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Marvel struck critical gold earlier this year with the release of Captain America: Civil War, the film holding a 90 per cent positive Rotten Tomatoes score. Can the superhero studio’s next film also be a critical success?
So far, so good. As reported earlier this week, screenings for Doctor Strange have taken place in the US, numerous journalists revealing their initial reactions on Twitter. The film’s embargo has since dropped, with publications finally revealing their verdicts.
Almost every currently available review has been primarily positive, critics applauding the film’s visuals and the succinct origin story. However, criticism has been levied primarily at the film following Marvel’s tried-and-tested formula, with various comparisons to the first Marvel Cinematic Universe, Iron Man.
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What Doctor Strange does, it does well, opening Marvel’s cinematic universe to the realm of the mystic in fine fashion. However, while the kaleidoscope visuals may constitute risk, the film fails to provide a character who does the same; perhaps future sequels will add to Strange’s repertoire, like how the Iron Man sequels added to Stark’s.
Determined, among other things, to top Christopher Nolan at his own game when it comes to folding, bending and upending famous cityscapes to eye-popping effect, this action movie ostensibly rooted in the mind-expanding tenets of Eastern mysticism is different enough to establish a solid niche alongside the blockbuster combine's established money machines.
While we might yawn at yet another threat to all mankind, Doctor Strange has been presented in such a way that this higher calling restores his ability to help the world entire. We understand that this calling matters to him, even if his motives remain a mystery.
Doctor Strange is a bit too clockwork as a story to make it into the top tier of Marvel movies, but on the other hand, its fearless approach to bringing the many weird dimensions that Strange traverses into the MCU emphasises the studio’s complete confidence in both its material and its ability to sell these heady concepts to a mainstream audience. Perhaps that confidence will allow Marvel to move past the standard origin template from this point forward.
It’s one thing to take a new world and make it feel familiar, and quite another to take a familiar word and show us new ways of looking at it. This is the first chapter of the MCU that accomplishes that second, more difficult, more thrilling task, and that bodes well for a better, stranger tomorrow for the MCU.
The only actor who makes a memorable impression is Swinton, with her strange affect, scarred bald head, sleek martial arts moves, and curious musings about the great beyond. This is really the only way Doctor Strange deviates from the established Marvel formula: Typically Marvel movies have terrific characters and so-so visuals and action. Strange is the opposite.
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It’s obvious why they hired a big-time star like Cumberbatch, because Doctor Strange is here to guide us through the next decade of Marvel movies, just like Downey did in the last decade. Doctor Strange is basically a reboot of Iron Man, only with a lot more prettier things to look at while you’re stoned. It’s a good strategy. And it works.
Swinton is effortlessly excellent in her role—one that was gender-flipped, in a progressive move for strong female representation in the genre, at least—and her arc, too, focuses instead on more simple universal binaries: Life vs. death, shadows vs. light, good vs. evil, the kind of yin and yang terrain that dials right into the major currents of Strange’s origin tale. As a contained standalone this is the most inventive Marvel has allowed its movies to get so far, which is a positive indication for new freshness as Phase 3 rolls out.
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