When You're Strange — Constructive(?) Criticism

While DC is struggling to catch up to Marvel, the latter is clearly winning the war for pop culture dominance. It seems that just about everything that Marvel Studios touches turns to gold, garnering both substantial box office earnings and critical praise - whereas DC has been able to bring in some impressive revenues, decent reviews have been...elusive, to put it as nicely as I possibly can.

The newest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (a franchise which is growing to truly monstrous proportions, now spanning across fourteen films as well as television series of both the "traditional" and online streaming varieties) sought to explore a slightly different direction than previous material, with it's focus on magic and Eastern mysticism in contrast to the rest of the Marvel lineup, most of which derive their abilities from scientific or technological enhancements. Also distinguishing it, and much like "Guardians of the Galaxy" before it, "Doctor Strange" showcases characters that are fairly obscure to the general public - Stephen Strange is hardly the household name that, say, Peter Parker is.

The biggest strength of "Doctor Strange" is it's deviation from familiar territory - instead of action and fight sequences, we see men meditating and practicing spells. Paradoxically, the biggest weakness of "Doctor Strange" is it's similarities to other comic book movies. At it's heart, it remains a fairly paint-by-numbers superhero origin story - a flawed protagonist gains unbelievable powers, grows emotionally as he learns to use them, gets in over his head while fighting a villain that he's no match for, but ends up victorious in the end (as you knew he would, given the fact that each of these actors sign on to multi-picture deals and are pretty much required to appear in each other's movies).

I understand that the filmmakers wanted to hedge their bets a little bit. As I've made note of, Doctor Strange doesn't have a lot of name recognition going for him, so it's understandable that the studio would want to introduce him to audiences in a way that would make him easily accessible. There's only so much talk of alternate dimensions and pseudo-mystical babble that moviegoers are going to take before they start waiting for the big showdown to happen. The thing that gets to me is that this movie really could have been a lot more.

A frequent problem with big screen adaptations of comic book stories, and one that "Doctor Strange" falls victim to, is that the filmmakers struggle to fit too much into one movie. This is especially troublesome with a movie like this, where many aren't familiar with the character and are being introduced to him for the first time. It's difficult to provide enough backstory to make the audience care about the protagonist, cram in as much of the magic stuff as possible, and also fit in a climactic showdown with a formidable antagonist to establish the good doctor as being a major player along with Thor and the Incredible Hulk. The movie accomplishes this, and actually somewhat admirably - at a running time of two hours, it's paced well enough that it feels considerably shorter. I was left disappointed, though, by feeling that the mythology of Doctor Strange, the Ancient One, and the Sanctum were a little neglected; at more than one point while watching I turned to a friend I was there with to ask if he was sure what the fuck was supposed to be going on. Perhaps "Doctor Strange" would have benefited more from a Netflix series like "Daredevil", where the story could have been elaborated on a bit more.

All of that isn't to say that I disliked the movie. While not perfect, "Doctor Strange" is as entertaining a watch as I could ask for from a superhero movie: impressive visuals, great acting (particularly from Benedict Cumberbatch in the titular role and Tilda Swinton as "The Ancient One"), and the obligatory yet eye-rolling cameo from Stan Lee.

I'm seriously getting tired of this shit.

As I post this article, "Doctor Strange" is currently showing in theaters. Stay for the mid-credits scene (which got me genuinely excited for Strange's next appearance), but go ahead and skip the post-credits scene (which I found to be kind of retarded).