Movie Review – Doctor Strange

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I made the most of my first weekend off work to go to the cinema to see a movie – my first since arriving in Preston. Spoiler alerts – 2016 A terrific addition to Marvel’s comic book movie additions with one of my favourite of all their heroes, Doctor Stephen Strange. We see him first as a Dr House style arrogant egotistical brain surgeon, reducing his medical staff to changing the MP3 tracks rather than passing a scalpel. His hand smashing car crash changes everything. Strange, frustrated by the medical profession he has served, turns to Eastern mysticism and ends up learning a whole martial art of Tibetan dimension jumping, time bending and sorcery but such power comes at a terrible price. The special effects are genuinely breath-taking and I think anyone watching this while stoned is really going to freak out. Stan Lee even gets a riff on that as he laughs out loud while reading Aldous Huxley’s LSD study The Doors Of Perception, oblivious of the occult war raging round him. Inception is probably the film that got closest to the world folding that goes on here. There is a lot of great humour too, especially with Strange’s cape developing a personality of its own, and Tilda Swilton gets most of the best lines. There are two post credit scenes, one mid-credits and another right on the end. There are also some real innovations. Instead of a fight that destroys a city, we get one fought as the ruins of a city (Hong Kong) trashed off-screen, is reassembled around the combatants. Strange’s closing tangle with Dortmannu, also played by Sherlock star Dominic Cumberbatch, is reminiscent of the Doctor Who long way round trip to Gallifrey. The film also neatly avoids the corny loud yelling of the spells seen in the comics themselves. A great movie and a far cry from the 1978 version of the story made for whatever spare change the production crew had on them on the day – there is a trailer for that here on Youtube Arthur Chappell