructs the lost pages of the Book of Cagliostro, and is able to read the ritual that Kaecilius stole.
Mordo and Wong yell at him for messing with the Eye—didn’t he know the consequences? But he only read about how to work the spell, apparently the texts put the warnings after the spell, which Strange criticizes as a method of structuring the instructions. The sorcerers point out that they’re fighting a war, protecting the Earth against mystical threats, just as the Avengers protect the world from physical ones. Strange is not happy about this—he didn’t sign up to fight a war, he’s in this to cure his hands.
Kaecilius attacks and destroys the London sanctum in order to weaken Earth’s protection to pave the way for Dormammu. The backwash of that attack sends Strange careening through the portal to the New York sanctum, which is also Kaecilius’s next stop. They kill the guardian of that sanctum, and attack Strange also, but the cloak of levitation—one of many artifacts on the sanctum’s upper floor—comes to his aid and bonds with him. Strange is able to imprison Kaecilius and sends one of his acolytes to the desert. The third sorcerer, though, stabs Strange. The cloak keeps the sorcerer occupied while Strange uses his sling ring to go to the ER to be treated by Palmer—who is rather shocked to see him after so long. (He made many attempts to contact her while in Kamar-Taj, but she didn’t reply to any of them.) She is skeptical about what he’s been up to, as it sounds like a cult—but then his astral form leaves his body and talks to her, which freaks her completely out. But it also enables him to consult on his own surgery—but then the sorcerer who attacked him, whose physical body is still being restrained by the cloak, attacks him on the astral plane.
As the astral battle goes on, Strange’s physical form flatlines. Palmer gives him electroshock, which starts his heart—but the energy of the shock transmits to his astral form, blasting outward at his foe. Strange tells Palmer to hit him again with a higher charge, which takes out his foe’s astral form, killing the body.
Strange takes his leave of Palmer—who sees him step through a sling-ring portal to the New York sanctum—and returns to find his foe’s physical form dead, Kaecilius escaped, and the Ancient One and Mordo wondering what happened. Strange tells them, and also is noticeably upset about having killed someone—he took an oath to do no harm, to save lives, not take them. Mordo explains that he doesn’t always have that option, which Strange refuses to accept.
The Ancient One is shocked to learn that Kaecilius can manipulate the landscape in the real world, not just in the mirror dimension. Mordo is shocked when Strange—who read the entire ritual that Kaecilius stole—says that the Ancient One is also drawing power from the Dark Dimension. Mordo refuses to accept that, though the Ancient One doesn’t deny it, either. The Ancient One also declares that Strange will be the new caretaker of the New York sanctum.
Kaecilius returns with reinforcements and attacks again, but this time Strange sends them all to the mirror dimension, so at least the people of New York will remain safe. However, the Ancient One, Mordo, and Strange get their asses kicked. (At one point, Strange and Mordo are thrown against a bus window, but the passenger sitting by that window, who looks just like Stan Lee, can’t see or hear them, and besides, he’s engrossed in reading Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, which is probably the best in-joke out of any of Lee’s cameos—yes, even better than the Mallrats one in Captain Marvel.) The Ancient One is badly wounded, and Strange takes her to the hospital. Palmer and West work on her—Strange actually picks up a scalpel, but his hands still shake too much, so he tells West to take over. Her astral form abandons her body, and Strange does likewise.
The Ancient One admits that she has peered into many possible futures, but none go past this moment—she is, she knows, fated to die now. She reveals to Strange that she didn’t cure Pangborn—instead, he uses magic, constantly, to keep himself mobile. She has seen many possible futures for Strange, and she hopes he’ll follow the best path that will lead to him becoming the great sorcerer he has the potential to become.
Her final advice to Strange before she dies is to admit that she did draw power from the Dark Dimension, because sometimes you need to break the rules. Mordo doesn’t understand this, as he is too rigid in his thinking. Strange needs Mordo’s strength and purity of purpose, and Mordo needs Strange’s improvisational skills.
Kaecilius’s next target will be the Hong Kong sanctum. Wong has gone ahead with various other mystics to defend it. Strange and Mordo head there, only to find that the Hong Kong sanctum has fallen. Using the Eye, Strange reverses time, keeping himself and Mordo immune to the shifting of the timestream. However, Kaecilius and his acolytes’ connection to the Dark Dimension makes them just as immune, so they continue to fight even as time reverses itself around them. Once they go to before Wong’s death, Strange protects him from the time changes as well, and the three of them confront Kaecilius’s forces—only for Kaecilius to freeze time right before/after the Hong Kong sanctum starts to fall.
Strange decides to go straight to the source. He has the Eye put himself in a time loop where he goes to the Dark Dimension and says, “Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain.” When he dies, the loop resets itself. Dormammu keeps killing Strange, telling the sorcerer he can’t win. But Strange can lose—again and again, and as long as he does, the people of Earth are safe.
Dormammu finally breaks down and asks Strange to free him from the trap, which Strange will only do if Dormammu leaves Earth alone forever. He agrees, and takes Kaecilius with him.
Strange returns to Earth a moment after he left, and Kaecilius and his people are dragged to the Dark Dimension to suffer torments forever. Strange’s last words to Kaecilius are that he should’ve stolen the whole book—the warnings are after the spells…
Mordo is disgusted by the Ancient One drawing on the Dark Dimension to make herself immortal, and equally disgusted by Strange’s blithe manipulation of time. He walks away from Strange and Wong, declaring himself to be done with Kamar-Taj.
Strange puts the Eye of Agamotto back on its pedestal in Kamar-Taj, with Wong only then revealing that it’s an infinity stone—a meaningless designation to Strange, but a significant one to the audience.
We jump ahead a few months to see Thor visiting Strange in his sanctum, the thunder god asking for help in finding Odin. Elsewhere, Mordo has decided that there are too many sorcerers, and he’s going to remove the power from all those who are misusing it—he starts with Pangborn.
“Study and practice—years of it”
This has all the makings of a great movie, and it frustrates the hell out of me that it’s merely a good one.
The overall story is fine. It’s a good introduction to the use of magic in the MCU, one that still works within the very scientific-minded bent of previous movies. (The source-code metaphor is a good one.) It’s just a different way of manipulating energy—Tony Stark uses armor, Stephen Strange uses magic. The actual plot of saving the world from being absorbed into the Dark Dimension is a worthy one for Strange’s first movie outing.
And the casting is mostly superb. Nobody ever went wrong casting Benedict Cumberbatch in anything, as he’s proven he can play any role he’s handed. While his performance isn’t quite perfect—for reasons I’ll get into in a bit—I do like that he portrays Strange as smart. He figures out how to do things, and he gets better with practice—you see the process by which he learns and improves himself as the movie goes on.
Chiwetel Ejiofor is superb as Mordo, one who is less of a mustache-twirling villain than his comics counterpart, and who comes by his villainy honestly over the course of the film by the betrayals he sees in the way things are supposed to be. He’s set up very nicely to be a bad guy in a followup film, though whether that’s in the upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness or elsewhere (or at all) remains to be seen.
Benedict Wong and Rachel McAdams are both excellent. McAdams has a particularly thankless task, but she and Cumberbatch both salvage it by playing Palmer and Strange as having a strong friendship that has its basis in a disastrous love affair. These are two people who know everything about each other, and would always be there for each other (well, she’d be there for him, at least), but can’t stand to live together long term. The easy camaraderie and banter the pair of them have is very real and convincing, and it makes for a strong friendship that you rarely see between opposite-sex characters. And Wong is a delight, a steady dependable rock.
Tilda Swinton is, of course, brilliant, but her casting is problematic. I understand why they didn’t want to go for the “ancient Asian master” stereotype, but they went a little too far with it. Kamar-Taj is located in Asia and is apparently populated by very few Asians. Some background characters, sure, but the person running the place is an ancient Celt? Really? And no speaking characters who are actually from India?
The timeline of this movie is a big problem. There’s simply no way this story can happen in the time allotted. At the very beginning, Strange has an award that is dated 2016, the same year the movie came out. But then he’s in the accident, he has to recover, and then he has to research cures, then he has to hit rock bottom, then he has to go to Kamar-Taj, then he has to learn the mystic arts, and there’s no way this didn’t take at least a few years. Yet he’s a fully formed master of the mystic arts in Ragnarok and Infinity War, which take place in 2017 and 2018, and that just does not work. This is all stuff that takes time, and there’s no indication in the movie that he’s taking it. (One can ignore that shot of a 2016 award before the car accident and assume that the opening of the movie takes place in 2013, which would track with Strange still being a surgeon in 2012, as established in Endgame, and the climax of the film takes place three years later, which actually provides enough time for all of this to happen.)
The biggest problem, though, is the same one that Justice League had. The first JL story should’ve had Darkseid as the bad guy, not an obscure minion of Darkseid. By the same token, Dormammu should be the main bad guy here, not some dim-bulb minion, whom Mads Mikkelsen imbues with precisely no personality whatsoever. Worse, they turn Dormammu into a CGI creature also with no personality whatsoever, whom we don’t even see until the climax.
Which is too bad, because the climax is brilliant. Obviously inspired in part by Dormammu’s first confrontation with Strange in the classic Strange Tales #126-127 back in 1964—where Dormammu winds up in debt to Strange for helping him—Strange using the Eye to trap the bad guy in a time loop is just fantastic.
And it points up to an important part of Strange’s character, which is one of the things I like best about the movie: Strange doesn’t wish to kill. He’s forced into it once, and he hates it and doesn’t want it to happen again. He wants to save lives. One of the tensions between Hollywood action movies’ proclivity for death and destruction and adapting superhero comic books is that most superheroes don’t kill—it’s part of what makes them actual heroes as opposed to vigilante shitheads. Far too many movies in this rewatch have ignored or lost sight of that particular truism (the 1989 Batman, Iron Man 3, Man of Steel, the 2003 Daredevil), but not Doctor Strange, thank goodness. He sends the second battle with Kaecilius in New York to the mirror dimension, and he puts himself in Dormammu’s fatal line of fire indefinitely, in both cases to safeguard the lives of the people of Earth.
