Doctor Strange (2016)

Doctor Strange was an odd call for me to give his own solo film. I was never greatly into the character, although I did collect The Defenders for a while, but Strange never seemed to play a major role in it.

The rather psychedelic character with his origins in Asian mysticism definitely belonged in the 60’s where he started.

Viewers knew that he’d be introduced into the MCU ever since his name was mentioned by Sitwell in The Winter Soldier. That actually brought up some questions about the timing of this one. He was known about by Hydra as far back as Winter Soldier, but only seems to have acquired his powers recently.

The film is a pretty standard origin story and the mind bending Inception style effects aside is rather pedestrian for a Marvel movie. Even the A-list cast seem to be unable to bring themselves to do any more than was strictly required for their roles. Possibly that’s direction or story.

The only real reason I can see for them to make Doctor Strange when they did was to introduce The Eye of Agamotto into the story, as it is one of the Infinity Stones.

As it was an all new character for the MCU we had to have an all new cast.

Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch was cast as Stephen Strange. He has the right look for the character, although in the comics I always felt that he and Tony Stark could double for each other and when Tony has the Iron Man suit on, who really knows who is behind that faceplate? Cumberbatch does arrogant very well and that’s what Strange is at the beginning before he loses the use of his hands in a car accident. He loses a lot after that, and I felt that his cape took the acting honours post accident.

I’m not even sure why Rachel McAdams is in the film. I know she plays Strange’s former love interest Christine Palmer, but the character does nothing that couldn’t have been played by any actress from central casting. Maybe they felt they needed a female character and it had to be an actress with a profile.

Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Mordo is quite good and he’s the one who goes a bit above and beyond with his performance and he hides a dark secret which is spelled out at the end of the film in one of the post credit sequences.

I’m sure that they thought it was edgy casting when they put Tilda Swinton in the role of the Ancient One, a role that is generally thought of as male. Swinton’s fairly androgynous, but in this I never saw her as anything other than a bald woman. She also played it by the numbers and never stretched herself.

Mads Mikkelson is a great bad guy, although in this one he was as flat as most of the rest of the cast, The most remarkable thing about him was the eye make up he wore.

There were no cameo appearances of note, maybe Benjamin Bratt as Pangborn, but that’s it. Chris Hemsworth appears as Thor in a post credit sequence, some of which was reused in Thor – Ragnarok. Even Stan Lee’s role as a bus passenger is forgettable (I had to look it up on imdb for find it for the review)

.

Director Scott Derrickson also had writing credits on this. Neither were something to be greatly proud of.

I do admit the very existence of this film has me shaking my head. There is apparently a sequel planned, but I don’t know why and can only hope it’s better than the first one.