Dr Strange Review

So, I went to see Dr Strange. The end.

Just kidding. I had this on a facebook post as one of the movies it felt like I was supposed to be really excited about it coming out, but in reality I was "meh." I had the same projection on Fantastic Beasts and have been more than pleasantly surprised to be wrong on that one, but with Strange it came in right about on target. I should clarify that on target for "meh," at least in this case, includes enjoying the film ... as long as I didn't have to do more than the 2 minute drive/10 minute walk down to the one-screener in my small town and pay 7 bucks (I call it the Guthrie test ... if I had driven the half hour to other theaters and paid 9, and especially if I had paid the NYC 15, I would have felt like I wasted resources a bit). I should mention that one of the reasons to make a point of all this is that it felt like the expectation (by maybe not the larger world but at least a particular larger world) of the expectation (on the part of the individual) had to do with either possibilities of theology or being written by a Christian (from what one person said at least).

So, I'll start off by giving my positives (and the negatives aren't really huge ... they just keep the goods from being really huge either).

First, Tilda Swinton is a very good actress, IMHO, and she's very distinctive. I have loved her ever since I first saw her in Constantine. I'm not really on the whole wetting my pants about Cumberbatch thing, but I do think he's a good actor, although I felt like his arrogance might have been a bit caricatured in the beginning, and thus humility a bit flattened in the end. Some of the humor was pretty good, and I like Rachel Mcadams and her character here.

But the enjoyment was more than just good performances. I did think there were some larger values there. For one, the Hippocratic oath bit was an actual really nice bringing in of ethics. But the one that stood out to me, if I had to pick "here's the single biggest positive," would be the manner of "defeating" the devil (I'm just going to take that for granted and not break my back finding the name from the movie and double checking it all the time), but that has two sides to it. First is the unequivocally positive part, which is the willingness to die over and over and over and over again to save those on earth. This is a nice literary instantiation of the exhortation to "take up your cross daily and follow me."

But the other sides of it are that his hope is not to have to do it for too long and the bigger issue of bargaining with evil. My take is that we live in a fallen and temporary world and that the actual defeat is beyond us, so as long as we're not doing evil, there may be a possible allowability of bargaining (I'm not saying any one case or all cases in general are justified, just that I can see a vague possibility of justification for some aspects). I'm all right with admitting that possibility that such could be true in clearly circumscribed cases, but I'm not sure that all who get excited about films being by Christians might be, if they examine the thing accurately.

As regards the possibility of theology in the film, though, this isn't really theology proper on time. It's virtue exemplar using time manipulation as a narrative mechanism. If you want to see more what the fuller actual theology of time looks like in the Christian Tradition, I'll be writing a post shortly that brings in aspects of it in talking about different aspects of the project of literature. Of course, that will be discursive exposition, not actual narrative fiction, but it (hopefully) will give a better picture of what theology of time actually looks like. For actual narrative fiction, I would have to think a bit ... but Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys pops into my head as a possible place to start.

OK, so I just remembered that I do have another quasi-negative. This whole thing of drawing from other dimensions to do your mojo feels off and not thought out to me, at least from the perspective of the excitement I sensed about the movies' theological possibilities and at least one guy who seemed a bit excited that "the guy who wrote it is actually a Christian." The dark world guy is definitely meant to be the Christian devil, but if that is that specific and that evil, and if the arch-sorceress's drawing on it for longer life needs to be explained, it seems like these other nameless "dimensions" should probably be named to some extent and whether they also might be dissonant with "good" and whether drawing on them has any adverse effect. But the schema is just sort of accepted for its value as mechanical justification for the film's action working.

Oh yeah, and the whole thing of needing to have the ring in order to be able to do anything left me a little flat. I mean, it's not really focused magic, but Harry manages to blow up Aunt Marge in Prisoner of Azkaban without a wand (for probably the largest consideration on the role of focus items in magical fiction, at least in contemporary fiction that I have read, see Jim Butcher's Dresden Files novels, although, come to think of it, there could be stuff in Patrick Rothfuss's Name of the Wind, but it's been a while since I read that ... but these aren't textbooks with chapters titled "Focus Items" ... you have to comb through the narratives for descriptions, and there is quite a bit of narrative in the now 14 Dresden Files novels) But these sorts of things are more minor dissatisfactions than negative points.


Easter Eggs

I definitely stayed around and watched the easter egg with Thor. While I definitely enjoy the mystery aspect of the easter egg (thinking ... hmmm, will they find a way to bring Buckie out of cryo? Will there be a movie with Dr Strainge vs Loki?), I think that there is something in the general practice that emblemizes a certain quality in the MCU overall (and DC as well) that limits it from making really great art. I honestly think there is more in my commentary here than "I hate these big conglomerate, monopoly assholes like Marvel," but if that is all you have ears to hear, then that situation just is what it is.

The easter egg mentality is always looking for not just the sequel, but the serial. The best way I could find to describe what seems limiting to me about it would be to note the visual similarities between the large scenes in Dr Strange and those in Inception (check out my post on Inception here) while stating that I think Dr Strange falls far short of Inception as art. Somehow the lessening of the stand-alone quality lessens the power, and not just because of the practical consideration that being looking for what elements might tie out with other MCU strands or be fodder for multiple sequels distracts from the encountering a particular movie on its own grounds, but that it definitely an issue too.

Don't get me wrong, I definitely have fave moments in Marvel and even places where, in specific instances, I think they did better than DC (although I think I will probably like Wonder Woman better than any MCU hero, and not for the typical reasons ... again, if that is all you can see in my comments, I can't help you to see further). For instance, I thought Marvel did something unique in Civil War in that they kept it focused on the human issue of the tension -- they even accented it by giving a narrative misdirection of making you expect "ok, now they have to team up to fight the real big baddy" but then bringing you back to the human tension, whereas Batman vs Superman did go for the "team up for the boss fight" easy resolution of the tension (although I don't think any villain in the MCU will ever match Jared Leto's joker for being interesting and distinctive ... you may have a problem with his darkness and the darkness of the DC universe in general, and it may be a legit beef, especially if you have kids you don't want watching it, but the gang-banger aspect, the adaptation of the hand tats for the smile, the laugh, the whole performance ... no MCU villain has matched that, not even Micky Rourke, whom I considered to be about the most interesting in Iron Man II, or Utlron and his AI super-sizing of human faults [hmmm, the best MCU villains seem to come out of Stark] ... I'm not including Ledger's joker because I consider that to be Nolan more than DC universe, as evidenced by the fact that it's not really a thing talked about at all that the new DC movies have Affleck and are completely non-synchronous with the Nolan trilogy, not talked about even to the level that people talked about Kilmer replacing Keaton or Clooney replacing Kilmer).

I just don't think either universe is going to make films that I wind up considering really great art, and I think it has to do with the seriality, which is most emblemized in the easter egg that became an MCU signature and that DC follows.



Random Addendum (meaning I had it in somewhere above and thought "it really doesn't fit there anymore and wrecks up the flow, but I still want to say it"):

I also find value in some of the material from DC, like the fact that it is the guy who accidentally killed who realizes that the dreams don't change the reality in Suicide Squad