The characterization of Strange is also problematic. As I said, Cumberbatch makes it work, because that’s his super power, but turning Strange into Yet Another Snarky White Guy (just like Iron Man, the kids’ll love it!) who loves classic rock (just like Star Lord, the kids’ll love it!) feels horribly constructed. The Strange of the comics is a staid, eloquent sort, and I would much rather have seen Cumberbatch play that Strange than a clone of Tony Stark and Peter Quill.
And the Eye of Agamotto is an infinity stone. Sigh. In the comics, the Eye is the all-seeing eye that shines a bright light that casts out artifice. Here, it’s a time machine, which makes for a clever climax, but it’s also not gonna be seen again, since the infinity stones were all taken care of in the next two Avengers movies. And heaven forfend we have an MCU character who isn’t connected to the infinity stones…
Then we have the sling rings. Jesus fucking Christ, the sling rings. What an idiotic addition those are. Yes, let us master the mystic arts, let us access the source code of the universe, let us surrender control to gain control—and oh yes, let’s also make sure we never lose our +5 Teleport Ring, otherwise the party can’t get to the next dungeon in the campaign. This is a corner of Marvel that has given us the Eye of Agamotto, the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak, the Winds of Watoomb, the Book of Vishanti, the Flames of Faltine, the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth—and now, the sling ring. One of these is not like the other. I remember watching this movie in the theatres and thinking that this was a directive by Disney so they could market sling rings in toy stores in 2016, which is the only way that these doofy accessories fit in with the rest of it.
I’ve been slagging the movie a lot, but for all that I’m complaining about the details, the overall movie is fun and enjoyable, and a good introduction to an important character in the Marvel pantheon. While Scott Derrickson and his collaborators’ script has its flaws, his direction is superb. The performances are all fantastic (with the exception of Mikkelsen), the action is brilliant and kinetic and evocative, and the Escher-by-way-of-Inception kaleidoscopic visuals are beyond stunning. It’s a very enjoyable movie in the abstract, and I’m very much looking forward to more Doctor Strange in the MCU going forward.
Next week, we find out why Thor is visiting Doctor Strange in Thor: Ragnarok.
Keith R.A. DeCandido wonders how many people have been using “shambala” as their wifi password the last three years.
Yeah, a fairly bog-standard Marvel origin movie elevated by some amazing visuals. I especially loved all of the city folding stuff, not least because it felt like we were cheated out of it in Inception.
I would have preferred if the movie had completely ditched the orientalist stuff. If there’s already sanctums in the West, why not have Strange get to them after looking into western occult traditions? I know it would mean even more variations from the comics but going halfway then stopping seems to make more problems than it solves.
The other thing is that the magic is pretty mechanical. I think the criticisms of the sling rings are on point but the rest of the magic isn’t that wondrous either. You have access to the source code of the universe and you’re using it just to make sparkly lines? Feh.
Overall, I agree with you Keith. Dr Strange is good rather than great. I still think Rachael McAdams is wasted. You can cut her out of the movie and you’d lose nothing.
Also it was the first time I really felt the origin story drag. We all know he is going to become the hero, just get on with it.
To add to what you said about the Tilda Swinton casting, there were rumours it was done to keep the Chinese censors happy. The original comic character was from Tibet which is an area of the world presently fighting against Chinese rule
I liked Mads Mikkelsen although his performance still isn’t as good as the others’. I didn’t have a problem with it, though.
I mostly enjoy this movie for the new worldbuilding it provides; agreed that the story itself is a bit canned (also, I always wondered what was stopping Dormammu from just reneging on his deal…). It’s still really fun to watch, and I love the music too.
I hope we do see more from Mordo (and I always felt so bad for Pangborn…honestly, a lot of the time I’m tempted to just skip that scene).
one of my favorite villains![.](//s04.flagcounter.com/mini/Jkzv/bg_FFFFFF/txt_DEDEDE/border_FFFFFF/flags_0/" width="1"/>)
My blog review:
https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/2016/11/24/thoughts-on-doctor-strange-spoilers/
In short, I liked the film a lot, and I liked Kaecilius better than Keith did — it’s a nice change of pace for an MCU villain that he genuinely believes he’s the good guy and is trying to save the world, rather than just being your typical one-dimensional baddie. Although Strange could’ve used more character development too, and in particular the film failed to explain why the Ancient One thought he could be Sorceror Supreme.
This was an enjoyable film. I would have preferred some of the visuals stick closer to the original Ditko design — pure white ectoplasmic forms for Strange and the others, and a dark dimension that wasn’t so … dark.
You’re right about Mikkelsen in this film, which is a shame. He was a superb Hannibal Lecter (and would be perfect as the Count when Marvel eventually creates a Tomb of Dracula series for Disney+).
According to Endgame the infinity stones were returned so the Ancient One and then Dr. Strange would still have the Eye. (Of course I don’t know how Captain America stays with Peggy Carter in the past and still returns it…)
I found this one very weak. As you note, Strange’s “aroogant and snarky” personality is a replica of previous MCU heroes. His journey from being an arrogant ass to being less of one, while saving the world from an uninteresting villain along the way follows the same beats as several previous MCU movies. The quasi-romance is completely pointless. And the whitewashing doesn’t help matters at all.
I also didn’t find the way magic was shown nearly as engaging or creative as I had hoped.
Mordo’s turn to villainy was very poorly done – he was a good guy through the whole movie, disagreed with Strange’s and the Ancient One’s methods by the end, and then in the post-credits scene he’s…suddenly murdering a guy? It was one of the MCU’s more blatant moments of making character serve the franchise: we need this guy to be a villain in future installments so hey, he’s evil now for no reason.
The “Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain” scene was good, but that was about it.
@8/C Oppenheimer: The Infinity Stones taken from the past were returned to the points in the timeline when they were removed. That didn’t undo Thanos’s destruction of them in the present. As of 2018 in the MCU timeline, they’re all dust.
@9/KatherineMW: As I said in my blog review, I felt the film did an excellent job establishing early on that Mordo believed extreme measures like killing were sometimes justified in the name of the mission, and that he was more extreme and inflexible in his thinking than Strange, setting up his turn to villainy as a perfectly logical outgrowth. He feels that it was Strange and the Ancient One who betrayed the principles he fights for, and that he therefore has to destroy their kind in order to preserve those principles. It’s nothing so simplistic as “good guy suddenly becomes evil.” In Mordo’s mind, the other sorcerors are the ones who’ve become corrupt and he’s the defender of purity.
Agreeing about the magic being too mechanical.
The brief moments when Dr. Strange enters the Dark Domain and they show the full-acid-trip Ditko landscape were visually astounding, so close to everything I’d hoped to see, but it all still felt too linear. It was the same as flying over a cool new planet in Guardians. It all just lacked the phantasmagorical impossibility of something out of Strange Tales.
The first time it felt like they really understood how to use Strange wasn’t until the end of Infinity War.
He’s in the middle of a pretty standard punch-up, Thanos throws another colored-energy-beam ™ at him, and instead of the same Inception-geometry-folding shield we’d seen a dozen times, he just poofs the attack into a cloud of Cerulean blue butterflies before going ‘Boddhisatva with a thousand arms’ to burst into a swarm of illusory duplicates that all strike down to bind him with the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak**.
My jaw hit the floor! It was unexpected, it was unreal, it was perfect.
For like a minute, then he got dusted.
I can understand why they slow pitched Magic; they were too afraid to really commit to the fantastic because they didn’t trust their audience. It was the same problem holding back Thor. (I actually don’t understand at all where the fear comes from – Harry Potter is one of the most successful franchises in the world, people are obviously cool with Wizards slinging spells at each other).
It seems like they are finally over that fear and ready to start opening up to the possibilities of truly weird and fantastical characters.
**Not actually name-checked, unfortunately. I think one of the worst things they did was not make him shout the Arcane (silly) names of the effects he was using. I need to hear Benedict Cumberbatch say, “By the hoary hosts of Hoggoth! I BANISH Thee to the Realm of Dread!”
I often wonder how A-list actresses like McAdams are recruited to play the personality-less, agenda-less, “love interest” of the main character. Good money, I guess?
@3/Stephen Shirres:
It isn’t just that Tibet is fighting Chinese rule: China refuses to even acknowledge that Tibet exists. If you make a movie that refers to Tibet, you’re not going to get a release in China. I always thought it was pretty common knowledge that this was the reason for the change in the Ancient One’s ancestry. I’m kind of surprised krad seems to have been unaware of it. It’s the one truly objectionable element of an otherwise fairly enjoyable film.
“The timeline of this movie is a big problem. There’s simply no way this story can happen in the time allotted.”
That’s a problem that really bothered me, the sheer brevity of Strange’s time in magic school. As I recall, Roger Stern stated that Strange spent seven years at the Ancient One’s sanctum learning sorcery, which sounds about right. Becoming a wizard shouldn’t be something that you can swot up in a few months. Heck, even the film seemed to initially suggest that Strange was going to be in Kamar-Taj for a really long time when the Ancient One responded to his query about how he could learn magic by asking how he became a medical doctor (“Study and practise. Years of it”). But then that got thrown out the window and he becomes a master of the mystic arts in a matter of months…
@13: If that was the issue, it wouldn’t have been difficult to have the Ancient One be from Nepal or Bhutan instead, rather than being Celtic.
@9: I didn’t think Mordo killed Panghorn in the post-credits, he just stole his ability to use magic (somehow…), so now Panghorn is a paraplegic again from the injury he was masking with his magic.
@15:” If that was the issue, it wouldn’t have been difficult to have the Ancient One be from Nepal or Bhutan instead, rather than being Celtic.”
