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Keyser Corleone's First-Timers Superheros Week, Review 7
Doctor Strange (2016) - Directed by Scott Derrickson
"The language of the mystic arts is as old as civilization."
I've mentioned before that Marvel has gotten to be the hottest topic in this modern world's culture, so unelievably huge that the executives at Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios know that now they can take lesser-known and even obscure heroes and make movies that will top the box office for a time being since the Marvel Cinematic Universe being a gradual story. Well, the time came for a new hero to join the fray and be brought to life by the modern Sherlock himself: Benedict Cumberbatch. This movie was one of Marvel's most innovative, meaningful and visually-stunning movies: Doctor Strange.
This entry of the MCU focuses on a surgeon named Stephen Strange who gets in a car accident that paralyzes his hands. With his job endangered, he travels the world looking for a proper solution, and comes across a school of magic in Kathmandu and learns how to open up portals to other realities and other places in the world. With a former powerful student attempting to gain control of a stone that can manipulate time, Doctor Strange as his school's newest prodigy must use what knowledge of magic he has before the rebels open a gateway to another dimension and free a powerful entity that could eradicate the universe before the clocks stoke another second.
Doctor Strange is one of the best entries in the MCU. I'm still not sure whether or not I consider the film perfect. Currently, my MCU stands at Avengers, Iron Man and Doctor Strange as the top three MCU films.
First, I will start with the special effects. The movie had the most unbelievable and clever usage of "modern" special effects I've seen since Dark City, or maybe even 2001: A Space Odyssey. The movie was occasionally a cinematic Viewmaster of kaleidoscope patterns that acted as the SETTINGS FOR FIGHT SCENES. How the hell do you even do that? From the start of the movie, this mind-warping aspect of the film kicks off. I'm reminded of the novel Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, a sci-fi romance novel that took place above a moon with strange astral and energy activity. This is a novel where the scenery helps to tell the story, which is phenomenal for writing and something Andrey Tarkovsky could not complete with his 1972 movie adaptation. Doctor Strange accomplished that.
*Side note: both Doctor Strange and Solaris are very equal in quality.
But the special effects aren't the only real standout thing, even though we get some amazing scens where portals are opened to other places and a couple of ghostly/astral bodies flying. What we have here is a BRILLIANT cast with several actors that stand among some of the MCU's best casting choices. Benedict Cumberbatch, a genius British actor, plays a very American surgeon like it was nothing, and Tilda Swinton plays her role as the Grandmaster all too well, and thankfully her role is properly and perfectly utilized as a major character unlike her well-acted but under-filmed role in Constantine. Seeing the debates on magic and schooling between these two arrogant intellectuals brought a life and color to the movie the special effects could not.
And for a movie with a lot of special effects to boast what with the cinematography perfectly matching the necessities of these effects by bringing out the best of them where they couldn't, there was an interesting story with a fairly well-developed villain and side-plots that actually had something to do with the movie. To help the story comes occasional discussions on life-philosophies and time as well as how time works. There's a lot more to this SFX romp than your typical Transformers film, and the story fits in as its standalone entry to the MCU perfectly well and does not rely on anything that past movies already covered.
Doctor Strange is undoubtedly one of the finest entries in the MCU not just for it's "magical" special effects, but it's acting and story. Scott Derrickson, the director, usually does horror movies so imagine how crazy it felt the first time I saw it and this superhero-wizard movie has little to none of it. The MCU knows what they're doing with choosing directors, and I hope to see more of Dr. Stephen Strange/Benedict Cumberbatch in the MCU series VERY SOON and see more direction from Scott Derrickson.
Doctor Strange (2016) - Directed by Scott Derrickson
"The language of the mystic arts is as old as civilization."
I've mentioned before that Marvel has gotten to be the hottest topic in this modern world's culture, so unelievably huge that the executives at Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios know that now they can take lesser-known and even obscure heroes and make movies that will top the box office for a time being since the Marvel Cinematic Universe being a gradual story. Well, the time came for a new hero to join the fray and be brought to life by the modern Sherlock himself: Benedict Cumberbatch. This movie was one of Marvel's most innovative, meaningful and visually-stunning movies: Doctor Strange.
This entry of the MCU focuses on a surgeon named Stephen Strange who gets in a car accident that paralyzes his hands. With his job endangered, he travels the world looking for a proper solution, and comes across a school of magic in Kathmandu and learns how to open up portals to other realities and other places in the world. With a former powerful student attempting to gain control of a stone that can manipulate time, Doctor Strange as his school's newest prodigy must use what knowledge of magic he has before the rebels open a gateway to another dimension and free a powerful entity that could eradicate the universe before the clocks stoke another second.
Doctor Strange is one of the best entries in the MCU. I'm still not sure whether or not I consider the film perfect. Currently, my MCU stands at Avengers, Iron Man and Doctor Strange as the top three MCU films.
First, I will start with the special effects. The movie had the most unbelievable and clever usage of "modern" special effects I've seen since Dark City, or maybe even 2001: A Space Odyssey. The movie was occasionally a cinematic Viewmaster of kaleidoscope patterns that acted as the SETTINGS FOR FIGHT SCENES. How the hell do you even do that? From the start of the movie, this mind-warping aspect of the film kicks off. I'm reminded of the novel Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, a sci-fi romance novel that took place above a moon with strange astral and energy activity. This is a novel where the scenery helps to tell the story, which is phenomenal for writing and something Andrey Tarkovsky could not complete with his 1972 movie adaptation. Doctor Strange accomplished that.
*Side note: both Doctor Strange and Solaris are very equal in quality.
But the special effects aren't the only real standout thing, even though we get some amazing scens where portals are opened to other places and a couple of ghostly/astral bodies flying. What we have here is a BRILLIANT cast with several actors that stand among some of the MCU's best casting choices. Benedict Cumberbatch, a genius British actor, plays a very American surgeon like it was nothing, and Tilda Swinton plays her role as the Grandmaster all too well, and thankfully her role is properly and perfectly utilized as a major character unlike her well-acted but under-filmed role in Constantine. Seeing the debates on magic and schooling between these two arrogant intellectuals brought a life and color to the movie the special effects could not.
And for a movie with a lot of special effects to boast what with the cinematography perfectly matching the necessities of these effects by bringing out the best of them where they couldn't, there was an interesting story with a fairly well-developed villain and side-plots that actually had something to do with the movie. To help the story comes occasional discussions on life-philosophies and time as well as how time works. There's a lot more to this SFX romp than your typical Transformers film, and the story fits in as its standalone entry to the MCU perfectly well and does not rely on anything that past movies already covered.
Doctor Strange is undoubtedly one of the finest entries in the MCU not just for it's "magical" special effects, but it's acting and story. Scott Derrickson, the director, usually does horror movies so imagine how crazy it felt the first time I saw it and this superhero-wizard movie has little to none of it. The MCU knows what they're doing with choosing directors, and I hope to see more of Dr. Stephen Strange/Benedict Cumberbatch in the MCU series VERY SOON and see more direction from Scott Derrickson.