Marvel's "Doctor Strange" follows the story of the talented neurosurgeon Doctor Stephen Strange who, after a tragic car accident, must put ego aside and learn the secrets of a hidden world of mysticism and alternate dimensions. Based in New York City's Greenwich Village, Doctor Strange must act as an intermediary between the real world and what lies beyond, utilising a vast array of metaphysical abilities and artifacts to protect the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
I had fun seeing this movie. It's an overall good popcorn flick. But if you are, as i'am, a little demanding about movies, you'll feel in the end that they gave a great amount of attention to the digital/special effects aspect of the movie and very little to the screenplay. In the end, if you're one of those weirdos who stay and watch the credits out of respect for the crew who made the movie possible, you'll notice that digital, cgi and special effects have huge teams of dozens of computer geeks who master an art that fills 90% of today's action movies. That's saying a whole lot of the movies industry these days.
The movie has a relaxed tone to it, almost like Green Lantern. The protagonist is egocentric and stubborn. His confidence is often mistaken for arrogance. The jokes are of bad taste. The dialogues are light and deprived of any seriousness. Even in the event of an eminent apocalypse, Dr. Strange manages to throw his puns and bad jokes. The multiverse of presented almost as a gratuitous event, a mundane truth accessible to anyone of travels to Kathmandu. There's no secret, no effort to achieve it. You only need to knock at their door, and the Ancient One will teach you right away the secrets of the astral plane. There's no sense of urgency, like for instance the urgency that drives Neo to find the truth about the Matrix and his decision to swallow the red pill.
This plot is old and recycled. It takes the Hero's Journey myth and put it to practice. And we've seen it a thousand before: Talented yet self centered person is set to trial and loses his talent/strength. Seeking redemption, finds a tutor. The tutor teaches humility and new found power. An enemy emerges. Tutor dies in fight. Apprentice seeks revenge, wins battle, takes the tutor's position. More or less, this formula is old and we all know it.This movie is academic in this sense. But it somehow works. It's light mood dialogues and absence of seriousness makes it digestible.
Well... at least until the last battle. Dormammu (one of my favorite marvel villains) is so poorly portrayed. Worst only Galactus in Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer. And the battle, the solution found by Dr.Strange to defeat Dormammu makes absolutely no sense. The Eye of Agamoto controls time in a dimension where time exists, but the the Dark Dimension of Dormammu there's no such thing as Time. So, how could the Eye even work in a dimension where the concept of time does not exist. How did even Dormammu succumbed to a concept to which he was not captive of of? Did the Eye of Agamoto invented time in the Dark Dimension? Of course not. It's just a bad plot decision. It's simply lazy writing.
The way they confuse so many time the realm of metaphysics with hard science like quantum mechanics, is astonishing. Like they were trying to mask the comic book nature of Dr. Strange (a sorcerer who is able to travel between dimensions with his magical powers) with quantum physics Wikipedia vocabulary. The confusing and unnecessary discussion between Strange and the Ancient One about the nature of the Multiverse, shows an attempt to minimize the "magic" of movie and make it sound more ... "scientific". Dr. Strange, in the book, is a magical entity. His powers are far beyond known science as he can do things modern science finds impossible. So the attempt to rationalize such character is in my opinion a big mistake.
Various incarnations of a Doctor Strange film had been in development since the mid-1980s, until Paramount Pictures acquired the film rights in April 2005, on behalf of Marvel Studios. Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer were brought on board in June 2010 to write a screenplay. In June 2014, Derrickson and Spaihts were hired to direct and re-write the film, respectively. Cumberbatch was chosen for the eponymous role in December 2014, necessitating a schedule change to work around his other commitments. This gave Derrickson time to work on the script himself, for which he brought Cargill on to help. The film began principal photography in November 2015 in Nepal, before moving to the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, and concluding in New York City in April 2016.
Doctor Strange held its world premiere in Hong Kong on October 13, 2016, and was released in the United States on November 4, 2016, in 3D and IMAX 3D. The film grossed over $677 million worldwide, and was met with positive reviews from critics. It also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects.
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