Review of Doctor Strange (2016) by Isadore H — 06 Jul 2017

Dr Strange boasts great and mesmerizing special effects, and has a very talented cast. All these things are great to see in a film, but what I enjoyed the most about this film was how fresh it felt in the Marvel universe.

My biggest problem with the MCU is that their film seem very formulaic. Not many are bad, in fact I quite enjoy many of them, but there seems to be an overall diagram each director seems to be following who writes these scripts.

Dr Strange was none of this, this film followed the bare minimum of Marvel cliches, and kept the story fresh by adding elements through the universe that is completely alien to the film. My favorite part to this film might be the boss fight at the end.

Another cliche cookie cutter villain appears in place of Mads Mikkelsen, who was doing a phenomenal job in his role. This was a huge risk to me, and I thought I was about to witness a very disappointing third act.

However, the script has Dr Strange defeat the villain in a very clever and unique way, and I throughly enjoyed that aspect of the film. Cumberbatch is really good, though he does have trouble masking his accent more than once.

I will get into the casting of Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One. I liked her in the film, and I understand that she is being cast in an American film, however, I still would have liked to see someone like Ben Kingsley or another Asian actor in that role.

I will not hold it against the film though, only because this is an American production and things like this will happen, I just would have liked to see someone who fit the role better physically than Swinton.