Recently, I went to watch Doctor Strange and here is what I think about it. This contains spoilers for Doctor Strange (2016)

Doctor Strange starts off with showing us the main villain, Kaecilius. He wishes to take power from the Dark Dimension and summon Dormammu to give eternal life to other people? Or at least that’s what Dormammu wants him to believe. Anyway, he did a ritual to bring the Dark Dimensions to Earth but caused his eyes to look weird. Oh and the first time we saw Kaecilius, he had 20 or so goons but later on during the ritual, only 4 or 3 were present. Where did the rest go?

Now we move on to Stephen Strange. He is basically an arrogant neurosurgeon. The movie could have focus more on his life before he broke his hand. Maybe explain his wealth or show more examples of him being arrogant. But instead, they rushed the whole first part of the film. Which I think is the most important part.

This is where the movie fails. More time could have been used to explore more. There was a scene where Stephen Strange starts shaving in Kamar-Taj and suddenly the next day he is so concentrated on fixing his hand. Why didn’t they make this movie 2 hours and 30 minutes?

Anyways, back to Stephen Strange’s arrogance. This guy didn’t want to operate on people solely because of their uninteresting backstories. He only operates on people who got into interesting accidents. They don’t have time to do any more examples of Stephen Strange’s arrogance so instead they just have their characters say “Stephen Strange” and “arrogant” together in every sentence they have.

This movie is not only bad though, it has this ability to make the CGI look mind-blowing especially in the Mirror Dimension. They made everything turn and curl, it’s just so trippy.

Doctor Strange also manages to introduce us to this world of sorcerers and wizards while not making it sound ridiculous. Also how many villains have you seen get defeated so uniquely ?

We see Doctor Strange at his lowest point when his hands got destroyed and now he can no longer be what he is best at being, a neurosurgeon. At the end credits scene, why didn’t we see Doctor Strange’s hands shaking anymore? And we never got to see his shaking hands in Infinity War either, was he cured?

In this film, Stephen Strange is new to everything, which makes him often blurt out relatable jokes.

Baron Mordo’s character arc is actually quite interesting. We get to see him thinking very highly of the Ancient One but then her death and her reveal of breaking the rules, inevitably leading to Baron leaving Doctor Strange after the fight. Which may lead to him being a villain in Doctor Strange 2?

The Cloak of Levitation is comic relief but also proves to be useful in saving Doctor Strange and Wong is just a complicated sidekick.

During the Ancient One’s death, we are told that Stephen Strange is scared of failures and him overcoming that lead him to defeat Dormammu, by failing constantly.

Overall, this film had a great mix of choreographed fight scenes and comedy but needs a longer duration.

Ratings: 6.5/10