Doctor Strange
Oct. 27th, 2016 08:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessI went to see Doctor Strange last night. I suppose I might give it a three and a half out of five.
I found it pretty entertaining, although the more I think of Stephen Strange’s character arc, there is nothing new about it, but the film was consistently amusing, the money they threw at the visual effects was up on the screen and there was a harpsichord on the soundtrack.
From what I’d gleaned about the comics and the character, I was expecting and hoping for some psychedelia. The director was a real fan, apparently and – issues of racial diversity aside, with critics saying it’s not good enough and the film makers saying they tried – I was excited about the cast, who were as good as I’d hoped. There was a real heft to character exchanges, while they were also deft with the funny, which was a determined tactic to get ahead of charges of hokeyness. While it's obviously part of the MCU, and part of an attempt to take the MCU in new directions, it was enough of its own thing and didn't mess with fanon, like there more mainstream stuff does.
It put me in a good mood from the off, because I just enjoyed watching sorcerers throw spells at each other in an Inception-y city scape. And Swinton’s Ancient One being very cool with her magic fans. We needed that reminder of what genre the film was going to be in as we went through Strange’s origin story until he got desperate enough to try to find the Ancient One, get wrongfooted and then special effected into becoming a (trainee) sorcerer (with huge potential). I just liked the combo of big budget fantasy featuring spellcasting by just adults – this sort of thing usually involves kids and is not brilliant. (Having said that, I've seen the trailer for Fantastic Beasts a couple of times now, and it still feels weird to watch mainly adults navigate the Wizarding World - a part of me hopes some kids will turn up at some point to acknowledge it all started with a children's book. I know - inconsistent.)
Cumberbatch was barely stretching himself though, apart from maybe the physicality, and might need to take on different roles. Strange is an arrogant but brilliant little so and so, who needs to learn humility and humanity. For ages, he is pathetic at magic, sorry, the mystic arts, and there’s an amusing running gag about his name. Not that Cumberbatch isn’t good, charismatic and witty enough to carry the role and his part in Phase 3, suggesting that he can stand up to already established characters in the MCU. I was a little confused about Strange’s status at the end, though. Is he just the Master in charge of New York or the Sorceror Supreme? Wong suggested he wasn’t ready for the latter, but who else was in charge of the Ancient One’s remaining followers, and the mid-credits scene suggested he was…
The mid-credits scene made me even more morose about the next Thor movie. [Side-bar: no Jane, which probably means no Darcy but even more naked Erik because that’s what Marvel thinks the fans want. The director is reported as recently saying to ignore past films which, hi, for all their failings were what got me invested in the characters. The remaining confusion over what Thor was up to in Age of Ultron – and Marvel should probably hand out diagrams about the Infinity Stones at this point. And now, what was said about Loki being in NY, helping Thor find Odin??? How do they get there from the end of Thor: The Dark World.] Apart from suggesting Cumberbatch as Strange facing off against Hiddleston as Loki, which is pretty delicious.
Also delicious, Tilda Swinton’s Ancient One. I liked that we had a woman as mentor (in a film that failed the Bechdel test).
Ejiofor offered a solid counterbalance Cumberbatch and the final credits scene set Mordo up as the bad guy for the next DS film which I look forward to, even if it hasn’t been guaranteed yet, I still fully expect it to land before a Black Widow standalone. I liked that Mikkelsen’s Kaecilius’s motives were perfectly understandable, but misguided.
McAdams was good as Christine Palmer, who I liked in that she was obviously brilliant at her job, but kind and a better human being than Strange, so it was in his favour that he loved her despite pushing her away and probably unable to have a functional personal relationship with her. She only put up with so much of his jerkitude. But we have seen Pepper Potts do this before (similarity with Tony of hand moves and the fiery rope but magic not science). I saw a review that made the excellent point that Marvel needs to improve on women by giving us more Ancient Ones (or villainesses!) not (Dr) I literally did not know what was going on – bad modern action direction on top of confusion over magic woo woo. But it managed to do something slightly different than the way cities keep getting destroyed in this sort of movie.
