Review: Doctor Strange

Doctor Strange is the latest film in the Marvel Studios series of comicbook adaptations, in this case featuring Benedict Cumberbatch as Marvel’s “Sorcerer Supreme”.  The character is probably lesser-known than Iron Man and Spider-Man, but still has a serious following as the Marvel Universe’s primary mystical hero.  When the character was first introduced (by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in the anthology comic Strange Tales #110), he was a vaguely Chinese-looking mystic with a Tibetan guru (The Ancient One) and a four-color morality in keeping with a superhero dedicated to fighting supernatural evil.

In this regard, the interesting thing about Doctor Strange was his origin story, which wasn’t revealed until five issues after his debut.  As it turned out, Stephen Strange was a doctor, in fact one of the top surgeons in New York, but was consumed by ego and greed, refusing to see patients who couldn’t pay his fees.  (Cumberbatch has a history of playing arrogant geniuses, so this was great casting.)  But Strange’s career ended when he got in a car accident that caused nerve damage to his hands which prevented him from doing surgery again.  Such was his reputation that he still could have made a decent living as a consulting surgeon, but his pride refused to let him work under another doctor.  He wasted his fortune on fruitless leads until at the end of his rope he traveled to the Himalayas in pursuit of “the Ancient One” and a miracle cure.  It was also at this point in the comics that Strange met his future archenemy, Mordo, who was the Ancient One’s main student.  Strange refused to believe in magic until he discovered that Mordo was using spells to try to murder the Ancient One, and when Strange tried to warn the old man, Mordo used another spell to silence him.  Strange realized that he would be helpless against Mordo unless he learned magic himself.  So he petitioned the Ancient One to become his new disciple, and at that point the archmage revealed that he was aware of Mordo’s evil but preferred to keep him at his monastery where he could watch him.  But from that point, Doctor Strange became the Ancient One’s new pupil, and eventual successor.

The movie changes this story significantly.  Not only did Marvel Studios famously “whitewash” the Ancient One from an Asian man to the Caucasian Tilda Swinton, Mordo (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a polite, low-key disciple who ends up being Strange’s main friend in the monastery as he begins mystic studies.  The relationship between Strange, Mordo and the Ancient One is complex and changes significantly over the movie.  In the meantime, Strange gets involved as the mystic community has to defend against Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen), an evil ex-pupil of the Ancient One whose exposure to the Dark Dimension has given him the worst case of pinkeye in the Multiverse.  Other characters include Benedict Wong as… Wong (who in this version is not Strange’s butler but one of his tutors) and Rachel McAdams as Dr. Christine Palmer, Strange’s colleague and ex-lover, who doesn’t really figure into the main story but is symbolically significant in being Strange’s only emotional connection to the human world, even when he was still a surgeon.

The movie is not especially original – the fabulous “space folding” effects were more famously used in the movie Inception, although not so extensively.  And the story is a bit familiar in being a Hollywood version of “the Hero’s Journey” where an arrogant person is brought low, forced to adapt to a new environment, and then turns out to be a Chosen One who learns great abilities that take other students many years to master.  But it’s all very well done and very well-acted.  And in terms of the broader universe, just as Guardians of the Galaxy introduced a whole space-faring civilization of humans and other races that the people of Marvel Earth are totally unaware of, Doctor Strange introduces the mythology and magical elements of the Marvel Comics to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which of course means that in the end the movie ties into the larger narrative that will lead to Marvel Studios’ “Infinity War.”  So as both an action movie and a comicbook movie, I highly recommend it.

 

And remember: Driving while distracted can be hazardous.  Please drive responsibly.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *