‘Strange’ a left turn for Marvel – ‘Rare superhero’

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LOS ANGELES, Oct 25, (RTRS): “Doctor Strange”, the latest superhero to dominate the big screen, is taking Walt Disney Co’s Marvel universe in an unconventional direction, lead star Benedict Cumberbatch said on Monday. Cumberbatch plays surgeon Stephen Strange, who harnesses mystical magic powers drawn from Eastern cultures. The actor said the new film intentionally takes a different path to Marvel’s other cinematic superheroes such as “Iron Man”, “Captain America” and “Ant-Man”, who draw power from technology. “It was a real left turn for the comic universe, let alone the cinematic one”, Cumberbatch told Reuters of the original 1960s “Doctor Strange” comics at the film’s London premiere.

“It was very dark and mischievous and psychedelic and otherworldly and to try and replicate that in modern cinema is one of the great challenges”, he added. “Doctor Strange”, out in theaters on Nov. 4, follows Strange, a cocky and brilliant surgeon – much like the billionaire “Iron Man” playboy Tony Stark – whose glamorous New York life is taken away from him when his hands are crippled in a car accident. Strange’s desperation to heal his main assets lead him to Nepal, where he encounters the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) and discovers how to harness mystical powers to heal and fight with, as the world faces threats from a menacing otherworldly being. “It’s toying with a lot of new things like parallel universes and kind of philosophical ideas and working on a deeper level … the metaphysical is just a whole new world that’s opened up for Marvel”, co-star Rachel McAdams said. The movie has received positive early reviews, with critics praising the plot, the visuals and the performances.

Enjoyed

“It does feel like a new chapter for Marvel and it’s definitely a new direction for me and I definitely enjoyed playing this character so if people are enjoying it then we’ve done something right”, Cumberbatch said. “Doctor Strange” is the first mainstream leading role for the 40-year-old actor, who developed a steady following through his lead role as BBC’s “Sherlock” and in his Oscar-nominated performance in 2014’s “The Imitation Game.” Cumberbatch and his wife Sophie Hunter announced last week that they are expecting their second child, and the actor said he was “over the moon.”

“Those are moments that you never ever forget — I remember it very clearly and obviously it was early on and so I couldn’t say anything and just yeah there’s nothing like, it’s kind of beyond words. It’s difficult to explain”, he said.

Although Marvel Studios’ “Doctor Strange” offers very few insights into the childhood of its main character, applying what we know about bullying on American schoolyards, it’s safe to assume it wasn’t easy growing up with a name like Stephen Strange. Perhaps that explains the complex that has driven Strange (that rare superhero who keeps his name after acquiring his incredible new powers) to become such an arrogant New York neurosurgeon, flaunting his skills at work and his Lamborghini Huracan outside the office.

Cut from the same mold as playboys Tony Stark (Iron Man) and Bruce Wayne (Batman), Strange easily might have become world’s most insufferable superhero. But instead, it’s the very fact of this deeply insecure and wildly overcompensating character’s determination to prove himself — coupled with the setback by which texting while driving cripples his hands and very nearly derails him of that ambition — that makes “Doctor Strange” which remains the gold standard for thinking people’s superhero movies.

Yes, this new project shares the same look, feel, and fancy corporate sheen as the rest of Marvel’s rapidly expanding Avengers portfolio, but it also boasts an underlying originality and freshness missing from the increasingly cookie-cutter comic-book realm of late. From this second-tier side character, the studio has created a thrilling existential dilemma in which its flawed hero’s personal search for purpose dovetails beautifully with forays into the occult New Age realm of magic and sorcery where Doctor Strange ultimately finds his calling.

While producer Kevin Feige deserves credit for bringing a master plan to Marvel’s big-screen slate, recruiting A-list talent on both sides of the camera and holding them to aesthetic standards that unify the various projects, those parameters are starting to feel every bit as restrictive as real-world physics can be to less-than-super movies. Like the original pulp comics, which were printed with a standard four-color process that permitted a very limited palette, Marvel movies are all starting to look and sound the same, boasting bright primary colors, magic-hour lighting, and bombastic orchestral scores.

Experiment

Generally speaking, there’s less room for directors to experiment when introducing new heroes, and yet Doctor Strange’s tangential standing within the Marvel canon allows a welcome degree of freedom, while the supernatural dimension of his gifts permits filmmaker Scott Derrickson to bend the rules a bit more than his peers — not enough, some would argue. Like “Spider-Man” director Sam Raimi, Derrickson hails from the world of schlock horror, where he made such seat-jumpers as “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” and “Sinister” and here, he transitions smoothly to a far bigger canvas (so big that Imax audiences will benefit from more than an hour of footage captured on the company’s large-format digital cameras).

The key is an in-on-the-joke script, which Derrickson co-wrote with Jon Spaihts and C. Robert Cargill, that ingeniously navigates major plot potholes even as it saddles its actors with ludicrous dialogue. But what actors! As Doctor Strange, Benedict Cumberbatch sheds his British accent but not the attitude, which both attracts and repulses fellow doctor Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams, the most competent — and human — of Marvel’s window-dressing girlfriends).

After the accident, Strange seeks advice from a man named Pangborn (Benjamin Bratt), who broke his back, but somehow learned to heal himself. Though skeptical at first, after meeting the former paraplegic on a basketball court, Strange takes his advice and heads east to Kathmandu, where he meets the Jedi-like Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his master, the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton). Mordo is a fascinating character whose motives are every bit as complex as Strange’s. Those who wish there were more of him in the film would be advised to stick around through both post-credits bonus scenes.

Meanwhile, much has already been written about the casting of the white-skinned Swinton in a role originally conceived as an old Asian man (as if the world needs yet another Mister Miyagi/Pai Mei stereotype), when the only real disappointment there is that the practically extraterrestrial star wasn’t asked to play the title role — because who is stranger? Swinton already walks this earth in some sort of enlightened state, and it’s no far leap to accept her as an ageless oracle with the power to bend matter and slow time. The latter trick, which turncoat ex-disciple Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen) uses for more nefarious purposes, lends the film a staggering visual effects innovation, in which the building-bending seen in Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” is taken to an extreme that would blow even M.C. Escher’s mind.

Whereas we can generally intuit the “rules” that govern most superheroes and their powers, Doctor Strange’s New Age training puts us in a vulnerable place where seemingly anything can happen: One near-death ER sequence manages to be tense, hilarious, and exhilarating at the same time, while another on a hospital balcony is among Marvel’s most poignant. To counter whatever disorder might result, the film is unusually heavy on exposition, and yet Derrickson understands that’s it’s far more satisfying to show than to explain, impressing with one psychedelic sequence after another. Burn a bit of incense or something stronger before watching, and this already hyper-vivid 3D experience is liable to carry you away entirely, especially when Kaecilius proceeds to fold first staircases and later the streets of New York into an elaborate moving kaleidoscope, in which Doctor Strange proceeds to jump, slip, and slide like a pawn in an elaborate, multi-dimensional chess game.

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