Perhaps a bit of excessive caution on MARVEL’s part, places like Nepal being maybe a bit too close for comfort to Tibet (Chinese official: “So the character originated in Tibet, and the movie has him coming from Nepal. I see what you did. Not good enough. No release in China).Combine that with concern over the “East Asian Holy Man” stereotype, and I can see how you can get a female, Celtic Ancient One.
I liked this movie in some ways, but it really, really bugged me that this was another “Arrogant white man learns to be slightly less arrogant” movie. Can we please have some adult male super heroes? Who start the movie grown up? There are other character arcs!
Also, in this movie, despite the number of times someone tells Strange “It’s not about you.” It is about him. It really is. He is the one destined to be the Sorcerer Supreme, after all. There is no point where he has to be second best at something or take the back seat to anyone. It bugs me.
On another note, you’d think people would learn that if your master makes you look snaky, you should probably find someone else to serve.
@17 If the Ancient One stayed as a man then it would make Rachael McAdams the only woman in the whole film. Also they can make the claim they are being more equal while ignoring the much bigger issue.
@13 I hadn’t realised the Chinese won’t even acknowledge that Tibet exists. That makes an already terrible situation much worse!
@6 ChristopherLBennett: I just read your review, and there was one point I disagreed on – your comment about Iron Man and killing. IIRC, his crisis of conscience was not about making/using weapons to kill, it was that he couldn’t control where the weapons ended up. That’s why he stopped making them, because he couldn’t guarantee that they’d only by used by USA-friendly forces. Which means that he’s okay with killing, just not with having his allies get killed by his own weapons.
As for the Ancient One choosing Strange for Sorcerer Supreme, I wonder if she chose him because her looking into the future showed her choosing him. In other words, fate, or predestination, or bootstrap paradox, or whatever you want to call it.
@16 Mike E: For Pangborn, I don’t think there’s much difference. Considering that he gave up the mystic arts and only kept enough to keep himself walking, losing the ability to walk might as well be killing him.
@18
“It’s not about you.” is an interesting line to have a character saying to Doctor Strange in a film called Doctor Strange.
I was tickled by the sitar-and-harpsichord theme used during the credits, in that the choice of instruments was very 1960s-psychedelic, in line with the origin of the character.
When Strange is foolishly evaluating prospective spine-injury cases while driving, one is described as “some kind of experimental armor”. Depending when the movie is set, that might refer to the armor being developed by Justin Hammer in Iron Man 2, or Rhodey being shot down during Captain America: Civil War, or something entirely different. (How many different entities are trying to emulate Tony Stark? one might reasonably wonder.)
The movie started with three magical sanctums (Hong Kong, London, New York) and at least one of them is demolished. Does the Ancient One have a plan for leadership succession and business continuity, to ensure (a) Kamar-Taj continues to operate, (b) dangerous magical artifacts are collected, and (c) Earth remains adequately warded against extra-dimensional adversaries? Strange and Wong can’t be everywhere at once.
The particular orange-sparks VFX used by the sling rings and invocations seems to be re-used by Ghost Rider in Agent of SHIELD, and by one of the alien Ravagers in GOTG2. (Scarlet Witch’s VFX are completely different.) I wonder if some MCU supervisor is implying a commonality of mechanism?
@20:” IIRC, his crisis of conscience was not about making/using weapons to kill, it was that he couldn’t control where the weapons ended up. That’s why he stopped making them, because he couldn’t guarantee that they’d only by used by USA-friendly forces. Which means that he’s okay with killing, just not with having his allies get killed by his own weapons.”
Allies is not quite the right word. In IRON MAN, he’s moved into action against the Ten Rings when he sees Stark Weapons being used by the T.R. against civilians.
I don’t mind Strange being arrogant here; I think it was baked in to the character from the start. I can accept Swinton as the Ancient One too, as the role is bullseyed in her wheelhouse. I think it relieves a bit of the “white guy instantly learns skills better than the locals who have been practicing their whole lives” trope. And nobody complains that the Ancient One was gender-bent or that Mordo is no longer a pasty, Eastern European.
Where they lose me a bit is in location. I never really felt like they were filming in the Himalayas or in Hong Kong. I have no idea whether they went on location or not (with Disney’s money I assume they must have?) but the local flavour was completely lacking for me.
I also wish he had called out more names of spells and that they were a bit more mysterious. Heck, the Unix command line feels more mystical than the magic in this movie. Some of the backgrounds could have been more mind-bending too, but that’s a quibble.
Nobody ever went wrong casting Benedict Cumberbatch in anything,
Almost anything. There was that one time with Star Trek Into Darkness, but that had more to do with JJ Abrams’ weird decisions as a mystery box marketing guru.
@19:” If the Ancient One stayed as a man then it would make Rachael McAdams the only woman in the whole film.”
Well, woman with a significant speaking part (We see some female sorcerers in the film). And they could have compensated by making Mordo a woman.
@11/quantumz: “I can understand why they slow pitched Magic; they were too afraid to really commit to the fantastic because they didn’t trust their audience. It was the same problem holding back Thor. (I actually don’t understand at all where the fear comes from – Harry Potter is one of the most successful franchises in the world, people are obviously cool with Wizards slinging spells at each other).”
I think maybe the issue is having sci-fi science/technology and magic/gods in the same fictional universe. That’s commonplace for comic-book fans, but less familiar to more general audiences.
Or maybe it’s just the conventional wisdom in Hollywood that comic-book characters are too silly and movies/shows about them need to be grounded to work. So a lot of film and TV producers have started out doing their comics-based productions in a grounded way to appease the executives’ fears, then once they won acceptance, they gradually eased into the wilder superhero/sci-fi/fantasy stuff. We’ve seen this not only with the MCU (and specifically within Agents of SHIELD from season to season), but with Smallville and the Arrowverse on TV.
@20/caddan: If you’d said that Tony’s guilt was about his weapons killing innocent people, then you might have had a valid point. But basing the worth of someone’s life on whether they’re American or not? That wins no sympathy from me.
And even so, I don’t care for the attitude that it’s okay to kill people as long as they’re bad guys. As Keith pointed out, that may be common for movie heroes, but comic-book superheroes are usually supposed to have more reluctance to kill. We see that in characters like Doctor Strange, Ant-Man, and Spider-Man now, which is good; but it would’ve been better if we’d seen more of it in the MCU’s earlier heroes.
“losing the ability to walk might as well be killing him.”
What a horrifically ableist thing to say. Millions of people lead fulfilling lives with disabilities, and implying that their lives are over or that they’d be better off dead is grossly ignorant and devalues their worth as people.
As someone not familiar with The Oath, what was the sequence that was used in the final film?
“The biggest problem, though, is the same one that Justice League had. The first JL story should’ve had Darkseid as the bad guy, not an obscure minion of Darkseid.”
I’m not sure I agree with this– while Steppenwolf certainly was too minor for the job, Darkseid himself didn’t deserve being jammed into an introduction film. Much like Thanos, he needed a lot of buildup, even moreso since the DCEU didn’t have the same solid foundation of solo movies the MCU had before moving on to The Avengers.
@27, I’m not saying that I think Pangborn’s lost of mobility is as bad as death, i’m saying that i’m pretty sure HE thinks that. Yes, millions of people with disabilities lead fulfilling lives. And yet, when Pangborn got magic, what did he do? He used it to restore his ability to walk. So clearly HE thinks that he’s worthless without that ability, and that’s what i’m referencing.
And i’m not saying Tony’s attitude is the right one either. I’m just saying that his crisis of conscience wasn’t a full anti-weapons direction, just an issue of control. Honestly, I wish that his armor had more non-lethal options.
They pretty much couldn’t win with the Ancient One. If they go with an Asian, then they’re using the stereotype of Wise Ancient Asian Mystic and they get panned (and especially if they stuck with Tibet, as noted). If they don’t, they get complaints by fanboys/girls for changing the source material for PC reasons or whatever. The latter is less of a problem, so I can see why they picked that option.
This movie was visually stunning; the Mirror dimension was as spectacular as it needed to be, especially the folding city chase. And I totally agree about the Sling Ring, that was as puzzling a choice as the Weirding modules in Dune. It was an unnecessary addition in a movie about super wizards that could easily be learning portals as a “common core spell” rather than a dumbly named & seemingly mass produced arcane item.
@27 I believe caddan was referring to the characters perception of his life not the characters actual worth. Keep in mind this was a character that had a journey similar to Strange’s, where they were desperate to find a way to walk again, so much that they traveled across the world for the unlikeliest of chances at a miracle cure. To have found that miracle only to have it taken away by Mordo like that would be devastating.
@30/caddan: If Pangborn is ill-adjusted enough to equate disability with death, that’s something he can learn to overcome with time, which would not be the case if he were actually dead. Since this side thread began with a discussion of Mordo’s turn to “evil” and whether it was abrupt and unmotivated, I’d say that whether Mordo actually killed Pangborn or not in his inaugural act of villainy is directly relevant to that question, since the core issue here is Mordo’s motivation, not Pangborn’s. (Although, as I said, the film did establish earlier that Mordo did believe killing was sometimes necessary for the greater good.)
“I’m just saying that his crisis of conscience wasn’t a full anti-weapons direction, just an issue of control.”
And that’s my point. If that’s all it was, it makes the character less heroic, and that’s what makes it a disappointing choice on the filmmakers’ parts to go that route. Control is not conscience or compassion.
@31/BonHed: It might’ve helped if they’d made Strange himself Asian-American. Then he would’ve been seeking answers in his own heritage instead of falling into the cliche of the white man who surpasses foreigners at their own cultures. (Ditto for Iron Fist on TV, although then that would’ve played into the separate cliche of all Asians being martial artists.)
I don’t mind the rings, aside from the silly name. Given the MCU’s portrayal of magic as just an advanced or alternate form of science, it stands to reason that it could produce labor-saving devices and force multipliers in the same way that conventional technology can. Heck, Strange has his amulet and his cape and various other magical items he can wield. Harry Potter et al. have their wands and portkeys and so forth. So what’s wrong with having rings too?
