Three stars. Rated PG-13, for nonstop fantasy violence and a nasty crash scene
By Derrick Bang
As a card-carrying member of the
original Merry Marvel Marching Society, I kept waiting for Dr. Strange to
employ one of his favorite signature phrases: “By the hoary hosts of Hoggoth!”
Never happened.
Here’s what else never happened:
any flicker of emotional involvement with this pinball machine of a movie.
Magic-laced fantasy is much more
difficult than creators often assume. Rigorous rules must be set in place, and
the supernatural realm carefully conceived, with a comprehensible balance
between good and evil: something that J.K. Rowling — as a recent successful
example — understands full well.
To get sloppy with such
strictures — or ignore them completely — results in a “story” of
make-it-up-as-we-go chaos. When no limits are placed on heroes and villains,
any conflict becomes meaningless. If a bad guy can bend reality to his will,
well, there’s always a sentient magic cloak to help the good guy at a dire
moment. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Toss in the potential for an instant re-boot, given the ability to
manipulate time, and the result is even more inane.
And b-o-r-i-n-g.
This was the insurmountable
problem with late spring’s most recent X-Men adventure, where the über-villain
Apocalypse could re-shape the material world with a wave of his hand. That made
him effectively unbeatable, until ultimately defeated by some “tricks” that
didn’t make any sense, in light of his inherent abilities. Meanwhile, we
endured an hour’s worth of meaningless, time-wasting, thud-and-blunder
nonsense.
Same here.
Happily, Doctor Strange isn’t laced with the sort of landscape-leveling
melees that cratered entire landscapes, in early spring’s Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (another soulless disappointment).
Physical mayhem rarely played a part in this second-tier Marvel character’s
various adventures. The “master of the mystic arts” instead battled his
adversaries with spells and counter-spells, often in fantastic parallel
dimensions of unreality that were an excuse — in the hippy-dippy 1960s and
early ’70s — for comic book panels laced with eye-popping, psychedelic visuals.
They were the four-color, printed
equivalent of the LSD-influenced “star gate” sequence in 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which dazzled
substance-altered viewers for decades.
But no matter how hard Marvel’s
writers tried — and this remained an ongoing issue — it was hard to identify
with Dr. Stephen Strange. He and his opponents were too powerful, too indefinable,
too weird. And too blandly impassive.
The writers of this big-screen Doctor Strange — Jon Spaihts, C. Robert
Cargill and director Scott Derrickson — haven’t solved that problem. Indeed,
they willfully ignored it, to the detriment of their film. Despite a promising
first act, which actually does flirt
with some real-world angst and emotional trauma, their story succumbs all too
quickly to little more than uninhibited, look-what-we-can-do special effects sequences.
Remember the landscape-warping
dreamscapes of 2010’s Inception?
Writer/director Christopher Nolan tried hard to keep that concept under
control, with uneven results, but at least he put some effort into it.
Derrickson and his co-writers placed no such restraints on this film’s visual
effects team, headed by Stephane Ceretti and Paul Corbould (both veterans of
several earlier Marvel universe movies).
So, yes: This big-screen Doctor Strange is an awesome showpiece
of state-of-the-art computer graphics and breathtaking visual amazingness. But
all that cotton candy excess is just a lengthy SFX demo reel, if we’re not able
to care about the people at its heart, or identify with their emotional
journey, or worry that they’re ever really
in peril.
To his credit, Benedict
Cumberbatch is well cast as the aloof and condescending Stephen Strange,
introduced as an arrogant, world-famous surgeon who takes only those cases
likely to enhance his reputation as God’s gift to medical breakthroughs. It’s
not much of a leap from his similar (and quite appropriate) haughty take on
Sherlock Holmes.
Ah, but the egotistical always get
punished in morality sagas, in this case when an inattentive Stephen flips his
car off the road, resulting in a horrific accident that ruins his delicate
surgeon’s hands. (Takeaway lesson: Do not
text and drive!) Sinking into a self-pitying frenzy that alienates even the one
person who genuinely likes him — trauma surgeon and colleague, Dr. Christine
Palmer (Rachel McAdams) — Stephen researches ever-more-desperate medical
methods to “fix” his hands. All to no avail.
Until one unlikely clue leads to
a legendary healer who runs a mysterious enclave known as Kamar-Taj, in
Kathmandu. Assuming he’ll find somebody skilled in Asian medicine, Stephen
instead discovers that the “Ancient One” (Tilda Swinton) is a master
practitioner of mystic arts, drawing on powers available in the countless
alternative dimensions that surround our known reality.
Ah, but not everybody possesses
the moral integrity to wield such abilities for the good of mankind. As we’ve already
seen, via narrative cross-cutting, one of the Ancient One’s former pupils — the
sparkly-eyed Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen) — has succumbed to the Dark Side of the
Force. (Um ... wait. Wrong fantasy realm.) Kaecilius has been seduced by a
promise of ultimate power while doing the bidding of the dread Dormammu, the
evil tyrant god of a “dark dimension” that seeks to devour life and planets
within all dimensions, and has a
particular craving for li’l ol’ Earth. (Don’t they always?)
Back at Kamar-Taj, Stephen is
learning — the hard way — that he needs to abandon his conventional Western,
know-it-all mentality, because, well, There are more things in heaven and
Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. (Oops. Another wrong
fantasy realm.) Anyway, this part of the film is fun, as the vexed and
frustrated Stephen is forced by a mocking Ancient One to become a better
version of himself.
Cumberbatch plays exasperation
well, and we almost feel sorry for the guy. Except that he never fully sheds
his patronizing superiority, and that remains a problem. Thank goodness for
McAdams and Swinton, both of whom know how to navigate arch one-liners with bantering
aplomb. Benedict Wong also has a droll supporting role, as, um, Wong, the
Ancient One’s faithful librarian.
Absent these traces of humor,
this film really would be a tedious
slog.
Chiwetel Ejiofor makes a strong
impression as Mordo, one of the Ancient One’s senior and noblest acolytes.
Ejiofor radiates dignity, grace and patience; Mordo recalls going through the
same initiation trials that confound Stephen, and thus can offer informed
counsel.
Longtime Marvel Comics fans know
two things: The original Ancient One was a male Asian dude, not a Caucasian
female. Swinton makes for interesting casting, and there’s certainly nothing
wrong with a female Ancient One ... but it would have been nice if she’d been played
by somebody who looks (or is) Nepalese.
As for Mordo ... well, he’s
another figure from long-established Doctor Strange lore. About which, you’ll
get no more from me.
Alas, Stephen’s mind/body desire
to heal his hands — the original (and only) purpose for his presence at
Kamar-Taj — is overtaken by increasingly deadly attacks by Kaecilius and his fellow
baddies. All of the latter are nameless, faceless thugs, Derrickson & Co.
apparently lacking the wit to make them actual characters. One is billed as
“Brunette Zealot.” How’d you like that
on your résumé?
Before Stephen knows it, he’s
sucked into a mission to defend the Ancient One’s three magical strongholds —
in London, Hong Kong and New York — which, thanks to the powerful Eye of
Agamotto, protect Earth from other-realmly mystical invasion.
Cue the aforementioned flashy, relentless
and dumb-dumb-dumb special-effects
battles. Yawn.
In too many respects that matter,
this Marvel Studios entry feels half-baked: a lackluster, effects-heavy effort
from a writer/director best known for gory horror flicks (which is also true of
co-scripter Cargill). Although Spaihts can claim credit for co-writing 2012’s
much smarter Prometheus, very little
of that intelligence is on display here.
Last
year’s re-booted attempt at The Fantastic Four remains the most disappointing of the recent big-screen Marvel movies,
but Doctor Strange is only marginally
better. And that’s damning with rather faint praise.
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