Doctor Strange (2016)

Release Date: 4 November, 2016


What's It About: Skilled neurosurgeon Stephen Strange suffers a disfiguring car accident and looks towards the mystic arts for a cure when western science fails him. He discovers otherworldly powers he had never before known.


The Good: The dimensional travel sequences are highly creative and trippy. Strange is depicted as travelling through dimensions with different laws of space and time and it was a joy to watch this scene unfold (very similar to the quantum realm in Ant-Man). The opening chase scene reminded me greatly of the city-bending scenes in Inception, which I did also enjoy. The most interesting things in this film are the ways the plot utilizes complex ideas like space and time travel, which was used as part of some of the film's twists.


The Bad: This origin story is a little generic and uninteresting. It seems to tick all the boxes as it goes along but doesn't really twist things up until the climax, in which it gets much more interesting. Kaecilius, the primary antagonist, was really nothing special and highly forgettable. Little is explored with his story and with the dark dimension, and as a result there were no stakes to invest in. There are also accusations of whitewashing by Hollywood of The Ancient One's role, who is a Tibetan man in the comics and portrayed by Tilda Swinton in the film.


Best Performance: Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Stephen Strange. Cumberbatch is a great actor and probably the standout element of the whole film. His acting credentials far exceed what is necessary for the role but he does really bring Strange to life on the screen with his little verbal tics and defensive reflexes to things around him. As an Avenger he will definitely fit in with the rest of the team.


Should I Watch It: There's an Infinity Stone in this film, so it's at least partially important in terms of the overarching MCU arc, so there's that. There's also the matter of Strange's importance as an Avenger character. In my opinion, he is being set up as the successive leader of the Avengers team after the first generation starts to leave, so this film may become retroactively more important with time.


Post-Credits Scene: Mid-credits and Post-Credits


Similar Films: Any of the MCU anthology, Inception, Harry Potter series


Trailer: