And, I'm sorry to say, the old formula is showing its age: here's a snippet of your bad-guys; this is your good-guy with a lot to learn (boy-oh-boy, isn't he arrogant); here's his perfunctory love-interest; Look, Avengers Tower! Eegads, drama! Journey starts here, folks! Ooh, this one's about this stuff... Training. Struggle. Conflict. He's catching on... Midway fight! Now he has purpose. Now he's a badass! Climax! Ooh, sequel bait.
This being Avengers XIV: Quick, We Need Something New to Show! it's hardly surprising the strain is beginning to show Even with the introduction of magic and the multi-verse, we're given the same old beats; the same old leaning toward style over substance; the same old stock characters for our hero to bounce dialogue off of. And what's frustrating is they've already found new ways of tackling the origin story. Guardians of the Galaxy got away with it through humour, a brand new setting, and being about a team rather than a singular hero. And despite being about a team, the writing and performances were strong enough to convey the background and character of every player. Even Ronan the Accuser - typical flash-in-the-pan bad-guy that he was - benefited from a memorable design and performance, and having his stoicism contrasted against the 'hero's' general silliness.
Ant-Man too, though it followed the more established formula, managed to stand out by being on a much smaller, more intimate scale.
Unfortunately, Doctor Strange feels a lot like a return to the old. Mads Mikkelsen does what he can with the villain, but we see so little of him, he joins Yellowjacket, Iron-Monger and Malekith (remember him?) in the category of, 'Well, they were knida interesting... Moving on.'
Similarly, Rachel McAdams gets to be little more than space-filler. There's chemistry; he rejects her; he needs her; they reconcile; she's gone. They do change things up slightly by not quite having the two get together (as if to say 'See, she's not really a love-interest! Aren't we original?'), but you could still replace her with Jane Foster and not notice the difference.
The action is also disappointing. Not that it's not imaginative and well executed, but it's shot so poorly. Scott Derrickson seems to have come from the same school of action directing as Paul Greengrass and the Russo brothers, thinking shoving the camera in an actor's ear and swishing it from side to side makes for an immersive set-piece, rather than a confusing blur of colourful nonsense. And it isn't helped by an over-reliance on CGI sets and models. Okay, when you're doing the Inception building-folding thing with an entire city, practical effects aren't really an option, but having a pair of actors brawl in an actually-rotating corridor was still far more impressive-looking than some green-screen wire-work and bandy-armed character models.
It also doesn't help that the action peaked with a mid-film confrontation, while the climactic fight was a much more brief, small-scale and uninteresting affair (and aesthetically reminiscent of Suicide Squad).
And though the final final face-off was a genuinely cool idea, the design of Dormammu, who should look something like this...
...was pants.
All that said, however, it's still good.
It's an almost frustrating trend with Marvel that even their somewhat throw-away films have plenty about them to enjoy, whether it be the action of Incredible Hulk or Iron-Man 2, or the character interaction and universe development of Thor: The Dark World. Even Age of Ultron, despite more-or-less being a retread of The Avengers, was packed with enough awesome that it didn't matter.
Doctor Strange, despite being part of the MCU, could probably be most closely compared to Green Lantern in terms of structure and unoriginality. But while Green Lantern lacked any semblance of effort, depth or excitement, Doctor Strange is what happens when you do all that same stuff (for the most part) well. The cast are invested, the action (what we can see of it) is imaginative and the writing's sharp.
As a rich, arrogant, goatee-wearing genius at the pinnacle of his field, it would be easy to shrug Stephen Strange off as a Tony Stark clone, but the similarities are superficial at worst, and Benedict Cumberbatch covers the journey from top-of-his-game to despair, to out-of-his-depth, to getting-the-hang-of-things comfortably, while also delivering on the humour and action. If there's one chink in his armour it's the accent. Hugh Laurie's in House may have taken some getting used, but at least it was consistent, and I otherwise can't think of a single example of an English actor struggling with an American accent. Cumberbatch's goes from passable to jarring, and even his weapons-grade cheek-bones couldn't distract from it.
As mentioned, Mikkelsen and McAdams are given very little to do, but they do it well, with both given a solid minute-and-a-half each to show some emotional depth, and even a couple of comedic moments.
Chiwetel Ejiofor is also a little short-changed, but he brings gravitas to what could have been a token side-kick, and offers just enough to hint at Mordo's inevitable (if you've read the comics) arc.
The biggest surprise for me was Tilda Swinton. Obviously she gives a good performance - she's one of those actors who apparently can't do otherwise - but I was among those who cried foul at the casting of a white actor as an Asian character. I'm not going to go into the whole white-washing debate here - Hollywood has a problem and it knows it does - but given the already lacking diversity among its heroes, this felt like a missed opportunity for Marvel to (at least in part) redress the balance. However, in a film so lacking in originality, there was something refreshing in the wise old sage being a (more or less) quite ordinary white English woman. It would have been easy to make the character the typical Dali Lama knock-off - all wisdom and enlightenment, with a touch of wise old wit - but instead The Ancient One is flawed, uncertain, occasionally vulnerable, and is shown to be mostly just doing their best. That's not to say the character shows all that because she's a woman, or that an older male or female Asian actor couldn't have portrayed all those things, but the character's gender and ethnicity helped subvert expectations and add something new. On top of that, Swinton is also given the opportunity to do a bit of arse-kicking, and managed that with aplomb.
I still feel they could've found a happy middle-ground by casting an Asian actress, but it wasn't as embarrassingly tenuous as I expected it to be.
Still, strong as the rest of the cast is, no-one steals a scene quite like Strange's cape - it reminded me of Carpet from Aladdin - and if there isn't at least one shot of it flirting with Thor's cape when the two inevitably meet, I'll be disappointed.
So, in summary, it's all business as usual for another MCU origin: strong cast playing mostly filler characters, a strong hero, strong action, and some interesting universe building.
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