Doctor Strange is a Psychedelic Visual Feast

Benedict Cumberbatch in Doctor Strange

I would like to begin this review with taking a brief moment to note that I am not a comic book fan. Despite having seen every Marvel movie and eagerly awaiting the sequel to Guardians of the Galaxy I have never read a comic book from Marvel, so I went into this movie while being blissfully unaware of its accuracy or respect to the source material.

That being said, Doctor Strange is the most visually stunning movie I've seen this year. Admittedly, its plot is lackluster, every element of its story seemed remarkably similar to various plot-lines in the rest of the Marvel franchise, and there were moments where the soundtrack felt like little more than stock action movie soundtrack which was provided to add to the noise during fight scenes. Even the protagonist, Stephen Strange, often times seemed to have the exact same personality of Tony Stark from the Iron Man films - admittedly, this is a petty thing to take issue with, especially since his arrogance is intended to be his fatal flaw, even if it is a rather overused one in action movies.

For all its flaws and imperfections, Doctor Strange was still immensely enjoyable. The acting was fantastic (I could be a bit biased because Tilda Swinton is my favorite actress and she was stunning and wonderful as ever in this), the humor was well-written with impeccable timing, and the visuals were absolutely astonishing.

Doctor Strange, visually, is comprised of lush and beautiful expanses of abstract imagery with psychedelic sequences which could easily be short pieces of their own entirely separate from the film and still be breathtaking. In the past, most efforts at using computer generated graphics to convey frightening and bizarre brightly colored visions only served to come across as campy and funny regardless of the director's intentions. In the case of Doctor Strange, however, the visuals are able to be exactly what they are intended to be - frightening, bizarre, beautiful, or depicting something that the human mind can barely comprehend, depending on the scene.

As a whole, Doctor Strange is neither better nor worse than the collective Marvel franchise. It is by no means a perfect movie but it isn't worse than The Incredible Hulk was, and it certainly isn't better than Captain America: Civil War. Still, it is a movie worth watching, and its detachment from the Avengers series (for now) is a nice breath of fresh air as it provides audiences a glimpse into the life of a brand new superhero, which also means that people who have not been able to keep up with the confusing tangled mess of storylines within the Marvel universe will still be able to find pleasure in this film.

Even if you're not particularly interested in superhero movies, I highly recommend seeing Doctor Strange in theaters so that you can experience the visuals in all their pulsing and dizzying glory. The imagination and amount of time which went into crafting the psychedelic sequences scattered throughout the film make it well worth the price of admission, and they also provide a fun and bizarre experience previously not achieved in the superhero genre.

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