Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the next post in my series covering the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This time, we’ll be taking a look at “Doctor Strange”. Doctor Strange is played by Benedict Cumberbatch, Rachel McAdams plays Christine, Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Mordo, Benedict Wong plays Wong, and Mads Mikkelsen plays Kaecilius, and Tilda Swinton plays The Ancient One. This movie involves plenty of mystic arts stuff, including creating portals and going into scenes that seem like gravity means nothing. Let’s get into this one, shall we?
After the Marvel Studios logo is over, we cut to Kaecilius and his crew break into Kamar-Taj and steal some of the books from there while killing the librarian in the process. They run away to London before being stopped by The Ancient One. She does her best to stop them from escaping through her abilities, but the bad guys left via a magic portal. After that scene, we cut to Doctor Stephen Strange preparing for a surgery while jamming to some funk music. He gets led to a different patient that has a bullet in his head. He carefully gets the bullet out of the patient’s brain with the help of nurse Christine. This scene is still tense to me when he does this procedure. After it is over, Stephen and Christine talk with each other for a bit while walking around the hospital. Later, we see Strange put on a tuxedo and drive around in his car. While driving, he takes a phone call where someone tells him about potential patients with different health problems. He looks away from the road to look at a picture of someone’s brain, which results in a crazy car crash that injures him tremendously. His hands were severely injured during the car crash, making him unable to do his usual operations as a neurosurgeon. His face was damaged as well. After he gets out of the hospital bed, he is desperate to find any way to heal his hands faster. In the meantime, he is struggling to do his normal routine stuff at home (including shaving and writing his own name). He gets into a heated discussion with Christine, who is trying her best to get him to move on. She leaves the room after he yells at her and refuses to apologize. He goes to see Jonathan Pangborn, who recovered from being paralyzed from the waist down. After a brief chat, Pangborn directs him to Kamar-Taj in Nepal. On his way there, he explores the area and tries to get directions to the place. Mordo follows Strange for a bit before rescuing him from some guys who were beating him up for his watch. Unfortunately, the watch gets broken, but Mordo brings Stephen to Kamar-Taj anyway. Once they arrive, Stephen gets treated to some tea and meets The Ancient One. The Ancient One was revealed to be the one who healed Pangborn in a spiritual way. He doesn’t believe this at first, but he is convinced by her when she used her powers to reveal the Astral Plane and the Mirror Dimension. After a trippy sequence full of crazy visuals that lasts for a few minutes, he tells her to teach him. She says no and kicks him out for the moment. After a discussion with Mordo about arrogance, she eventually agrees to teach Stephen. Mordo leads Stephen to his room where he can rest and meditate (and use Wi-Fi). He looks at the message under his watch that was written by Christine. We then see The Ancient One teach Stephen about how to use his hands to perform magical tricks. He is then led by Wong to get some more books after he finished three of them. He sees some books that Wong says are only to be used by The Sorcerer Supreme (in this case, The Ancient One). He sees that one of those books has pages ripped off before Wong puts it back and threatens to kill anyone who steals a book.
We then see the bad guys use the ripped pages to perform a spell that makes the room trippy. Stephen is failing to use the Sling Ring, which can make portals to other places if done right. The Ancient One tells Stephen that it’s not the hands that makes the portals pop up. She tells him to silence his ego before transporting him to Mount Everest and leaving him there. He eventually learns to get out of Everest through the Sling Ring (and surrendering control) and gets back to Kamar-Taj safe and sound. He then trims his facial hair to look better before getting more books from Wong in a sneaky way while Wong is listening to Beyoncé. Later, The Ancient One exposed Stephen about using portals in the library before putting him in the Mirror Dimension. After that Mirror Dimension scene, we see Stephen train in combat with Mordo. Mordo tells him that Kaecilius rejected the Ancient One’s training and left for his own work. Mordo then displays the Staff of the Tribunal before he tells Stephen to conjure his own weapon via the Sling Ring. At night, we see Stephen writing an email to Christine to apologize to her before going off to learn how to bend time backwards and forwards with the Eye of Agamotto (which contains the Time Stone). He does this while looking at the book that had pages ripped off and eating an apple. We see the apple get eaten and uneaten a few times back and forth. We also see the ripped pages come back. Mordo and Wong interrupt him and warn him about the dangers of messing with time and natural law. Stephen is then told that there are three sanctums that help protect Earth from any crazy threats. The three sanctums are in New York City, London, and Hong Kong. He is also told about Dormammu before the three get attacked by Kaecilius and his guys. Stephen gets transported into the Sanctum in New York City where he enters and sees three doors that can change to any location. While in the sanctum, he runs into Kaecilius, who kills a guard. Strange then fights him and the others after failing to run away. He is still iffy on his abilities, making him struggle against Kaecilius. The room changes gravity during