My favourite bit was absolutely the cloak of levitation. <3
The trippy footage was loopy but fun, and in the moment, I was having a good enough time to go along with it, although apart from looking cool and making your opponent stumble, although surely there should have been other ways to do that, I’m not sure what the point of some of the magic fighting was. There were moments where
I found it pretty entertaining, although the more I think of Stephen Strange’s character arc, there is nothing new about it, but the film was consistently amusing, the money they threw at the visual effects was up on the screen and there was a harpsichord on the soundtrack.
From what I’d gleaned about the comics and the character, I was expecting and hoping for some psychedelia. The director was a real fan, apparently and – issues of racial diversity aside, with critics saying it’s not good enough and the film makers saying they tried – I was excited about the cast, who were as good as I’d hoped. There was a real heft to character exchanges, while they were also deft with the funny, which was a determined tactic to get ahead of charges of hokeyness. While it's obviously part of the MCU, and part of an attempt to take the MCU in new directions, it was enough of its own thing and didn't mess with fanon, like there more mainstream stuff does.
It put me in a good mood from the off, because I just enjoyed watching sorcerers throw spells at each other in an Inception-y city scape. And Swinton’s Ancient One being very cool with her magic fans. We needed that reminder of what genre the film was going to be in as we went through Strange’s origin story until he got desperate enough to try to find the Ancient One, get wrongfooted and then special effected into becoming a (trainee) sorcerer (with huge potential). I just liked the combo of big budget fantasy featuring spellcasting by just adults – this sort of thing usually involves kids and is not brilliant. (Having said that, I've seen the trailer for Fantastic Beasts a couple of times now, and it still feels weird to watch mainly adults navigate the Wizarding World - a part of me hopes some kids will turn up at some point to acknowledge it all started with a children's book. I know - inconsistent.)
Cumberbatch was barely stretching himself though, apart from maybe the physicality, and might need to take on different roles. Strange is an arrogant but brilliant little so and so, who needs to learn humility and humanity. For ages, he is pathetic at magic, sorry, the mystic arts, and there’s an amusing running gag about his name. Not that Cumberbatch isn’t good, charismatic and witty enough to carry the role and his part in Phase 3, suggesting that he can stand up to already established characters in the MCU. I was a little confused about Strange’s status at the end, though. Is he just the Master in charge of New York or the Sorceror Supreme? Wong suggested he wasn’t ready for the latter, but who else was in charge of the Ancient One’s remaining followers, and the mid-credits scene suggested he was…
The mid-credits scene made me even more morose about the next Thor movie. [Side-bar: no Jane, which probably means no Darcy but even more naked Erik because that’s what Marvel thinks the fans want. The director is reported as recently saying to ignore past films which, hi, for all their failings were what got me invested in the characters. The remaining confusion over what Thor was up to in Age of Ultron – and Marvel should probably hand out diagrams about the Infinity Stones at this point. And now, what was said about Loki being in NY, helping Thor find Odin??? How do they get there from the end of Thor: The Dark World.] Apart from suggesting Cumberbatch as Strange facing off against Hiddleston as Loki, which is pretty delicious.
Also delicious, Tilda Swinton’s Ancient One. I liked that we had a woman as mentor (in a film that failed the Bechdel test).
Ejiofor offered a solid counterbalance Cumberbatch and the final credits scene set Mordo up as the bad guy for the next DS film which I look forward to, even if it hasn’t been guaranteed yet, I still fully expect it to land before a Black Widow standalone. I liked that Mikkelsen’s Kaecilius’s motives were perfectly understandable, but misguided.
McAdams was good as Christine Palmer, who I liked in that she was obviously brilliant at her job, but kind and a better human being than Strange, so it was in his favour that he loved her despite pushing her away and probably unable to have a functional personal relationship with her. She only put up with so much of his jerkitude. But we have seen Pepper Potts do this before (similarity with Tony of hand moves and the fiery rope but magic not science). I saw a review that made the excellent point that Marvel needs to improve on women by giving us more Ancient Ones (or villainesses!) not (Dr) I literally did not know what was going on – bad modern action direction on top of confusion over magic woo woo. But it managed to do something slightly different than the way cities keep getting destroyed in this sort of movie.
My favourite bit was absolutely the cloak of levitation. <3
The trippy footage was loopy but fun, and in the moment, I was having a good enough time to go along with it, although apart from looking cool and making your opponent stumble, although surely there should have been other ways to do that, I’m not sure what the point of some of the magic fighting was. There were moments where