@33:”It might’ve helped if they’d made Strange himself Asian-American. Then he would’ve been seeking answers in his own heritage instead ‘
Dunno. Strange’s brand of magic has always seemed to be a universal thing, one not tied to any particular Earthly culture*. We’ve seen a pretty diverse array of wizards over the years, all practising the same type of magic: Mordo, Cagliostro, Manuel Diego, Tareva (a water-breathing Atlantean), Jules St Thomas, Silver Dagger, Hiram Shaw, Kushala, etc. And they’re mostly using made-up magical names: Raggador, Voltorr, Cyttorak, Faltine, etc
Calling something like that someone’s “heritage” seems a tad silly
*Corrected a typo
This is a flawed movie but one of my favorites of the MCU and one that helped get me to finally check the rest of them out.
@@@@@2/noblehunter: The same thing occurred to me. I hate the rational West/mystical East stereotype and wanted to see the Ancient One to purely follow a Western esoteric tradition without any need for an “exotic” Asian setting. Even better would be if Strange himself was cast as Asian as a callback to his first character design (I do really like Cumberbatch as Strange though).
@33, the Eye of Agamotto and the cape are unique magical items, like the other arcane things in his Sanctum Sanctorum. The Sling Rings appear to be all the same, with the exact same function, as if they were mass produced. It just felt cheap, gimmicky, and unnecessary in a movie about magic. There’s nothing wrong with magical rings themselves, even having multiple rings in LotR as those were specifically created by an evil lord to ensnare the users; magic in Tolkien’s world functioned very differently than it does in Marvel, so these crafted things were important and unique.
krad: You write “he initially appeared as a fully formed master of the martial arts”; should that be “mystic”? (There’s one other place you use “martial arts”, but I think that one is correct; there is some martial arts training involved, IIRC.)
There’s also one place you have an extra word: “He sends takes the second battle with Kaecilius in New York to the mirror dimension”.
Other than that, I enjoyed the article.
@37/BonHed: As I said, within the MCU’s paradigm of magic and science/tech being variations on the same thing, reproducible magic tools are a logical thing to exist. And if every student at Hogwarts has a wand, what the heck is so wrong with every sorceror here having a ring? I just don’t see the issue.
@37: If the portals were a spell you can learn, rather than created by an item you have, you couldn’t trap someone just by taking their item.
I enjoyed the movie, but no one has mentioned my major quibble. I’m probably the only one who cares. It’s not even major as far as the movie itself goes, it’s casting (kind of).
I love Benedict Cumberbatch, but my favorite thing about him and the coolest thing he has going for him is his voice! And then he has to take on an American accent, which robs him of his best characteristic. I know the character is American and the Sanctum Sanctorum is in NYC so I’m not sure how you could have made Dr. Strange British without having to change a lot, but I would really have preferred ol’ Benedict with his own accent. Then you could have gone with the more staid and formal mannerisms pretty easily in lieu of Tony Stark Jr., which I didn’t care for. I guess I’m the only one who hates the American accent from Benedict. It’s not bad, necessarily, just…what a waste.
Spider-man definitely has to be from NYC, but I feel like the ethnicity could have been updated for the Dr. Strange character without losing anything essential. Maybe it’s just me.
@41
Strange has to be an American. The world has too many Brit wizards.
RE:Sling Rings,
My only problem is the name. “Sling rings” just doesn’t fit with the Dr Strange aesthetic. They should be called something else: The Rings of Oshtur, The Rings of Hoggoth, etc. Heck, the the Rings of Raggadorr is a standard incantation in the comics. In the movies, they could be literal rings that sorcerers use for conjuring portals.
Dropping the “Baron” from Mordo sounds like a concession to a modern, realistic story. But Britain is giving out about a dozen non-hereditary baronies a year – one Baroness was even born in Nigeria like Ejiofor. Maybe it wouldn’t have fit his character, but it would be fun to give him a real-world title that matches the fantasy comic-book one.
@44/Gareth Wilson: Or “Baron” could just be his given name, like comedian Baron Vaughan (the new voice of Tom Servo in Netflix’s Mystery Science Theater 3000 revival).
I never saw the point of watching this particular movie. Just like with the prequels to the movie Alien, why make an origin story to someone named Strange? Some origins are better left a mystery.
The only problem with the characterization of Stephen Strange as a selfish dick who learns the error of his ways is that it got to the screen too late. It’s always been part of the character; hell, he practically invented the archetype, along with (to a far lesser degree) Spider-Man. But by the time the Dr. Strange movie came out, the origins of Iron Man, Thor, Green Lantern, The Green Hornet and God knows who else had been retconned for the movies to follow the same arc. So it just didn’t seem remotely special anymore.
My biggest disappointment is the degree to which the Strange of the movies retains his mundane speech patterns and vocabulary. When he calls Stark a douchebag in Infinity War, my soul just dies a little. The Strange I know and love speaks with a formality that’s practically Shakespearean; it’s just another way of showing he has one foot at best in our worldly plane. So I guess what I’m saying is that the voice actor who played the character on the Buddah Records Spider-Man “rockomic” of the early ’70s will always be Dr. Strange to me.
There was no way that I was not going to love this because Dr. Strange is the only Marvel character who I really loved in the original comics (which I stopped reading circa 1984, so none of these opinions relate to more recent books – or to the movies/TV series). I liked Namor, Thor & The Silver Surfer well enough, but it was all downhill from there passing through boring (Daredevil, Iron Man) to really irritating (Spiderman, the 3 members of The Fantastic Four who weren’t Ben Grimm). So, since I’d liked a lot of characters better in MCU incarnations than I had in ’60s & ’70s comic books, I was REALLY psyched for Dr. Strange. I asked but one thing of it, that it accurately channel Ditko’s art. And it did that, so I am a happy man. You are not wrong, however, in that Strange’s diction should have been more formal, almost stilted.
bad_platypus: Thank you for catching those typos. They’ve been fixed.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, ever grateful for the edit function
By the way, Kathmandu is in Nepal (its capital actually), not in India.
I’d give this one a solid B. It could’ve been more, but as has been said, it needed to lay the groundwork for a more general audience that doesn’t/hasn’t read the comics. It stays fairly true to the spirit of the origin. The fact that Strange’s characterization has been lapped by other origins, like Stark’s, is kinda like the hits John Carter took for supposedly being derivative of Star Wars. Sometimes a general audience, and some critics, are unfair and under informed.
Didn’t have a huge issue with sling rings. Magic often requires focus objects.
Not sure why the Eye needed to be an Infinity Stone, other than needing to fit the story into the larger Thanos one. Also not sure why it was the Time Stone. Strange has never been Doctor Who. Have there been time travel elements in Strange stories in the past? Somebody in the production was probably a Whovian and got a chuckle along the way for creating an American Who.
One element that hasn’t been discussed much is the humor. I laughed out loud at Strange’s struggles with a sentient cloak. Some of the repartee with Wong was funny too.
The shifting visuals for mirror world were better than anything in Inception. I was a bit disappointed by the dark dimension. It wasn’t weird enough.
I find I don’t have any strong feelings about this one. It’s a decent one, Strange is an engaging protagonist (although his arbitrary scepticism on meeting the Ancient One after believing Pangborn’s story of mind healing is a bit by-the-numbers) and it is nice to have a hero who tries to preserve life, the final showdown with Dormammu is effective, the supporting cast are nicely drawn. It doesn’t set the world on fire but it’s good to have.
Mordo attacking Pangborn after the credits just seems to be there because all these films have to end on a cliffhanger now (either that or a funny tag scene), and the fact it doesn’t even seem to be designed to set up another movie makes it even more unnecessary. It’s Sinestro putting on the Yellow Lantern ring all over again.
I have always felt there were three things that needed to be changed in this movie.
1. The ancient one should have no fixed persona. They should look different to different people as they are as close to a pandimensional being as a human can get. This should be shown in a series of over the shoulder shots that pass behind people standing around them while they are in the centre of a room and then as our view moves between the watching people we see what they see: An old Asian man, a young black woman, an Indian child, a heavy set south american grandfather, a young Afghani girl, etc. until we get to strange where we see Tilda Swinton. The Ancient one tells Strange this is because there are only certain people, people will listen to, and for him that is the form of a woman from television when he was a child: Flash to little Stephen Strange watching a television with adoring eyes as Tilda Swinton sings a not Mary Poppins song, or maybe she’s a teacher he had in tiny tot school, whatever. Strange is incredulous and denies this, but we know it’s true. It also says that Strange has the hangup and would rather learn magic from a posh white lady, what does that say about him. This avoids the problem of Orientalism, by saying that some people go to the mountain top and see an old Asian sage, others go up and see a little kid, but the Ancient one isn’t any of those people, those identities say more about us than the ancient one. They are beyond that. (Mordo could see some beautiful magic lady, or maybe we never see what he sees, but whoever it is he’s in love with them.)