the fight before he sends Kaecilius’s assistants to other places and traps them. A magical cape called the Cloak of Levitation comes by and helps Strange fight Kaecilius (while having some funny moments in the process). After Kaecilius gets trapped in an elaborate contraption, he tells Strange about eternal life and time. He also says that death is an insult and talks a bit about Kamar-Taj. Strange somehow lost his Sling Ring and gets severely hurt. The Cloak saves Strange from getting killed while he teleports himself to the hospital where Christine works at. Once he lays down on an operating bed, his spirit (Astral-Body) pops out and spooks Christine. The Astral-Body instructs her on how to save the human form. While she is busy working on the human body of Strange, the spirit of him fights with the spirit of the enemy that was choked by the Cloak earlier. This fight goes through several walls and ends with Stephen winning thanks to Christine and her shock thing at the hospital. She stitches him up while he apologizes to her for everything. He also tells her about what he has been doing all this time. He goes back to the sanctum and puts on the Cloak of Levitation. Strange then reveals that The Ancient One has been drawing power from Dormammu to sustain a long life. Mordo and Strange then have a confrontation after this reveal before they fight with Kaecilius and his people in the Mirror Dimension. There are fantastic visuals in this sequence, which includes a funny Stan Lee cameo in which he is reading from a book about perception while Strange and Mordo land on the bus. New York City is seen through many weird perspectives in the Mirror Dimension. This whole sequence ends in a tragic manner, as The Ancient One is killed by Kaecilius after a fight between the two. The people at the hospital fail to revive her while the spirits of her and Strange have a brief chat. She tells him that his arrogance and fear has kept him from greatness. She also tells him that his time is short. Strange is also told that he and Mordo need to work together to win against Kaecilius. He has a brief moment and a kiss with Christine before heading off to his duties.
We then cut to Hong Kong, where we see Kaecilius and his two assistants prepare to enter the sanctum. Wong prepares to fight them while Strange and Mordo have a talk with each other. Mordo is still distraught over the Ancient One’s actions. The two of them go to Hong Kong where they see the sanctum destroyed by the Dark Dimension. Strange stops time and reverses it to undo a lot of damage. While this is going on, Strange and Mordo fight the evil magic users. The two of them win while also saving Wong in the process. Kaecilius interrupts them and freezes time. Strange then goes to the Dark Dimension to talk with Dormammu (who is also performed by Cumberbatch, strangely enough). We then see a sequence where we see Strange say “Dormammu! I’ve come to bargain” a whole bunch of times thanks to the time stone. He gets killed countless times before Dormammu eventually accepts the bargain and takes Kaecilius and his zealots with him in exchange for the time loop to end. After everything is restored back to normal, Mordo is disgusted and leaves the Sorcerer life. Strange then goes back to put back the Eye of Agamotto, which Wong tells him contains the Time Stone. After walking up some steps, he puts on the broken watch and stares at the window as the credits roll. After the name montage, we see Strange talk with Thor (Chris Hemsworth), who is on Earth looking for his father with his brother Loki while Thor drinks a lot of beer. This scene will be in “Thor: Ragnarok”. After the credits, we see Mordo confront Pangborn and take away his mystical abilities. Mordo then says that there are “too many sorcerers”. The movie ends with the teaser that “Doctor Strange will return”.
This movie is another solid entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Benedict Cumberbatch was another great casting choice for Marvel as he performed the role of Doctor Strange very well. The relationship between Strange and Christine wasn’t the best, but at least he apologized to her near the enTilda Swinton played her role well as The Ancient One when she was on screen. Mordo and Wong were good supporting characters in this movie (with their actors, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Benedict Wong, delivering good performances). The villain was a bit boring, but Mads Mikkelsen played it well with the material that he was given. The visual effects in this movie were outstanding, especially during the moments where the characters were in the Mirror Dimension. The Dormammu bargain sequence was another example of great visuals. We keep seeing Strange getting killed in numerous ways before Dormammu ends the time loop and accepts the bargain. A couple of funny moments that I liked were the aforementioned Dormammu sequence and when Strange was stealing the books through portals while Wong was listening to Beyoncé. I also was amused by the Cloak of Levitation when that was featured in the movie. The score by Michael Giacchino was solid in this movie. The movie explained the mystic arts well enough for me to understand them.
Overall, this movie was a good one. There were some interesting fight sequences, some funny moments, and crazy visual effects throughout the movie. It also introduced another Infinity Stone: The Time Stone, which was in the Eye of Agamotto. That stone will be of great importance later on in the MCU. For now, it’s time to get away from any Infinity Stone talk and focus on another space adventure in "Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2". That post will be out soon. Have a good night, everyone.
(Here is the video from the people at How It Should Have Ended on this movie. All credit goes to them.)
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