Week 86: Doctor Strange

I enjoyed this movie as much the second time as the first. The shock and novelty of the CGI effects is mostly worn off -- although the optical illusion of that intersection depicted in orthographic projection still gives me chills every time -- but what has taken its place is appreciation for how deftly the screenplay manages to pack in so much really dense world-building in a fleet, briskly-moving action movie. For instance, go back to the scene where Mordo and Wong interrupt Stephen Strange's experiments with time: Everything they warn him about would come true in various later MCU productions, and as of this writing, are still coming true. This reminds me of re-watching Guardians of the Galaxy and discovering in hindsight just how much groundwork had quietly been laid without the entertainment value suffering one bit.

I still question the wisdom of making Strange himself such an unlikable protagonist. That's odd to think now, because he might be at peak likability here; his own starring sequel would undermine his personal growth from this film, and both it and No Way Home depict him as hot-headed and unwilling to entertain the possibility that he might not immediately have the right answer in every situation. I appreciate that the comic-book character is also an obnoxiously arrogant know-it-all, but given that Tony Stark still dominated the MCU when this was made, I'm surprised that they didn't tone down that aspect of Strange's personality more. I just watched the off-brand adaptation Doctor Mordrid get riffed on MST3K, and despite its many limitations, it presents a more likable take on the character than big, expensive Marvel Studios would manage. (7/10)

Other random thoughts:

- I find it very hard to believe that a man with Strange's expensive taste in luxury goods and snobbish tendencies would listen to popular hits of the 1970s. That choice felt jarring. Surely he would listen to the highest-fidelity recordings of opera or classical music, or something of similar class? I thought that he was playing the guess-the-song game in the operating room as an attempt to bond with his co-workers and seem like a man of the people, but no, he was later shown listening to "Interstellar Overdrive" while getting dressed alone before the car accident. Someone should give Marvel a memo that just because classic pop/rock hits were successfully deployed in the Iron Man and GOTG films does not mean that they work everywhere.

- Can the rehab specialist working on Strange's hands simply mail him a package full of confidential patient records, especially when Strange is no longer employed as a doctor? That seems like a significant HIPAA violation. There must have been other ways for the plot to lead Strange to Jonathan Pangborn.

- I said before, in the discussion of the first GOTG film linked above, that one of my favorite moments is when Ronan is so jolted by the "dance-off" that he briefly talks like a normal person. The "Mister Doctor" bit here achieves more or less the same, giving Kaecilius just a few seconds where he talks like an ordinary person before he turns back into Standard Evil Villain. I want more moments like these.

- Must Strange have a buff physique in the mirror like every other comic book hero? He might have kept himself in peak shape during his surgeon days, but since the hand injury, his life has fallen apart and he's been in seclusion at Kamar-Taj. Surely working out daily, particularly on his pecs, would not have been a priority? If any MCU hero could get away with a flabby dad-bod, it's the guy who spends all day reading books and making circles with his hands.

- The doors from Kamar-Taj to the New York and London sanctums seem to open into the building interiors, as you'd expect for such secure facilities. Why does the one to the Hong Kong sanctum open a block away?

Discussion question: Given that everything else that Mordo and Wong warned about has come true, the one part that's murky is Mordo's prediction that "the bill comes due, always." In other words, he argued that Strange's use of dark-dimension magic like time manipulation would have negative consequences. One could argue that it saved half of the universe in Infinity War and Endgame, but later titles like No Way Home and Multiverse of Madness certainly show things going wrong as Strange overdoes it with black magic. And yet, even for all of the bad things that happen in those films, they don't tie back to this use of dark magic that Mordo condemned. Thus far, we haven't seen any consequences to Strange's bargain with Dormammu, unless I missed something. So, I ask you: Do you consider Mordo's proverbial "bill" to have come due already in those other titles, or not to have come due yet, or to have been forgotten about entirely by the MCU?

When Strange is about to have his car accident, a colleague on speakerphone is reading off possible surgeries that he could perform. One is an Air Force colonel with a spinal injury in "experimental armor" that sure sounds like James Rhodes immediately after his back injury from Captain America: Civil War. Strange declines to operate, but I bet that a really intriguing episode of What If…? could be spun out from his decision going the other way: Strange agrees to do the operation, and even though he crashes his car anyway, Rhodes's transfer to Strange's hospital is initiated, which means that the Skrulls' attempt to abduct Rhodey from the hospital just after his injury could have failed, which would significantly alter the trajectory of Secret Invasion and (I assume) the upcoming Armor Wars movie if that ever happens. Depending on what treatment Rhodes got in New York, he might not even have remained paralyzed, which could have had smaller ripple effects like the conversion with Nebula in Endgame in which they bonded over their cybernetic enhancements.