2. Stephen Strange should suck at magic. Like, they kind of do this, but because he’s just super duper smart he figures it all out and becomes a whiz bang in no time. That just serves to make all the other wizards look like chumps, and it has to be said as he’s like the only white dude wizard and it’s a multicultural extravaganza (which it should be, because world wide wizards is awesome) it kind of smacks of white boy savior. I mean he solves the mystery of the eye–side note, I know people say the eye was destroyed by Thanos along with the infinity gems, but I don’t buy it. In that same movie it was explained that the gems basically were the universe, that if they were not present in the universe for even a second, that everything would begin to unravel. How the hell do you destroy that? Big T almost blows his arm up killing half of life, but then he’s mostly good having literally unmade the 6 singularities that are the physical representations of the damn universe itself? Oh he says it almost killed him, but he’s also a big purple liar. I think he hid em, and lied so they couldn’t undo it, then he goaded them into killing him so he couldn’t spill the beans, his mad mission complete. I digress– after a bit of book looking, and nobody else did that cause they weren’t smart enough, or daring enough to get past the library security? Nah. Dude should stay sucking at magic almost the whole film, everybody should be looking at him like “Dude go home.” Mordo talking to the Ancient one like “Um I think we made a big mistake, he’s…well he’s just not good at magic. Also, kind of a dick.” But our boy keeps trying hard. Maybe gains some insights, makes a couple clever calls so we see he’s not hopeless. But he’s basically just riding on the ancient one’s good will. Until…
3. Dormammu I Have Come to Bargain. This is it, this is the moment. Through plot and happenstance Strange has pulled off his plan, he has played a trick on a dark god, and out witted powerful wizards sacrificing himself to avoid major destruction. He had to pull every clever trick, narrowly dodge every other (better) wizard, and watch all his allies and his mentor fall, all while using what magic items he could to stay alive. Because of the Ancient ones guidance he was able to access the eye, and in this moment he dooms himself to possibly eternity suffering the same death over and over–because an ancient god of darkness who has been waiting in the wings for who knows how many millenia is not going to get bored of killing this dumb wizard after even a couple centuries. It’s Dread Dormammu for gods sake, he’s gonna have more than mere destruction up his sleeve. But Strange endures, and because of the Eye, he remembers. Each death, each terrible torment, each second long battle against a god. He learns. Over lifetimes he becomes stronger until his battles last two seconds. Five seconds. Ten. A minute. An hour. Days. Weeks. Until for years he battles the Dark God to standstills that he inevitably loses. Finally the god notices, Strange reveals his plane, he has gamed the system, he will never stop, his will is as strong as the god’s. This is what makes him the Sorcerer Supreme, millennia of training against a terrible foe, and a stubborn resolve that eventually Dormammu will have to bargain with him. Now Dormammu talks, there’s probably a lot of suffering and torturing and stuff, but Stephen does not break, he knows what happens if he does, and he knows no matter how bad it gets, he has another chance. So Dormammu blinks first, he decides that finally there is an opponent out there worthy of breaking, that this little wizard could grow so strong under his assault but not bereak in spirit is impressive, and he thinks that in his own way he created Strange, and by backing off and letting Strange “Win” he’s actually ensuring his victory by releasing this pupil out into the light, a piece of himself gets its toe through the door. His bargain is that once every (insert period of time here) he will get another chance to be free of his prison, Stephen agrees saying that: “He will always have to pass through me.” Dormammu smiles. Stephen wins (OR DOES HE???? SEQUEL YOU SAY?!?!?!) and returns, to face Kaecelis. When he left he was so far beneath the dark sorcerers notice he was allowed to live (and when he did try to kill him, Strange’s buddies and his magic stuff kept him alive by the skin of his teeth). Now Strange returns the Sorcerer Supreme (with white temples and a mystic aura) we see a cool sorcerer battle, but it’s not even a fight, because strange just folds reality in ways the older sorcerer cannot even imagine. Mordo is all “You have been touched by dark powers (and I’m not jealous AT ALL!!) so I’m leaving and I’ll start my own wizard school ya jerk.” Movie otherwise ends the same.
I think this last bit, with bit two are important, otherwise the story is just: Smart doctor man is so smart he smarts the magic all the way to becoming big smart wizard YAAAY! and I think it’s not Stephen’s brilliance that wins the day, it’s his willingness to put it all on the line, so others do not have to suffer. I also think his power should be earned through sacrifice, instead of just gained at a stupendously accelerated rate because he’s a big brain boi. In the end, unlike all the other heroes,(who mostly get their powers as gifts, accidents or through privilege) his power would come from his willingness to sacrifice and endure suffering for everyone, which is what you want in a mystic guardian of earth.
Sorry for the long comment, just been digging around in m brain since the movie came out.
@51/Sunspear: At the time Doctor Strange came out, the Time Stone and Soul Stone were the only ones left, so that limited their options. And I guess they needed it to be the Time Stone so they could do all the time-loop/reversal tricks in the climax, and Strange’s reversal of time to reconstruct the spell book.
@53/Lurklen: I like your alternate version of the plot. Although your Ancient One suggestion is basically the same thing they did with the Great Intelligence in Captain Marvel, so they would’ve had to do something different there.
Sunspear: My issue isn’t with Strange being an arrogant ass before becoming a sorcerer, it’s him being the same type of arrogant ass as Tony Stark with the same type of love of classic rock as Peter Quill that I have an issue with. He shouldn’t have been Tony Stark, he should’ve been Charles Emerson Winchester. I wanted the regal figure of the comics, not a retread of the Snarky White Dude that we’ve seen far too much of in the MCU.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@@@@@55:”Sunspear: My issue isn’t with Strange being an arrogant ass before becoming a sorcerer, it’s him being the same type of arrogant ass as Tony Stark with the same type of love of classic rock as Peter Quill that I have an issue with. He shouldn’t have been Tony Stark, he should’ve been Charles Emerson Winchester. I wanted the regal figure of the comics, not a retread of the Snarky White Dude that we’ve seen far too much of in the MCU.”
Spot on, KRAD.A Charles Emerson Winchester-esque* Strange would have been perfect. Ditch the classic rock and have him be an aficionado of classical music. You could even keep some of the snark and the put-downs, only now they would be be high-brow snark and erudite put-downs.
@@@@@ 53:” That just serves to make all the other wizards look like chumps, and it has to be said as he’s like the only white dude wizard “
Dunno. We saw a fair number of “white dude wizards” in the film. To cite the most obvious, there was Mads Mikkelsen’s Kaecilius, the movie’s primary antagonist.. Another prominent “white dude wizard” in the film was the fellow played by Scott Adkins (he’s the one that had the epic astral form fight with Strange).
I do like the idea about the Ancient One presenting a different face to each person who sees him/her. Of course, as previously noted, that would have prevented MARVEL from using that idea for the Supreme Intelligence in CAPTAIN MARVEL.
*And my approval of the idea has nothing to do with the fact that I share a surname in common with Charles…..
@56
“Of course, as previously noted, that would have prevented MARVEL from using that idea for the Supreme Intelligence in CAPTAIN MARVEL.”
Or perhaps not! The Ancient one is the Sorcerer Supreme, and the Kree are lead by the Supreme Intelligence? Coincidence- yes, of course!- but why should that stop rampant connection drawing and theorizing? If magic is the source code of the universe, why shouldn’t the Supreme Intelligence incorporate it into their OS?
@CLB: the choice was probably just the time stone. What happened with Gamora and Widow being sacrificed for the soul stone was likely locked in years prior. The soul stone ideally should’ve been associated with Adam Warlock, whose whole reason for being was to fight Thanos, but Gunn dragged his ass… (There was one interview early on, perhaps after the first Guardians became a success where he thought he could keep his little corner of the MCU distinct from what was going on with the Avengers.) The soul stone would’ve been ideal for mages that could literally knock the souls out of organic bodies.
@krad: I get the point, but that’s still just replacing low-brow arrogant assery with high-brow arrogant assery. Blame grandfather Downey for setting the template. And I think Strange and Stark were deliberately set up to rhyme and reflect each other. They were intended to butt heads for being too much alike, just with different approaches. We can wish otherwise, but it’s in the design. Even the scene in Endgame where Strange holds up one finger to Stark reflects what you’ve said about sacrifice and wanting to save lives.
Tidbit: I also hate the trope of surgeons listening to music while operating, regardless of the music choice. Don’t know how prevalent it is in real life operations, but I wouldn’t want my doctor playing “name that tune” while they’re supposed to be concentrating on the patient.
Btw, would we level the same negative charge of sling rings being mass produced and generic against the Green Lantern Corps? Or any of the other corps in the spectrum?
@58:”Btw, would we level the same negative charge of sling rings being mass produced and generic against the Green Lantern Corps? Or any of the other corps in the spectrum?”
Bit apples-to-oranges. The Green Lantern Corps is about a bunch of people from alien races wielding the same weapon: the power ring. In contrast, the bulk of the magical artefacts in Strange’s world seem to be singular in nature: the cloak of levitation, the Eye of Agamotto, the Orb of Agamotto, The Book of Cagliostro, etc
And, as I said upthread, I’m OK with the “sling rings”; I just dislike the name. They should have called ’em the Rings of Raggadorr.
@59/Tracy: But then, why would that be? If people know how to create a useful magic item once, why can’t they do it more than once? Okay, maybe there are some found items created by powers beyond humanity and falling into human hands, like the Infinity Stones themselves, but surely not every magical item would fall into that category. It stands to reason that there would be a few unique, extra-powerful magical items and a bunch of more commonplace, everyday magical items.
@58 – I work in healthcare software IT, specifically on a surgical application, which means I’ve also witnessed surgeries while doing tech support. It’s pretty common, along with quite a bit of joking around. Sometimes preference cards even have music and radio station preferences.
Honestly, in some ways to be a surgeon and literally cut into something I think requires a certain level of detachment, at least at the time.
@56 TracyWinchester
To be fair to the movie it’s been a bit since I’ve seen the whole movie through, and I’m working off of memory from last time I saw it, so I might have forgotten some guys. For some reason Mads Mikkelson himself (though not his character) slipped my mind. Though that brings up another oddity, the protagonist, the antagonist, and the mentor are all white Europeans. That’s a little weird. :shrugs: I guess they might have felt like they were at an impasse: “We’re not going to make strange anything but white american doctor dude, we don’t want the ancient one to tap into orientalist tropes, or magical black ____ and we don’t want the two white wizards fighting evil POC wizard…make em all white?” I mean no doubt more went into casting than skin tone, but it’s obvious from the way they handled the ancient one the conversation on race happened.
@54 ChristopherLBennet
Thanks!
