The summary. After suffering a terrible car accident, which renders his hands useless, a successful yet arrogant neurosurgeon, desperate for rehabilitation, travels to the high mountains of Nepal, where his discovers a group of mystical monks who will teach him the hidden and powerful world of sorcery and alternate realities, which in time will turn him into the superhero known as “Doctor Strange”.
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| Poster in English for 'Doctor Strange' |
One night, while driving towards a party with people of the high class society, he suffers a serious car accident. Stephen Strange is mostly unharmed, but as a result of the incident, his hands sustain irreparable damage.
Frustrated with the possibility that he may never be able to operate again, Strange begins looking for alternative ways, outside of science, to effectively heal his hands. In the process he learns that a person, who had permanently lost the use of his legs, made a miraculous recovery and now walks normally again. This person was healed after traveling to a remote place in Nepal.
Strange travels to the same place, in Katmandu, where a group of mystical monks, whose leader, an enigmatic bald woman who they call “The Ancient One” (Tilda Swinton) offers Strange the means to heal not only his hands, but also to reconnect his spirit with his body, in a way only few chosen people have been able to.
And so Stephen Strange is thrust into the hidden world of sorcery and arcane knowledge, which can give a person the ability to open up portals to other dimensions, materialize objects from thin air and manipulate the laws of physics to his or her liking.
But unbeknownst to Strange and the other monks, as the training of the former neurosurgeon moves forward, a sinister force threatens to plunge the entire world into darkness, therefore, Strange and the monks must work together and use their magic, to save humanity.
The review. “Doctor Strange” is a motion picture adaptation of another popular superhero graphic book from Marvel Comics; this one in particular must have been quite a challenge for its filmmakers, given the material of origin, which is filled with characters that forge weapons out of thin air and walk in and out of hallucinating dimensions. Nevertheless, director Scott Derrickson, and all the people involved in the making of this film, managed to come up with an extraordinary movie, one that is every bit as entertaining, while remaining faithful to the spirit of the comic books created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.
Full of impressive images of alternate realities, which seem ripped out of dreams and in some instances even evoke some of the amazing scenes of such films as Christopher Nolan’s “Inception”, or the Wachowski brothers’ “The Matrix”, as an idea, “Doctor Strange” looked like a movie adaptation that was going to be impossible to make. But in the end it turned out to be possible, thanks in part to a well-written script by Jon Spaihts, C. Robert Cargill and director Scott Derrickson, who previously directed the good horror films “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” and “Sinister”.
This team of screenwriters did an excellent work of remaining faithful as much as possible to the source material while, at the same time, doing feats to keep the viewers from getting lost in the wild turns that the story has, once its main character begins to familiarize with the world that hides beneath ours; a world which allows people to open up holes in the air, that can transport one person from one place to another. Or materialize objects out of nothingness. This is in no way the kind of magic we saw in the Harry Potter movies, where the characters always used wands and colorful spells.
No; the magic of the sorcerers we see in “Doctor Strange” seems to flirt even with elements of modern physics: An expression such as “alternate reality”, in some way suggests the “Theory of Parallel Universes”; materializing weapons from thin air can be interpreted as the Theory of Relativity in reverse (transforming energy into matter.) And opening portals to transport form one place to another is obviously teleportation.
In other words, while the magic of Harry Potter’s world is obviously for children, the magic of “Doctor Strange” is intended for young adults and adults. The magic of “Strange” is closer to science and no to so much to fantasy, like “Potter”.
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| Another poster in English for 'Doctor Strange' |
Is precisely the addition of Oscar winner actress Tilda Swinton (“Michael Clayton”), the detail on which the writers took some of the few liberties from the comic, since the character known as “The Ancient One”, in the graphic books is shown as an Asian old man, while in this film is depicted as a woman whose past remains uncertain, and all that is known of her is that she is Celtic.
But as “The Ancient One”, Swinton manages to give a fresh look to a character that in other stories has become a cliché: The oriental old mentor who trains the hero; a lot of movies come to mind with this premise: “Karate Kid”, “Kill Bill”, and so on. As “The Ancient One”, Swinton shows strength of character as well as a touch of mystery, and every time she appears on screen we want to know more about her.
Stephen Strange’s soul searching journey might remind some viewers of Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins”, but the question here is who inspired who, given the fact that, while that journey does appear in Doctor Strange’s comic books from the 1960’s, Batman never made such trip in his own comics. A young Bruce Wayne does travel to Japan to learn martial arts, according to some of its graphic stories, but he does so by training with a Japanese teacher, and not with the villain Ra’s al Gul.
But just as Nolan was most likely inspired by Doctor Strange’s journey, Derrickson was inspired by “Inception”, another Nolan film, for some of the most amazing scenes of “Doctor Strange”, in particular, the ones where we see the sorcerers fight against the bad guys, running and jumping from buildings that keep bending or turning upside down, while the characters seem to be unaffected by all of this that’s happening around them.
Benedict Cumberbatch offers a performance very different from the one we are so accustomed to, which is that of the famous English detective “Sherlock” Holmes, or even his other character that we saw in movies such as “The Imitation Game” or “Star Trek Into Darkness”. For starters, in “Doctor Strange” he uses an American accent. And while Cumberbatch can easily play egotistical characters, here he also shows some vulnerability, as he begins to change with the mystical training. And to top that off, he also gives Strange a funny side.
Fans of the Doctor Strange comics will be satisfied to know that the hero’s archenemy, Dormammu, is in fact shown in the movie, but that is all I’m willing to reveal, because I don’t want to ruin the surprise. And speaking of surprises, as is customary in all of the other Marvel Comics film adaptations of recent times, from “Iron Man”, to “Avengers”, to “Captain America”, viewers should watch through all the closing credits of “Doctor Strange”, since there’s not only one revelation, but two of future movies to come from the Marvel universe.
Rating: * * *
Main cast and details
Title: ‘Doctor Strange’
Director: Scott Derrickson
Screenplay: Jon Spaihts, C. Robert Cargill and Scott Derrickson
Country: United States
Year: 2016
Genre: Action / Adventure / Science Fiction
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Mads Mikkelsen, Rachel McAdams and Tilda Swinton.
Rated: PG-13 (Some material may not be not appropriate for children under 13 years of age)
Running Time: 1 hour and 56 minutes
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