奇怪博士 Doctor Strange review by Gabriel Powers

Dr. Stephen Strange is one of the best doctors in medicine. He's so good he doesn't even have to be nice to his staff, nor does he have to care for patients he'd rather not. But the night Strange's hands are crushed in a freak auto accident he falls from his high horse. While searching for a way to fix his livelihood, Stange is taken into a monastery, and trained in the ways of sorcery and magic. Meanwhile, a malevolent force threatens to destroy our world.

The Invincible Iron Man sucked, and Marvel Animation's two Avengers films were barely average. I wasn't very excited at the prospect of sitting through another Marvel Animation movie, even if it was featuring Dr. Strange. Though Doctor Strange is a solid improvement on the poopy missed opportunity that was Iron Man, it's still wrought with problems.

Like Iron Man and Ultimate Avengers, Doctor Strange is an origin story. It's understandable that the good doctor isn't an ace magician right off the bat, and a dark past is inevitable (though flirting with one's own sister on every occasion of flashback is a little too dark for me), but his constantly bitchy and frustrating attitude is so obnoxious that even his heroic turn is hard to care about. The film's attempts at adult drama are genuine, and more successful than Iron Man's, but still below that of the best aimed at children’s animated entertainment.

Like the other Marvel cartoons, and most origin stories on film, Doctor Strange has difficulty balancing our hero's back story and an interesting adventure for him to take. In the comic book and television mediums writers can take their time to work a back story issue by issue, but filmmakers (animated or live action) usually don't have the option of taking more than two hours to set up a hero and his adventure. This story (despite the 95 minutes dictated by the box art) is haphazardly crammed into only about an hour and a quarter of runtime, leaving no time for the emotional depth the creators want to achieve.

I'm not all that clear on the specifics of Dr. Strange's original origin story, but it seems to have been updated quite a bit. The story elements are pretty darn similar to stuff already seen on Justice League, the original X-Mencartoon, and of all things, Nightmare on Elm Street. Not really the backbone the creators needed.

The character has been updated from his origin, but only up to about the '90s. Again, just like the other Marvel Animation releases, Doctor Strange is oddly dated, from plot, to character design and animation. Even the acting is particularly broad. This strange anachronistic nature renders the film irrelevant in the face of emotionally complex modern animated series. This is an action film with dreams of something deeper. Non-combative conflict quickly gives way to sword fights and explosions on every occasion.

The story stilting action is pretty weak, unfortunately, though there are glimmers of colourful eye candy. Most battles carry little or no weight, physically or emotionally. Things fly around, fires blaze, characters no one cares about are killed, it all gets pretty boring pretty quickly.

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