I’m not sure at that point the Supreme Intelligence was even a glimmer in their eye, but even so I think the benefits to this movie out way the costs to Captain Marvel. Of course I had huge problems with that movie too so I may be biased. (I just wanted to know more about her and her world, and why we should care about her as a person, and I felt the movie just kind of flubbed that in favor of making her “strong”. If she’s gonna be marvel’s Superman the movie should spend more time exploring the character in depth, rather than doubling down on attitude and snark. I have a whole screed about how I’d changed that one too, but I won’t inflict that on you kind souls. I really really wanted to like it too. They didn’t even call her Captain Marvel in her own movie! I digress.)
@57
Magic Supreme Intelligence robot is pretty neat/bonkers. Also they wouldn’t have to use something else, if anything the Kree leader doing it after we’ve already seen someone else doing it, someone we trusted and was flagged as a hero, might have signaled less of an evil robot overlord (had they been subtle with that at all in Captain Marvel) and more of a sage guide, as well as suggesting the “power” level of the Supreme Intelligence (another thing I wish we’d spent more time with in that movie.)
@58 Sunspear
Soul stone is even the right colour scheme. All that orange from the sling rings and the Mandalas. I bet it went back and forth. It does make way more sense, but then you also have the issue of the Time stone being off world, and if that’s the case Thanos gets it before the heroes and then they’re hooped. Lotta moving parts limit their options.
Oh, and that surgeon thing? Totally happens all the time, supposedly it helps reduce distraction by giving them something to occupy surface level thoughts, you don’t think about that itch on your thigh if your singing about how your hips don’t lie, but I’m with you. I don’t want someone nicking an artery because they were feeling the beat.
@61. Lisamarie: I guess it’s a positive if it keeps them relaxed. But I wonder if anyone’s done a study of any correlation between failed or problematic surgery outcomes and the amount of goofing around doctors did in the OR. Don’t know how many professions are allowed to work with a soundtrack while handling serious, perhaps life and death, business.
Some writers mention writing with music playlists either blasting or in the background. Personally, I concentrate better when it’s quiet.
@60
Science vs Magic, I suppose. In a magical context, we expect unique weapons and artefacts: Excalibur, Mjolnir, The Holy Grail, Circe’s wand, etc. In a scientific context, we expect results to be replicable, that something made by one guy can be made by another. IRON MAN II, for example, pointed out that it was only a matter of time before someone else duplicated Tony Stark’s armor tech, which makes sense. The Americans only had an atomic monopoly for approx four years (The Soviets exploded their first bomb in ’49).
With magic, though, it’s different. You can always say that only this one person (Merlin, Wayland the Smith, etc) could make a thing.Or that only one one can exist at a time. Or it can only be made once every 100 years. Or it takes the blood of a dragon, and they’ve gone extinct.
@64. “Or it takes the blood of a dragon, and they’ve gone extinct.”
… possibly from overhunting for use in magical components!
@64. Tracy: “it was only a matter of time before someone else duplicated Tony Stark’s armor tech”
Except they haven’t yet. That was the point of showing the spinal injury in the twisting armor, the jokes about Hammerrhoids, and Rhodey stealing/appropriating an armor suit. Even the US military, with all it’s resources, couldn’t replicate the tech. When Rhodey asks for a suit, Tony says, “Sure, you got 4 billion dollars?”
So even though Tony builds multiple versions/iterations, his tech is still largely proprietary to him. He is a tech wizard.
@66:”Except they haven’t yet. That was the point of showing the spinal injury in the twisting armor, the jokes about Hammerrhoids, and Rhodey stealing/appropriating an armor suit. Even the US military, with all it’s resources, couldn’t replicate the tech. When Rhodey asks for a suit, Tony says, “Sure, you got 4 billion dollars?”
So even though Tony builds multiple versions/iterations, his tech is still largely proprietary to him. He is a tech wizard.”
Which is all terribly annoying. Tony provided an educated guesstimate as to when people would start catching up to his tech (“most countries 5-10 years away. Hammer Industries 20”), but there’s been no follow-through. As you noted, this works against Tony Stark’s SF veneer, making him more akin to Merlin than to inventors like Robert Goddard and the Wright Bros.
@62:”Though that brings up another oddity, the protagonist, the antagonist, and the mentor are all white Europeans. That’s a little weird.”
Well, all of the antagonist-protagonist duos in the MCU have been mono-racial so far, and that includes BLACK PANTHER (Klaw is a secondary antagonist in that film). The only partial exception that I can think of is the mixed-race Ghost in ANT-MAN AND THE WASP, but I’m not sure that she really counts as the film’s protagonist, at least not in the way that we’ve seen in the other MCU films.
@66:”Except they haven’t yet. That was the point of showing the spinal injury in the twisting armor, the jokes about Hammerrhoids, and Rhodey stealing/appropriating an armor suit. Even the US military, with all it’s resources, couldn’t replicate the tech. When Rhodey asks for a suit, Tony says, “Sure, you got 4 billion dollars?”
So even though Tony builds multiple versions/iterations, his tech is still largely proprietary to him. He is a tech wizard.”
Which is all terribly annoying. Tony provided an educated guesstimate as to when people would start catching up to his tech (“most countries 5-10 years away. Hammer Industries 20”), but there’s been no follow-through. As you noted, this works against Tony Stark’s SF veneer, making him more akin to Merlin than to inventors like Robert Goddard and the Wright Bros.
@62:”Though that brings up another oddity, the protagonist, the antagonist, and the mentor are all white Europeans. That’s a little weird.”
Well, all of the antagonist-protagonist duos in the MCU have been mono-racial so far, and that includes BLACK PANTHER (Klaw is a secondary antagonist in that film). The only partial exception that I can think of is the mixed-race Ghost in ANT-MAN AND THE WASP, but I’m not sure that she really counts as the film’s antagonist*,at least not in the way that we’ve seen in the other MCU films.
*Damn typos!
Josh Friedman, the creator of the Terminator TV show, actually requested the music for his kidney operation. I’m not sure his choice was appropriate: “It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap…”
@64/Tracy: “With magic, though, it’s different.”
But it isn’t, not in the MCU. As I’ve been saying, both Thor and Doctor Strange, as well as the Darkhold arc on Agents of SHIELD, make it clear that magic in that universe is just an alternative way of harnessing the same physical forces used by science. How other works of fiction treat magic is beside the point; we’re talking about how the MCU defines and depicts it, and within that context, it’s just an alternative approach to physics and technology.
Also, there are plenty of fictional universes in which magical items are commonplace or mass-produced, like magic wands, amulets, charms, or — yes — rings. (In the Japanese TV show Kamen Rider Wizard, for example, the entire magic system is based on rings, each with a different power, so there are a bunch of toy rings for kids to collect. The rings in the show have to be individually carved from magic stones that are theoretically difficult to find, but as long as one has access to the stones, a skilled craftsman can create new rings in a matter of hours, and there are dozens of rings in the hands of multiple Mages, both good and evil). So I just don’t understand the logic of claiming that all magical items must be one-of-a-kind. It seems to me that magic use would be quite rare and difficult in a universe like that, not to mention the difficulty of teaching anyone to use magic if the tools of the trade are impossible for more than one person at a time to possess. Like I said, I can buy that some magical artifacts are rare or unique, but all of them? That’s just not tenable.
According to Mordo in the movie, sorcerors are able to imbue items with magical energy as a way of easing the process for them, basically as force multipliers or backup batteries. So theoretically any sorceror should be able to infuse mystical energy into multiple items, or multiple sorcerors should be able to create their own versions of the same standardized item, or one powerful sorceror could energize a bunch of standardized items and give/sell them to other sorcerors as labor-saving devices. We know that Asgardians have a multitude of enchanted weapons; each one has its own unique name and design, but they’re all the same general kind of tool.
For me (a software developer) I definitely need music sometimes to get into ‘the zone’, especially if I’m already distracted or finding it hard to be engaged/concentrate. Although I also find myself turning it off if I get into something that’s really tricky/new to me.
Based on what I know of surgical throughput (and the work we do in scheduling/analytics to enable throughput), for a lot of surgeons, they literally come in, cut, stitch, and leave for the next patient in a different room. So while to us it’s a major operation, to them it’s something they are doing multiple times a day, every day. Granted, it’s possible having this applied to neurosurgery, which is a specialty, is different and might require more focused concentration for a tricky case, but I can definitely see for how the ‘routine’ surgeries you need something to help you focus instead of just going on autopilot. (Obviously, I’m not a surgeon, so what do I know, ha?).
But now I’m interested in this study; there are metrics for this kind of thing on a surgeon-level basis, although I don’t know if anybody has thought to correlate specifically music use to it.
@71. Lisamarie: “But now I’m interested in this study”
If you find any data, I’d be interested too. Please report back. It may be one of those things that’s assumed to be working and becomes unquestioned protocol.
Reminds me of a story about doctors’ assumption that they were washing their hands enough. (Think it was in one of Malcolm Gladwell’s books.) A hospital admin used some new tracking software to see if they could reduce infections. They took samples/swabs from the doctors. She then hacked their comps (admins have power!) and posted pictures of the results as desktop wallpaper, which turned out to be shocking levels of germs. Nothing like visual evidence.
I am grateful I did see this in Imax 3-D as those magic sequences were stunning and well worth the theatrical admission alone.
However, I have not felt any urge to revisit the movie as like most other people. I feel this film is good, but not great. The origin’s similarities to Tony Stark (Arrogant Jerk with Facial Hair gets humbled by accident and becomes a better person) unfortunately meant they decided to go with Strange’s own character is a poor man’s Robert Downey Jr. I certainly feel in his appearances outside this move, Cumberbatch has a better grasp on how to play the character.
I appreciate the fact that bringing in such a strong presence as Mads Mikkelsen as Kaecilius gives such a disposable villain of a character more depth and gravitas that he ever really should, but I am annoyed Hollywood’s best possible choice to play Doctor Doom has instead been cast as this.
@39/70 CLB, “And if every student at Hogwarts has a wand,”
I don’t like Harry Potter for mostly that reason, hokey campy crap like magic wands, fake sounding Latin incantations, sorting hats, etc. So the sling ring just felt cheap and gimmicky to me.
