DOCTOR STRANGE (2016)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

I didn't have much to say about the MCU's DOCTOR STRANGE when it first appeared in 2016, and nothing much has changed. Having seen how little magic and mystery appeared in the two THOR films that preceded STRANGE, I suspected that the Feige-verse would be incapable of doing justice to the Master of the Mystic Arts, and my recent re-viewing did nothing to change that opinion.

I probably could have put up with the way the hero's origin is shoehorned into the "Infinity War" matrix and the increasing sameness of the MCU's mix of hyperkinetic action set-pieces with predictable bits of humor, if I thought there had been an honest attempt to capture the vibe of the classic Lee-Ditko stories. What the film needed was an authorial/directorial appreciation that could have channeled that subdued, ethereal sense of mystery, even if there's little chance anyone could have come up with a cinematic analogue to Ditko's graphics. What the film needed was Sax Rohmer; what it got was the usual Michael Bay bombast.

So there's a cadre of good magicians, led by the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton), who serve to protect Earth from extradimensional menaces. One of their number, Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelson), has formed such an antipathy for mortality-- which he calls "time"-- that he believes the Earth would be better off if it was absorbed into the dimension of the evil conqueror Dormammu. The good magicians aren't able to stop Kaecilius from stealing the pages of a magic book for the summoning of Dormammu, despite being able to manifest a level of magical FX with all the charm of Christopher Nolan's INCEPTION. Kaecilius escapes, but for some reason I didn't catch, he's not able to perform his ritual for quite a while.

Enter Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch). In a faithful but still mediocre recreation of the hero's origin, Strange is an arrogant (though not particularly money-hungry) neurosurgeon. Former girlfriend Christine, also a doctor, busts his balls for not being a one-dimensional altruist like she is. As in the comics-origin, a car accident robs Strange of the neural control he needs for his advanced surgical techniques, but he hopes to find a way to restore his abilities by learning the energy-manipulation techniques of the Ancient One. Despite her initial reluctance to teach the former doctor-- who often feels like a less horndog version of Tony Stark-- she and her foremost student Mordo spend weeks, if not months, training Strange in magic. 

Conveniently enough, Strange reaches the apogee of his training when Kaecilius is ready to strike, weakening the good magicians' veil of protection by annihilating one of their refuges. Following a mystical duel between Strange and Kaecilius, Kaecilius gives the hero his philosophy. The villain's maunderings about "time" exist so that the script can turn things around at the climax, when Strange foils Dormammu and his "timeless" dimension by casting a time-spell on the overlord. It's frustrating, because there could be the seeds for a stimulating "dueling concepts" in these contrasts, but in STRANGE they function just to wrap things up quickly. I suspect that this emphasis on time also ties in to Strange's function as a sort of "time-oracle" in AVENGERS ENDGAME.

Despite the predictable feel of everything Strange is given to do, Benedict Cumberbatch invests even the bad humor and the Tony Stark-isms with a sense of gravitas. All of the other actors put in their time without much distinction, particularly the horribly overrated Benedict Wong, playing the good sorcerer Wong. The script tells us that he, not Stephen Strange, is the Sorcerer Supreme of the Earth-realm, but this boils down to nothing more than virtue signaling, since his character does nothing to justify his lofty position. When the STRANGE project was first announced, some fans wanted to "race-bend" the hero so that he became Asian. I don't know precisely why the MCU chose not to do so. Yet I suspect that had they done so, the script would not have been able to harp on the sins of a non-white hero as gleefully as the writer of STRANGE does with its Caucasian crusader.