While up to standards with previous Marvel films and certainly an enjoyable evening of movie watching, I found the newly released Doctor Strange to be the beginning of the end for me in terms of my interest in the Marvel universe.
Viewed as a standalone film, Doctor Strange achieves several things: It has some clever and humorous banter between characters, it develops complexity of character and relationship between characters and it introduces some interesting concepts surrounding the world of the movie.
Doctor Strange himself as a character is inherently interesting from the get-go. A genius and successful doctor is a role well within Benedict Cumberbatch’s tool chest (although his American accent was at times distracting).
The character is someone an audience can look up to and strive to emulate. He is clearly egocentric, but that does not stop us from being interested. It is especially intriguing when he gets in a car accident and loses the use of his hands, bringing him from the top of the world to a place of helplessness and vulnerability.
His character arc is fairly standard and reasonably satisfying — he realizes that he’s done people wrong in his past, and he makes a choice that benefits others while hurting himself and thereby we see that he has gone through a change.
Another interesting aspect of the film is the abilities that Strange learns in his attempts to fix his hands. He essentially becomes a sorcerer with the ability to alter reality and access an infinite number of dimensions, although they primarily stick to two or three in the movie. This adds another mythical layer to the already extremely mythical marvel universe.
One highlight of the film was Doctor Strange’s cape, which he acquires relatively late in the plot. The cape was almost a character of its own and often added an element of hijinks or simple laughs, which frankly was somewhat scarce in the earlier parts of the film.
The film tended to drag on a bit as it tried to get through a great deal of content in a standard movie length, from introducing us to characters and teaching us about the world of the mystical arts as well the establishment and subsequent ruin of a compelling villain.
All of these factors came together and made a solid, easy-to-enjoy and engaging film. However, as I was sitting in the theatre, letting the visual effects and quippy dialogue wash over me, I couldn’t shake the feeling that to some extent I had seen all of this before.
Marvel has been riding a wave of these movies for years now, creating a wide and varied universe that has something for everyone, but I’m beginning to ask myself how long this can go on. How can these characters be maintained in an interesting and dynamic way?
Part of the problem may be that Doctor Strange gives us yet another origin story — something we’ve been getting plenty of over the past few years, and it can be difficult to rehash an origin story in an engaging way that doesn’t feel stale.
I also found the character of Doctor Strange to be somewhat familiar, specifically reminiscent of Tony Stark. Both characters are brilliant, big headed, think they’re above everyone else and find themselves funnier than anyone else does. This is only really a problem in the context that these two characters exist in the same universe. It will be interesting to see whether these two interact in a subsequent film. The lack of diversity of character seemed to show a lack of imagination.
For the average Marvel movie, or superhero movie in general, a sizable portion of the external conflicts between the characters are through fight scenes, which themselves take up a sizeable portion of the movie itself.
This also leads to somewhat repetitive elements between movies that I’m beginning to feel tired of. I feel as though I can only watch New York be destroyed by supernaturally powerful beings so many times before it becomes tiresome.
Doubtlessly the Marvel machine will continue to churn out box office hits for years to come. I have no doubts in their ability to bring in funding.
I believe, however, that it may be time to begin asking whether these box office hits are culturally worth the hundreds of millions that are being spent on them. More and more we are seeing studios focus on what makes money thereby limiting the types of movies that get made.
