Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine Dr. Strange - The Movie

I'm going to transfer some comments I see in the shoutbox here

Emily Sivana: yay! I loved it.

Myg - Andy S: Well that's a strong endorsement... I've been going to the movies a lot - saw Moonlight and Handmaiden ... now Dr. Strange shall be on my list

Jfposey: It was very much the psychedelic feel of Ditko in the alternate dimensions.

My own opinion:

It was an OK movie. The special effects were great. Worth seeing on the big screen.

It seems like they used half to 2/3 of the movie to tell Dr. Strange's origin. I feel that they could have done it in half the time and devoted more movie to the villains/challenge.

Regarding the villains, I did not get a sense of danger. Maybe they should have taken some time to show the attack on London and the after effects (kind of like they did with Hong Kong) Done earlier in the movie it would have made the danger seem more real rather than having us just told that there is a danger if the 3 shields fall. For that matter why wasn't the Ancient One pursuing those evil sorcerers? A throw away line about them being hidden too well or that time/history must run its course would have helped.

I did like the development of Mordo and enjoyed the second after credits scene.

I really enjoyed it, and I say this as someone who is generally apathetic toward the majority of Marvel Studios' output. I loved the psychedelic visuals, which felt like the leapt straight out of a Ditko page from the 60's. The humor was pretty good too and I think Strange's sarcasm worked a lot better for me than Tony Stark's because he spends the entire movie getting the crap beat out of him until he learns to stop being a jerk.

Quis, I agree that the villain could have used more work and I would have preferred if Dormammu had been a more prominent character before the final act. Alas, that seems to be something Marvel struggles with consistently with these films...

I agree that this suffers basically because movie studios feel the need to tell (or retell) the origin story at the start of every franchise. Part of me wishes they could have done the Nightmare story, which is technically Dr.Strange's first appearance, and then explained the origin in a different movie or a TV show. For some reason, the studios think we need to know their backstories in order to care about these characters, and that tends to make movies long and slow. I think fantasy/science fiction series suffer from this as well; most of my friends started Harry Potter with the 2nd book/movie. I personally skipped the first Thor movie because I read the comics so I felt I wouldn't miss anything.

The villain were kind of minor, and I wonder if having Dormammu in this movie was a mistake. Dr.Strange doesn't have a lot of unique villains (most of them are random evil magicians like the one in this movie). I did like that they gave the main human villain a motivation to differentiate him with the pure evil that is Dormammu.


I loved the movie though, other than the pacing. I loved all the Ditko goodness. I enjoy reading about different dimensions and entities in the Marvel Universe and it was cool to see it on screen. The casting was superb, and I hope Night Nurse (Palmer in this move) gets a TV show like Peggy did.

Again, I didn't mind having the origin. I just thought they could have cut the amount of time they spent on it. Then they could have shown the attack on London and make it as devastating as the Hong Kong one. Then you could have had conflict between Strange and the Ancient One with Strange (and Mordro) wanting to go into battle right away and the Ancient One saying that the time was not right