Doctor Strange: Marvel’s darkly trippy journey into mysticism

AFTER 13 movies, Doctor Strange is Marvel’s first proper foray into magic. And it is a darkly trippy spectacle with mesmerising performances.

REVIEW

IN THE 13 films that precede Doctor Strange in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, feats of enormous power and strength have always been explained as science or alien technology. Now there’s magic. Lots of it.

Doctor Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a hot-shot New York neurosurgeon. His prodigious talent and intellect is only matched by his outsized ego and pursuit of glory. But his life is up-ended one night when a catastrophic car crash leaves his hands destroyed by irreparable nerve damage. He can’t work.

Conventional Western science gives him no hope, then he hears of a man who now walks freely despite a crippling spinal injury. Doctor Strange is told to seek out Kamar-Taj in Nepal, where a sect led by the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) is charged with defending Earth from mystical threats.

Here we learn that our reality is merely one of an infinite number of dimensions and the Ancient One and her followers are capable of the likes of astral projection, manipulating matter, travelling between realms and creating gateways.

Doctor Strange, a man of science and materialism, is initially sceptical but soon becomes a believer. Learning quickly, aided by his photographic memory (he earnt his MD and PHD at the same time) and natural affinity for magic, he soon discovers the deeper secrets of the Ancient One and the rituals in her books — which includes the abilities to manipulate time and space. Just in time for the battle against a former disciple, Kaecillius (Mads Mikkelsen), who has some very nasty plans for our reality.

Doctor Strange isn’t your average Marvel movie, it’s not even your average comic book movie (and it’s the sixth one this year alone) — its tone is much darker and it deals with high concepts such as time, the inevitability of death and surrendering control. But it still has many moments of levity and some pretty effective physical humour seamlessly woven in.

Better shields than Captain America’s.

The cachet around Marvel projects is evidenced in part by the franchise’s ability to attract high-calibre performers. The four main actors here are one Oscar winner (Swinton) and three Oscar nominees (Cumberbatch, Rachel McAdams and Chiwetel Ejiofor).

Cumberbatch makes a charismatic Doctor Strange, even if he hasn’t quite nailed the prickliness of the comic book character nor an American accent. Despite Swinton’s controversial casting, she is brilliant as the light-footed Ancient One, conveying a mischievism, warmth and an all-knowingness that leads to genuine pathos in the final act.

Because it is Marvel’s first proper foray into mysticism, Doctor Strange was going to have to give viewers a visually expansive spectacle not previously encountered in the mega franchise. It delivers.

The fantastical reality bending scenes are less Inception-y than the trailers suggested — they’re actually more like Escher sketches on steroids. The scale of them is mind-blowing, even if it means, at times, the characters appear like little GI Joe figurines from afar.

I rarely say this about any film, let alone a Marvel one, but Doctor Strange is worth watching in 3D in order to appreciate the full depth of the altered cityscapes, as well as the hallucinogenic multiverse sequences. All the effects really are quite impressive.

Quick! To the TARDIS.

What’s refreshing about Doctor Strange is that for those who aren’t devotees of the MCU, it works quite well on its own — it doesn’t require an encyclopaedic knowledge of every film that came before it.

There are few references to the larger Marvel universe (though one of them, a throwaway line, is important to the groundwork being laid for Avengers: Infinity Wars), but make sure you stick around until the very end because there are two post-credits scenes and a familiar face pops up in one of them.

Doctor Strange once again proves that when it comes to superhero movies, Marvel has its finger firmly on the pulse.

Rating: 4/5

Doctor Strange is in cinemas from today.

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