REVIEWED: DOCTOR STRANGE 8/10

Dr Strange is the 2016 blockbuster from Marvel. I have been meaning to do a review of it – but I thought my blog was becoming to ‘comic book-ly’. I was just writing about comic book films and I wanted to explore other territories, like TV shows and Oscar winning films. But I feel like now is the time to put on the cape and give an in-detail review of Dr Strange. 

First of all, I want to explain a bit about how I review films. I really want this blog to be personal – by that I mean, I don’t want it to be the same as the other generic posts you see from critics or Buzzfeed. So, yeah – whilst the graphics are amazing, with a film of this calibre that should be a given, I will still mention it because the graphics were amazing – but with my posts, I assume you have already watched it. Whilst other posts give you an opinion on whether to watch it or not, I assume you have already watched it and give an in depth review of what I did or did not like. The second important details about my blogs are the actual ratings. I struggle to rate films out of 10, to understand why click here. The moat important detail about my reviews is that I always focus on the negatives, my friends say that I ‘nit-pick’. So if you at any stage are wondering why I hate this film so much, I didn’t, I really liked it and think it was a good film.

So into it I go. I am a fan of the MCU, and dare I say it, I am a little bit OCD. So, I focus on every little detail, and my biggest problem with Dr Strange is that it destroys the entire MCU timeline. Cast your minds back to 2014, the release of The Winter Solider, one thing that got fanboys extremely excited was the Dr Strange name drop. But, it doesn’t add up, because at this time Dr. Strange is still a surgeon. And of course, it does say that Hydra predicts future effects through a number of results, MIT results, so you could say that they are predicting that he has the potential to become Dr Strange and that Hyrda discovered this. But, why did they name drop him along Bruce Bannerr, surely, it is a little far fetched to assume he is a huge threat to Hydra when all he has is a couple degrees, and alot of money. Ok, for arguements sake – if I did concede defeat – how long was Dr Strange training? Did he master it all in a couple months? How long was the recovery after he had the accident? It all doesn’t add up. Where were all of the people in The Avengers or The Avengers Age Of Ultron, I think aliens taking over New York is a pretty big deal.

Another issue I have with the film and by far the biggest is the villain. I am so sick of MCU taking great actors and giving them such a useless, generic, we want evil to win plot. Madds Millenksin is an amazing actor, and his Hannibal was frightening, when I heard he was cast I was so excited, but yet his storyline is literally the exact same as any other. This is more a problem I have with the MCU as a whole, they cast Daniel Bruhn in Captain America and his villian wasn’t exactly the best. And yes, whilst the villain is technically Dormamu, we never focus on him. For example: How powerful is he? Who is he? Is he supposed to be as powerful as Thanos? Why did he just leave? Is it because he pinky-promised, I am assuming he is very strong, so why didn’t he bargain and then just do whatever he wanted?  If he is so powerful, why do we literally only get a glimpse of him, it just feels like a waste. It feels like the studio got involved, almost the same as what happened with Fan4stic, and said “All our villians are rubbish, let’s introduce someone that will get everyone excited for future films. After all we have to sell Phase 4”. And, unfortunately, this makes the Madds character in this film redundant.

This is the part of the review (I do it in every review) where I list all of my problems with the film because it allows me to put out some of the problems I had with the film that I know everyone else has had. And I don’t want to spend to much time on me repeating everyone elses’ review

1. I have already touched on this slightly. But how powerful Dr Strange became and how quickly. Now, now, I do understand he is a genius – but how is his first real fight against the villain (Madds Millenksin) in the film. And, let us not forget that he won that fight – so does that mean he is really strong or the villain was really weak. He didn’t only take out one character but three.
2. If we look into their actually power – it is slightly confusing, if they can teleport anywhere, and Dr. Strange can teleport his hand into the library, then why didn’t the villain just do that in the beginning. Although that is a point I feel a lot of people point to, it is true. And I am not nit-picking, but it really annoy me.
3. How quickly he masters the Eye of Agamotto, or even knows what he was doing. They did not say that he was drawn to it because he had immense power, although that would’ve been stupid we were just supposed to expect it. Why did no else think of doing that? Why didn’t the villain do it after he had taken it so no one would know? Why didn’t the ancient one use it?
4. What happened to London? Maybe because I live in London, I was slightly confused how everyone seemed to be OK with London being destroyed.  What happened to it? Why wasn’t Magic shown to the world? Why wasn’t it in Captain America: Civil War.
5. This is a really small problem I had but I don’t really mind it – I just think Racheal McAdams was slightly under-used. I was happy with how much she was given, but I would’ve liked to see a bit more of her, but apart from that I thought character development was fantastic – something I will get onto

I have focused massively on the negatives of this film, so you are probably wondering why I gave it an 8 star rating, but I really did love this film. I think the casting was fantastic and the character devlopment was great. We were introduced to the world, without it seeming crazy or stupid. I think there was a perfect blend of comedy and action (My friend and me share different values on the comedy bit). I liked every single character in the film – the only thing that I think could’ve been slightly improved was Racheal McAdams character, but I understand there was nothing they could really do. Benedict Wong was fantastic in the film and Baron Mordo was everything I was hoping he would be, he will be the future of the MCU

One of the best things in the film is Dr Stranges’ cloak. It added perfect humour, and almost had a personality of his own. The scene with Hong Kong, where they rewinded is one of the best scenes in the MCU – forgetting about how it looked (I will touch on that), the way we got to see every thing happen in rewind was entertaining.

It was the best looking Marvel film, it was a film you had to watch in 3D. Visually it was fantastic, it is a great film for the mutuals. It has action, comedy(maybe too much for my friend), drama (at the begginning), it is a visual masterpiece

Finally, let’s take a second to thank the film for all the great quotes and memes it gave us:

So there is my review of Dr Strange, I really did enjoy it – although my review may not show so. I hope you have realised that throughout the blog, I referred to the villian as either ‘Madds’ or ‘the villian’, that is because I think it is only fitting as if I was to ask you what his name was you would have no idea. I give it eight stars

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AZ