Doctor Strange:
If you got the sense from the trailers that there would be amazing 3D... I wasn't sold. I saw it in IMAX 3D and while the visuals were as stunning and frankly trippy as they needed to be, this had the potential to be the closest thing to a theme park motion ride of any movie since Tron: Legacy and it really didn't deliver. I'll see it again on a cheap screen and offer a better report of this.
I don't think this was a top-tier Marvel movie. It's a mythology-building one. It's not crammed full of puzzle pieces to the point of being overstuffed, but the pacing is a bit off between acts, with a very long second act and a relatively short third. Still, this movie had the job of introducing magic to the MCU and boy does it. There's a certain amount of navel-gazing involved in this, though Doctor Strange, learned scientist, is definitely the right character to do it, rather than Thor, whose Magic can be taken at face value.
Cumberbatch pulls off the humbled, partially-reformed egotist perfectly and the transitive property of distinctive baritone certainly applies in full force. In fact, I can't really speak poorly of any part of the casting. I had hoped for more of Hannibal Lecter from Mads Mikkelson, but like Christopher Eccleston in Thor 2, he's a lesser sort of villain. Benedict Wong is somewhat unexpected the comic relief, though I thought this movie had fewer big comedy beats than most other Marvel films.
Doctor Strange in Marvel comics has an odd pedigree, a fixture who could never quite carry a long-running series. He was created primarily by Steve Ditko (a real life escape artist who drew some inspiration from Houdini and therefore probably a guy who knew something about meditation and self-control) and was essentially the comic-book channel into which 60s psychedelia flowed. His early comics are full of bizarre colors, Escher-esque geometries and low-grade surrealism. This is all put forth in the movie version of the character. Like Ant-Man, Doctor Strange could never be a starting point for entry in to the Marvel Universe, but you can fully accept that he's a part of it. The trailers put this on full display as reality bends around the characters, but the visualization is amazing regardless.
I think this movie tried to be a little more cerebral in a way that was failed a bit by some small bit of writing or editing. I had a great time watching and I was definitely entertained, but big questions were discussed in the context of the plot and in places the cool visuals seemed put in place to avoid carrying those conversations forward. I know Civil War was an extremely long movie, but this movie really could've done with some extra time, especially to develop the antagonists.
There are two stingers on this movie. As usual, you have the animated credits to see the first but sit through the whole credits to see both.
I may have more thoughts, if only on the matter of 3D.
