First, the good. This movie is everything you'd expect from a Doctor Strange origins film. Benedict Cumberbatch does a great job portraying Strange as a brilliant doctor who is full of himself. Even the love interest in this movie doesn't get much love from him, at least not until the end. The best part of any Doctor Strange origin story for me is definitely the beginning. It starts with him losing control of his hands in a car crash. And it gets better from there.
Later, he realizes no Western medicine or surgery can fix his hands but he thinks if he goes out to Nepal for this special treatment he can gain use of his hands again and go back to being a brilliant surgeon. He learns about magic and other dimensions and such. He becomes an apprentice to this British female master-who's bald. Enter epic magic training montage.
The way they introduce everything in the first half of the film is brilliant. If you didn't know anything about Doctor Strange well now you do because of the beginning of this movie. Honestly most Marvel fans already know this stuff though but this is a great fresh reminder of who and what he is.
Now, for the bad. The magic in this movie was very cool but most of the fighting was done using melee attacks, energy weapons (magic sword), and not very much ranged magic attacks. I was expecting like actual ranged spells like in an rpg game or something but instead we got energy weapons made from magic and them using the cgi magic weapons, which were all mostly melee weapons like swords. I wish they used more actual magic in the fighting. Like in Warcraft. The magic used was all cgi trickery that looked super fake. But its not like they could do anything do make it look real.
Now for the nerdy. Stan Lee makes an appearance in the film reading the book The Doors of Perception. He's all laughing while reading it, pretty funny stuff. At the end of the movie we learn that Doctor Strange controls time using an Infinity Stone, which we know is linked to everything in the Marvel Universe. Thanos has an Infinity Gauntlet which basically gives him the powers of God. The fact that Doctor Strange has one makes him one of the most powerful heroes in the Marvel canon.
Lastly, I liked the sentimentality from Strange's love interest. She gave him a watch that said time will tell how much I love you. Pretty sappy but very beautiful. The ending of the movie was amazing. Basically he put himself and this evil dark god (Drommamu) in an infinite time loop where Strange kept getting killed forever until this god agreed to leave and never come back. They could've been stuck in there for an eternity while time remained still on Earth. Pretty fascinating concept for a children's movie. Also, the fact that he endured death for an eternity is very dark for a Marvel movie.
Great movie! The ending credits showed Strange agreeing to help find Thor's father Odin. And the other ending was the goody black dude sorcerer becoming a bad guy sorcerer. Interesting.
Don't miss this one this Holiday season
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