I saw the Scott Derrickson-directed Doctor Strange over the weekend, and enjoyed it a lot. It’s not going to unseat any of my favorite MCU movies (currently Iron Man, Winter Soldier, Guardians and Civil War) but it was a fun if familiar tale. I’ll get all the non-spoiler notes out of the way first: the effects are as amazing as advertised, and I can’t wait to go back and see it in 3D. The cast (for all the difficulties with casting a movie from a source so steeped in racial stereotypes) are great as a Marvel movie’s cast usually is, with Benedict Cumberbatch filling Strange’s robes admirably as the arrogant surgeon/distracted driving consequences example. I really liked Chiwetel Ejiofor as Mordo, he’s got such a great delivery of his lines. It’s no surprise why he got to say most of the artifact names.
The visuals are simply jaw-dropping. For those who scoffed at the early clips and trailers that mostly showed the city bending as “psh, Inception” that barely scratches the surface. Basically take the visuals of the Quantum Realm in Ant-Man, add a bunch of psychedelic color, and jam the accelerator to the floor. So cool.
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