@Bonhed: But that’s just surface level stuff. It’s not really what the Potter books are about. If you can’t get past that, it would be like saying, “I’m tired of seeing all these same utensils on the dinner table every night, therefore I won’t eat.” Or having a toolbelt and saying, ” I’m tired of using a screwdriver (electric or otherwise) to drive these screws. Isn’t there another tool?”
@75/Sunspear: Right. Harry Potter is largely about taking familiar tropes — both of fantasy fiction and of boarding-school fiction — and remixing them in a fresh way.
Just wanted to say I watched this film with someone who is a registered nurse.
She pointed out that Strange’s injury (between C7 and C8) is a bit of a problem considering human beings don’t have a C8.
@31 BonHed: “If they don’t, they get complaints by fanboys/girls for changing the source material for PC reasons or whatever. The latter is less of a problem, so I can see why they picked that option.”
Except then they got accused of whitewashing, which is a worse complaint. As you said, it’s really a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. And I think that moving the Ancient One’s abode to some Western city would have just compounded the whitewashing problem.
I don’t buy the idea that the change was made to appease Chinese censors. If Tibet won’t fly, there’s no reason they couldn’t have just made him or her Nepalese.
@61 Lisamarie: I’d never heard of preference cards before, so I Googled it. I learned something new today, thanks to you.
@77 Line: I teach biology, and I picked up on that too, the second time I watched it. But a Google search revealed that C8 *is* a recognized medical term; it refers to the cervical spinal nerves rather than the vertebrae. (And it was Pangborn who had that injury, not Dr. Strange.)
@CLB: “And that’s my point. If that’s all it was, it makes the character less heroic, and that’s what makes it a disappointing choice on the filmmakers’ parts to go that route. Control is not conscience or compassion.”
Be that as it may, I think it’s pretty clear from the films that control *is* the issue. Not that conscience and compassion play no part in it; he feels guilty because his weapons were used to kill innocents. But he responds to that not by becoming a pacifist, but by deciding that the only way to ensure his weapons don’t fall into the wrong hands is to make sure they stay in *his* hands. The only people he trusts with the Iron Man suit are himself and those closest to him. He’s still willing to kill, which is made abundantly clear in the scene where he kills a bunch of terrorists to save a bunch of innocents.
What the other commenters were disagreeing with was the statement in your review that you “found it hypocritical that the movies’ Tony Stark supposedly gave up the weapons business due to a crisis of conscience but still routinely uses lethal armaments as Iron Man.” You may wish that he was less prone to use lethal force (and I sympathize with you on that), but to be a hypocrite he would have to behave inconsistently, and I don’t think he does.
“I don’t mind the rings, aside from the silly name.”
Is it worse than “boom tubes”? :P
Personally, what I have a hard time taking seriously are gratuitous alliterations like “Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth”. (Which, yes, “sling ring” is a gratuitous rhyme, but it doesn’t sound like it’s reaching so hard.)
“It seems to me that magic use would be quite rare and difficult in a universe like that, not to mention the difficulty of teaching anyone to use magic if the tools of the trade are impossible for more than one person at a time to possess.”
I don’t disagree with the point you’re making, but that brought a very interesting analogy to mind, one that I don’t think I’ve really seen explored in any fantasy story. The Mona Lisa is unique, but that doesn’t mean that painting can’t be taught. If magic is an art, as it’s often called, what’s the magical equivalent of a commercial print? Or a forgery?
@68 TracyWinchester
“Well, all of the antagonist-protagonist duos in the MCU have been mono-racial so far,…”
Dude you’re right. How did I not notice that lol? Even Black Panther. That’s kind of crazy. I actually feel bad for the actress who played Ghost, until this moment I had completely forgot about her, and she should be a more memorable character, I also liked her performance, and she’d be a neat character to see continue, but she’s just kind of there. Her situation is inadvertently the entire reason Ant-Man is in the quantum tunnel and doesn’t get snapped (they’re harvesting quantum junk to stabilize her molecules, like ya do). Her and her messed up molecules save the universe.
@24 vinsentient: I grew up on Hong Kong, and I have no knowledge of whether they filmed on location or not. Nothing jumped out at me as particularly egregious when I watched that scene, but I was focusing more on the action than the background. So I found it on Youtube and watched it again with a closer eye for detail.
First of all, a general statement: a lot of movies give the impression that Hong Kong is one big Chinatown. There are parts of Hong Kong that look like the area seen in this movie, but what isn’t often reflected in the movies is how ultramodern it is. (One that did a better job in this regard is The Dark Knight, which I know for a fact was filmed on location because I recognized the location where Bruce Wayne meets up with Lucius Fox. Also, something the movies never show you is that the majority of the territory is actually woodlands, but that’s not really relevant here.)
The placement of vehicles is really a mess; some of them are parked on the left (which is correct) and other on the right. And it’s clearly not a one-way street either, as you can tell from the opening shot. Also, when Kaecilius and his flunkies are sucked into the Dark Dimension, there’s a brief aerial shot that shows an arrow painted on the street, and the cars in the shot are facing in the *opposite* direction to it.
There’s a brief glimpse near the beginning of a taxi, which is spot-on. (Hong Kong taxis have a distinctive look that’s complete unlike New York or London cabs.) OTOH, there are several shots of a bus which doesn’t look like any bus I’ve ever seen in Hong Kong (most of them are either double-deckers or minibuses). However, a Google Image search of “Hong Kong bus” turned up a few vaguely similar examples, so I suppose it could be a newer design that was introduced after I moved away. I did notice, though, that there’s no passenger boarding door visible on the left side, which is *definitely* wrong.
The bamboo scaffolding is *very* Hong Kong.
The design of the Hong Kong sanctum would stick out like a sore thumb in a neighborhood like that, mainly because it’s *way* too short compared to the surrounding buildings. Outside of the more suburban areas, any building of that size and shape would probably be a historical landmark, and it wouldn’t look nearly so dingy.
Also, I hadn’t really thought of this before, but Hong Kong is a much newer city than even New York; before the British took possession of the territory in the mid-1800s, there wasn’t much there apart from a few villages. So if the sanctums are supposed to have been around for a long time, someplace like Shanghai would be a more plausible location. (Also better for diversity, since otherwise it could be taken as an implication that all three sanctums were established by Brits.)
@79: I think that’s probably just a side-effect of the fact that except for Black Panther (and the Guardians-who-aren’t-Peter-Quill, but they don’t really count) all the primary protagonists have been white. And they might have thought that pitting a white hero against a non-white villain might look bad*. Or it might just be because a majority of actors are white, and a majority of (human) comic-book villains are *also* white… in other words, more a result of demographic realities (if you want to be charitable) or unconscious systemic bias (if you want to be less so) than a deliberate choice on the part of the filmmakers.
(*With that in mind, it’ll be interesting to see whether Mordo comes back as the villain for the next Doctor Strange movie.)
@78/Matthew: The Mona Lisa is unique, but paintbrushes are not. We’re talking about magical tools here, not their results. Imagine how hard it would be to teach painting if only one artifact on the planet had the power of applying pigment to canvas.
@80 Matthew
I think they did a pretty good job on the store fronts, but for me it’s things like the width of the street feeling off, the minibus looks too long, there seemed to be a police car (ie: instead of van), and an aerial shot looked like a lot of straight streets in a grid. I can’t point to any one thing being definitive; it just doesn’t feel right to me somehow.
I’m undecided about the sanctum. Anything that height and in an old architectural style would usually have to be something left over from earlier colonial times so it could just conceivably be seen as some kind of exclusive club for rich people.
With regards to whether HK is a good location for the Asian sanctum, I am OK with it. I imagine that a world-girding system of sanctums didn’t come about until the early phase of globalization in the 19th century so it makes sense to be in entrepot cities like London, NY and HK.
Now that I think of it, I’m sad that we likely won’t see Clea any time soon, if we are going to get Mordo for the antagonist next time.
@80 and 83.
With regards to “Also, I hadn’t really thought of this before, but Hong Kong is a much newer city than even New York; before the British took possession of the territory in the mid-1800s, there wasn’t much there apart from a few villages. So if the sanctums are supposed to have been around for a long time, someplace like Shanghai would be a more plausible location. (Also better for diversity, since otherwise it could be taken as an implication that all three sanctums were established by Brits.)”
That actually works with the change of the ancient one to Celtic. British territories would be right up her alley.
@79 “Her situation is inadvertently the entire reason Ant-Man is in the quantum tunnel and doesn’t get snapped”
Whether or not he got snapped is still a matter of chance. He could have been standing next to them and not gotten snapped, similar to Hawkeye. But being stuck in the quantum realm for 5 years / 5 hours is what gave them the time travel idea to get replacement stones, so there’s that.
And let’s hope that Ghost got included in the snap, or else she’s dead. Without those quantum particles to stabilize her, there’s no way she would have stayed stable during those 5 years.
@83/vinsentient: Yes, it makes sense to me that sancta meant to protect humanity as a whole would be positioned at the dominant nexus points of human population, culture, and travel at any given era — the places that had the densest concentrations, not only of people, but of human thought, interactions, and mental/emotional energy, given that magic is often portrayed as being powered by ideas and emotions and the spiritual force of human thought or belief. So where you have the greatest cultural dynamism and innovation is probably where you have the most intense magical energies as well, and thus it follows that both the forces of good magic and the demonic forces they protect against would be drawn most strongly to those areas.
So maybe 500 years ago, the Sancta were in Beijing, Vijayanagar, Cairo, and Istanbul, while 100 years later, the Indian and Egyptian ones would’ve been relocated to Kyoto and Paris, and so forth. Although if it were strictly by population size, they’d be in Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai, and Beijing by now, so that’s not a perfect metric. Port cities, places at crossroads of travel and culture, would probably be more dynamic and more charged with magical energy. After all, they’d have psychic/spiritual connections branching out to all parts of the world, making them powerful focal points.
