The latest Marvel movie has arrived in theaters, but it doesn’t feel like a Marvel movie. Instead, Doctor Strange is the new kid in town who doesn’t fit in, who has his own style, and who opens doorways to new ways of thinking. If the Marvel Cinematic Universe were the town from Footloose, then Doctor Strange would surely be Kevin Bacon’s Ren. But instead of busting a move on the dance floor, he’s tapping into the astral plane, altering time, and giving viewers one hell of a fun experience in the process.
Meet neurosurgeon Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch). He’s brilliant, he’s highly skilled on the operating table, and he’ll help cure what ails you… as long as doing so can make him look good in the process. His steady hands are magical with a knife and a scalpel, but after a devastating car accident, he wakes up to rods in his fingers and a dagger in his old way of life. After shutting out his friend and former lover Christine (Rachel McAdams), the one person who truly cares for him, Strange travels to Nepal in search of The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton), a wise master of sorcery who reluctantly takes Strange under her wing and opens his eyes to other dimensions and abilities that his science-or-bust mind never dreamed of.
Strange is a quick learner, and that’s a good thing, because The Ancient One’s former student, Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen), is hell-bent on using his powers to transport Earth to the Dark Dimension, where a malevolent entity known as Dormammu dwells. As relic protector and librarian Wong (Benedict Wong) mentions at one point, The Avengers may take on the physical threats to Earth, but the sorcerers are responsible for keeping the mystical menaces at bay. With a dangerous new era approaching, it’s not long before battles of both wit and brawn take place on Earth and in the otherworldly astral plane.
After showing moviegoers the supernatural side of New York City in 2014’s Deliver Us From Evil, co-writer / director Scott Derrickson once again immerses viewers in a different side of the Big Apple with Doctor Strange. For a film that features time travel and magical spells, Doctor Strange feels incredibly grounded, and that’s a credit to Derrickson’s capable hands. Like so many of his previous films, the characters in Doctor Strange take precedence over the story, making the narrative all the more involving and believable, even when it’s at its most fantastical.
Keeping the story lighthearted at times and emotionally devastating at others is Benedict Cumberbatch, who portrays Strange as an overconfident, arrogant, self-centered, yet ultimately well-meaning person with a disarming sense of humor. This guy would fit right in with the Stark family, and I have feeling that he and Tony could have some candid conversations and more than a few laughs if they ran into each other at cocktail hour. Strange is the perfect reluctant hero, a skeptic whose belief system is firmly embedded in science, and watching those beliefs get abruptly uprooted by The Ancient One’s mystical teachings is worth the price of admission alone.
But also making the movie well worth your time are the psychedelic visuals, which are delightfully trippy. Watching the New York City skyline fold in on itself in kaleidoscopic fashion, or seeing buildings shift their structures with the ease of a Rubik’s cube, you might be reminded of some of the best visuals from Christopher Nolan’s Inception (which would make a great double feature with Doctor Strange). Along with the effects artists, Derrickson and co-writers Jon Spaihts and C. Robert Cargill (with whom Derrickson frequently collaborates) never run out of ways to surround Strange with visuals that amaze, entertain, and unnerve, including a nightmarish moment when the doctor watches his fingers turn into small hands that multiply into even smaller hands and so on. It’s almost like watching Freddy Kruger’s nightmares, and at times you may even wonder if there’s a mushroom or two in your popcorn.
In addition to being Inception-esque visually (but certainly still doing enough of its own thing to avoid replicating Nolan’s masterful dreamscape), Doctor Strange is reminiscent of 1990’s Ghost in scenes when Strange leaves his physical body to enter the astral plane, hovering above his beloved while she tends to his near-dead body. Unlike Sam Wheat (Patrick Swayze), however, Strange can appear to humans and disappear at will, too, and Derrickson takes full advantage of the comedic and creepy possibilities this magical ability provides, even throwing in a few jump scares that fit right in with his horror résumé.
Is Doctor Strange a perfect movie? Not quite. Despite having the awesome presence of Mikkelsen, the story never seems to give Kaecilius enough room to really show his teeth beyond the ominous opening scene, choosing instead to mostly have other characters explain his motives and malicious nature. And although it features the gorgeously lit backdrop of Hong Kong, the final scenes, while clever, feel a bit anticlimactic and fail to live up to the stellar showdown at the New York Sanctum that takes place around the film’s midway point. These are minor bumps in an otherwise smooth landing for Doctor Strange, though.
Like the Thor movies and Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange opens the doorway to an entirely new world of possibilities for future films in the MCU. Marvel has been on a roll recently with smart, unique releases, but Doctor Strange will allow the studio to have an even bigger playground for viewers to explore and enjoy. Nothing will ever be quite the same in the MCU now that Doctor Strange has worked his magic on the big screen. And even though Halloween may be over, Marvel is still casting spells in theaters with their latest, and weirdest, film.
Movie Score: 4/5
Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.
When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.
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