‘Doctor Strange’ Movie Review: Wonderfully Bizarre Marvel Adventure

Marvel’s Doctor Strange reminds us that even the most surreal and unrelateable of circumstances can result in a blockbuster hit. Imagine giving superpowers to Dr. House from House. That’s the movie. A cynical, borderline ass of a man becomes a hero through crippling himself via his own arrogance and ego.

As a top surgeon who shows off constantly, yet hides it in his whole “saving lives” fiasco that doctors do. After a magic fight and some guy is beheaded over a book, we open up to brain surgery, where Dr.Stephen Strange answers questions about which songs are which, provided by one of the neurosurgeons. I’m so glad our tax dollars are funding this surgeon’s DJ career.

Next, he makes another doctor look like a pile of incompetent garbage by taking a patient who was to be left for dead and removing the bullet from his brain without any fancy tools. When he tells the family, he refuses to be touched by them, but accepts their thanks. Love interest Mcgee, Christine, turns down his offer to go out, as it’s always about him, no matter what the situation. He dresses up fancy for the event, drives his black car in the dead of night and, while passing others on a windy road at 80 miles per hour, and decides to look at medical files on his phone. While looking down, he crashes for the next 30 seconds. Don’t text and drive, kids.

When he wakes up, his hands no longer work like they used to. He can’t do surgery. He spends every last penny trying to find a “competent doctor,” stating that he could repair his own hands, yet repairing his hands to the way they used to be is impossible. Chasing everybody he loves away, he is lead to a man who broke his spine yet now plays basketball everyday. The man speaks of a land in the east, somewhere in the Himalayas. Strange walks around town asking everyone for where it is located, which is the equivalent of going to Spain and asking where the City of Gold is, or coming to New Jersey and asking where the New Jersey Devil lives.

After almost getting robbed, his savior takes him into a temple as Strange mistakes someone serving the tea for a servant. He is in actuality “The Ancient One” other characters have spoken of. The Ancient One tells Stephen to open his mind, talking about repairing his body through his spirit, that he must open his mind before he can repair his body. After an intense argument and well-worded dialogue, he flips out and calls her a hack. Things get physical and she astral projects him. Hard. He flies out of his own body. He is shown multiple universes he could never have comprehended otherwise in a powerful show of special effect mastery. Don’t do drugs, kids.

He asks her to teach him, and the Ancient One, naturally, says no. Post-clawing at door he was let out of like a dog, they let him back in. He begins to study and act humble for what I assume is the first time in his life.

Multiple Beyonce jokes later, Strange becomes competent again, warps with magic off Mount Everest, learns to fight, steals books from Wong and awakens the Eye of A Tomato. Oops, I meant to say Agamato. Sorry, the name almost didn’t make sense there, I’m glad it makes sense now. The Eye is a relic that controls the progression of time, and Strange experiments on an apple. He is stopped before almost releasing a spell that could have broken space-time. Immediately after explaining this, the Dark Dimension, Dormammu, and Sanctums, the Himalaya Sanctum is destroyed.

Oh right, I should explain that, too. Dormammu cannot die and is the living incarnation of the timeless Dark Dimension, and the Sanctums in Hong Kong, Himalayas and New York keep danger at bay from infinite universes, but mostly just Dormammu. After a fight scene involving a floating cape relic that chooses Strange, Strange goes to the hospital he used to work at after he is stabbed in the chest. He kills a man through astral voltage, which was honestly one of the most “I don’t know how to save the main character so here’s something he can do” situations that I’ve ever seen.

After recovering and scaring Christine, he confronts the ancient one about how she has stolen energy from the Dark Dimension to keep herself alive for so long. She attempts to ignore him. The bad guys attack again, this time resulting in all of them becoming more powerful by Strange’s accident. As New York crumbles before them in a parallel dimension and Stan Lee laughs at a comic on a bus they crash into, The Ancient One is forced to fight.

She dies. One long death scene later, there is an odd and forced love scene between Christine and the new Dr. Strange, who isn’t as much of a gigantic asshole as he used to be, but is just as handsome ignoring the hands. You know, if you think Benedict Cumberbatch is attractive. Let’s save this for the end section, shall we?

In the end, the bad guys are successful in destroying all of the sanctums and the Dark Dimension enters through Hong Kong, possibly referencing pollution. Strange reverses time, but this isn’t enough. He enters the Dark Dimension, casting a spell that loops time. From the moment he says “Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain,” he had already won. Although Dormammu may be all-powerful, he is now a prisoner to time for the first time in his “life.” There is a montage of Doctor Strange getting riggity rekt, but in the end Strange is heard for his words: to release the time spell if he takes back his influence from the Dark Dimension.

Strange saves the day, and although his hands may no longer work and he may be suffering from blue balls because of it, Doctor Strange is elevated to a sorcerer supreme, and vows to protect the world. While he attempts to protect the world and talks with Thor about locating his father Odin, the sorcerer whom Strange trusted leaves him, re-crippling the man who had told strange about The Ancient One in the first place for the sake of justice.

Doctor Strange was one of the best Marvel movies yet, starting out relatable and ending with Harry Potter, yet keeping the audience immersed the entire way through writing and special effects. Cumberbatch did a spectacular job, and while some believe him to look like a snapping turtle, his hands, shaking as if they actually were destroyed in an accident, made everything believable from the start.

Would I recommend you to watch this? UH HYEAH! Would I recommend a child to watch this? Well, there are needles, injuries and other kinds of wounds, but the movie attempts to censor it, especially since most battles are done through magic. Still, there will be gore, and The Ancient One’s corpse is one thing that made me give away my popcorn. Well my friends really like popcorn and I was saving my appetite for Applebees half-apps, but I was at least somewhat disturbed as I drank my medium soda. Also look out for the language, parents. Other than this, I would recommend not missing out on this movie full of magical, sci-fi wonder. Don’t let Doctor Strange weird you out, this bizarre adventure isn’t one to be missed.