Belatedly replying to LazerWulf in comment #28, the first issue of The Oath has Strange’s astral form kibbitzing over himself being operated on. That’s what was adapted into this movie.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@82: I was thinking that something like the Eye of Agamotto would be comparable to the Mona Lisa. The analogy isn’t exactly applicable to this discussion of sling rings; I just think it’d be an interesting thought experiment to see how far you could stretch the metaphor of “magic as art” as opposed to “magic as science”. (Speaking of the latter, the mention of Unix code made me think of the “Wiz” series by Rick Cook, which is about a computer programmer from Earth who’s mistakenly summoned to a fantasy world, and learns how to hack magic to do things that no wizard had ever accomplished before.)
@83: I gather from your comments that you’re personally familiar with HK; have you lived there too? Yes, the streets are definitely too narrow for most parts of the city. Unless I missed something, there’s no minibus in that scene; the bus looks full-sized to me, and like I said, it’s completely unlike any bus I’ve seen in HK; the design is more like a typical U.S. city bus. I didn’t say anything about the police car because I couldn’t recall what a typical HK police vehicle looked like, but in response to your comments I did a Google Image search of “Hong Kong police car”. They do exist, and have a fairly distinctive look which does seem to roughly match the one in the movie (though we don’t get a very good look at the latter).
“Anything that height and in an old architectural style would usually have to be something left over from earlier colonial times so it could just conceivably be seen as some kind of exclusive club for rich people.”
I’d expect something like that to be located in Tsim Sha Tsui or the Central district, though, not someplace like Mong Kok.
Really, the biggest issue is that apart from the taxi, I don’t think there’s anything in that entire scene that you couldn’t find in another Chinese city or one of the larger U.S. Chinatowns.
@88/Matthew: Something like the Eye, sure. I’m not saying there wouldn’t be any unique, special artifacts. I just don’t believe they all would be. My whole point is that it makes no sense to assume all magical items fall into the same category — that one would reasonably expect a mix of common, basic magical items and rare, special ones. Like, there’s only one Hubble Space Telescope but there are millions of hobbyist telescopes. There were only a few Space Shuttles but there are countless aircraft of all sizes. There’s only one Superconducting Supercollider but there are dozens of smaller particle accelerators. For every exceptional, unique item, there should logically be a large number of more basic, commonplace items.
And the same goes for art, to use your analogy. For every Mona Lisa or Guernica, there are thousands of generic landscape or still-life paintings to hang on waiting-room walls. The existence of unique things does not preclude the existence of common things of the same category. On the contrary, it requires them, since how would anyone ever develop the skill to create the unique and exceptional works of art if not by practicing for years on the more basic stuff?
Interesting that everyone compares arrogant genius Stephen Strange to Tony Stark. When I saw this in the theater my first reaction was to compare him to another super-arrogant super-genius character played by Benedict Cumberbatch: Sherlock.
@91 Absolutely; I already indicated that I basically agree with what you said. I was just observing that when it comes to art, *every* painting is unique, even the “common” ones. Except of course that that’s not entirely true; there’s only one Mona Lisa, but there are thousands of copies of it. Which is why I mentioned commercial prints and forgeries. All of this is completely tangential to the discussion of the movie and in no way meant to contradict any of your points.
(The last comment was meant to be a reply to @89, by the way.)
@90 I’m actually getting tired of seeing him typecast that way. Sherlock. Dr. Strange. Khan. Smaug. Alan Turing. Julian Assange.
The first things I saw him in, before he was really famous, were Amazing Grace, The Other Boleyn Girl, and The Last Enemy. In each case, the character he played was more human and relatable, and I wish that more casting directors would remember that he’s capable of playing characters other than insufferable or tortured geniuses.
@92. Matthew: I wouldn’t put either Smaug or Assange in the category of geniuses, although you could argue the latter is insufferable and smug. You could subtract Khan as a genius too if you include original Spock’s assessment that he thinks in two dimensions.
@88 Matthew
Yes, I’m a Hong Konger who emigrated.
I had no idea there were police cars! I’ve never seen one! I was leaving Yuen Long after dinner in June when I saw a few regular police vans go speeding by carrying tons of kitted up police (turns out by choosing to take the bus instead of rail that I just missed a violent clash between pro-establishment supporters and protesters/regular commuters). I’ve only ever seen the vans and motorcycles.
Maybe by “bus” we aren’t talking about the same thing. I mean the yellow-bodied, green roofed “mini-bus” (that is exactly the same size and shape as the red-roofed “maxi-cabs”).
By strange coincidence, my last flat was in Mong Kok… I agree that in Mong Kok proper there aren’t many old style buildings, but remember that it does border more affluent areas like King’s Park, Ho Man Tin etc. Then again, there is almost no building so historic that the government won’t let it be torn down grrrrrrr…
Now that I think of it, I can’t actually imagine what the Asian equivalent to a NY brownstone might be.
So I guess no commenters have been high in the Himalayas? :)
No, Smaug wasn’t a genius. BC played him as a psychopath. I believe he really relished the role, too.
@94 Yeah, I knew what you were talking about. The bus in the clip has the same color scheme as a HK minibus, but the size and shape looked wrong to me — though on a close examination, it’s not quite as large as I thought. So maybe it *is* a proper minibus, perhaps of a newer design that I’m not familiar with (the windshield looks a tad too large, and it’s more angular where the sides meet the roof). But I still can’t see any sign of a passenger door on the left side where it should be.
@95 Perhaps “genius” isn’t the right word exactly, but dragons in fantasy fiction are often portrayed as being exceptionally crafty, and Smaug follows that pattern.
@Matthew: it’s a stretch about Smaug. Throw in other recent roles, voices of Shere Khan and the Grinch, and especially his role in the Patrick Melrose series, and Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch is not in any danger of stereotyping yet.
@86, yes, that actually fits fairly well – London, Hong Kong and New York were all major centres of trade and people movement in the early 1900s, and it is possible they haven’t felt a need to reposition the sanctuaries since.
I mean, all three are major stock exchanges today for example.
I could easily buy that previous ones were Cusco, Baghdad and Kyoto for example, and they moved them as needed for the appropriate shield spells. But it also depends on what the MCU chooses to do with Agamotto and his colleagues, as to how far back everything goes.
@85 Caddan
I’m not sure about that. I think the idea was that by being in the Quantum Realm he wasn’t in the universe per say, he was in a state between universes, which is why they can later use it to go through time. Though I guess it’s really impossible to know if he was just one of the lucky ones, or if he was outside of the infinity stones reach.
Yeah, and suddenly returning 5 years later, I hope the tank thing she was in was still running, or she’s in trouble either way. Sadly I don’t think it’s gonna end well for Ghost. Man the snap would just be such a mess in so many mundane ways, but when you throw in comic level science stuff it really would be apocalyptic.
When I first saw this film 3 years ago, I had little knowledge of the character. While, it’s a mostly solid character origin story with superb visuals and top-notch performances from all involved (especially Cumberbatch), Dr. Strange came across as just yet another solo entry with few consequences to the overall MCU. I had little to no idea just how important the character would become in the following Avengers entries.
That’s partly because the film has to work as a character origin story, thus we don’t spend nearly enough time addressing a central aspect of the mythology: the Ancient One’s ability to predict the future and all the potential outcomes that flow from certain decisions. That should have been given far more coverage and depth, because it plays directly into the Infinity War story.
But overall, I don’t have any problems with the film. It came at a time I was rather sick of origin stories, so I didn’t give it the necessary respect at the time. Rewatching it prior to Endgame made me appreciate it much more. But Krad has a point by bringing up the fact that the timeline is too compressed for Stephen Strange to fully grow into the wise force of nature he’ll become in Infinity War.
Also, a shoutout to McAdams. I wasn’t a fan of her back in the Sherlock days with Downey Jr. Too generic. While I had serious problems with True Detective‘s problematic second season, it did one thing right: it rehabilitated her as a leading performer and showed me she can be interesting when the character is right. While, she’s underutilized here, what material she gets works well (you can never go wrong playing against someone like Cumberbatch).
I definitely appreciated Strange’s unwillingness to kill. Coming so soon after Civil War, it was a welcome reiteration of statement, reminding us that superheroes can and should be heroic, making noble decisions that would be much harder for the average person.
I’m not too familar with Derrickson’s work, with the exception of Emily Rose. He fit well into the Marvel pantheon, capable of telling a coherent dramatic story and generating some striking visuals. I’m looking forward to the next Strange film.
The compressed time-frame of the magical training was explained – Strange mentions that he has a “photographic memory” (I want to say that he said he got two post-graduate degrees at the same time?), and there is a glimpse of his astral form reading one of the books while he’s sleeping. He’s been reading ahead of the class when the Mirror Dimension is introduced.
I tend to recommend the film by noting that the shape of the plot, as an origin story, is pretty standard, but the things that happen at each major beat is surprising. I really like it.
renniejoy: That’s only half the problem — there’s also the time it would take him to recover from the accident and go through surgery and physical therapy and all that time seeking out cures. That would be over a year at least.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Oh sure! I was just responding to the idea of the magical training not taking multiple years. :)
I always felt Doctor Strange has to be set immediately after Civil War, because the patient he’s talking to his assistant about, the Air Force colonel with spinal trauma, is Rhodey!!!
@104 Aeryl I lean more toward the soldier/pilot injured in Hammertech during Iron Man 2. The description of “experimental armor” by Dr. Strange’s assistant fits better for that time frame than an already well-known, if not famous, Colonel Rhodes in War Machine/Iron Patriot armor during Civil War. Plus, it makes more sense timeline wise. I think background details like dates on trophies are given too much weight for determining timelines anyway.
I will say I like the idea by Lurklen@53 about Strange acquiring his immense skills during the time loop with Dormammu, a la Groundhog Day or Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey.
@105, Except IM2 predates The Avengers set in 2012, and we know that in 2012 Strange was still a surgeon.
I gotta say this: Sling Ring, do ya thing!!!!! (: