- Nothing else going on today, right?
- Time enough to sit around, smoke doobies, and watch matinees wherein people with cheekbones throw special effects at one another?
- And then drink coffee (and smoke more doobies) and write a thousand words of nonsense about it?
- No worldly matters of pressing urgence?
- Good.
- Okay, let’s get this out of the way:
- Boccecourt Chameleonface.
- Bongledong Coffeemate.
- Bradleycooper Cooperbradley.
- Okay, I needed to get that out of my system: obviously, Doctor Strange is played by Benedict Cumberbatch doing his Doctor House impression, and he fights Mads Mikkelson, who is the single most European man that has ever lived.
- Along the way, several minorities aid Doctor Strange and tell him how special he is.
- You know, Enthusiasts, that I don’t write reviews.
- Someone wants to pay me to do it, I will, but no one is, so I will not: if you’re looking for a thumbs up or down, then you have come to the wrong place.
- Go read A.O. Scott, who is a grown man who makes a living seeing comic book movies.
- (Why am I mocking him? That’s a great scam.)
- And make no mistake: Doctor Strange is a comic book movie; moreover, it is a Marvel movie, mostly the script.
- Do they still make paint-by-numbers?
- Paint-by-numbers was a big thing when I was a kid: you get the book and a special set of paint labeled with numbers instead of colors, and the book would have line drawings of a well-known piece of art broken into numbered segments.
- You would paint the sections marked 1 with the appropriate paint, and so forth, and when you had finished there would be a painting (kinda).
- I think they found the screenplay version of paint-by-numbers.
- Stephen Strange blah blah arrogant surgeon barble barble car crash yadda yadda magical foreigners boom boom boom special effects ending.
- There were several iterations of this line of dialogue:
- “Doctor Strange, do you remember the thing you said to me in the first act? Well, I now repeat it back to you in the third.”
- The bad guy did bad things for reasons which I feel like they explained in the film, but I was not paying attention to.
- The hero was tall.
- It’s that kind of story: either there is exposition, or there is CG-enhanced gesturing.
- SO MUCH GESTURING.
- According to movies, magic is 80% gesturing.
- The other 20% is wardrobe.
- You cannot wield the Wand of Watoomb in your jeans and tennis sneakers: it requires a robe/karate pajama/amulet combination.
- The draw for this film is the hoodoo, and there is so much of: cities fold in on themselves, and Hong Kong fractalizes into spiraling mandalas, and the Dark Dimensions look just like Steve Ditko drew them.
- These effects are rather special. (Except for the car crash scene, which looks like a well-made video game from 2011.)
- See the 3D version, or the IMAX if it’s available, and smoke many doobies immediately prior to entering the theater.
- It’s trippy, man.
- Anyway: it’s a Marvel movie, with all that entails, and the most consistent feature of Marvel movies has been the hiring of actors who are stupidly over-qualified for the jobs.
- Anthony Hopkins, and Alfre Woodard, and Glenn Close, and Tommy Lee Jones; that sort.
- Strange is no exception: Chiwetel Ojiofor–one of my favorite actors since Serenity–and Mikkelson are superb; so are the women, Tilda Swinton and Rachel McAdams.
- Rachel McAdams plays The Girl, and this sentence I am currently writing represents more thought about her character than the screenwriters applied to her over the entire course of production.
- Marvel movies are not about The Girl: they are about white guys learning how special they are, and how they can do anything they want.
- Tilda Swinton plays the Ancient One, who lives in China and is not Chinese.
- At one point, one of the characters exposits that she is Celtic, but she ain’t fucking Celtic.
- Tilda Swinton is Tllda Swinton.
- That would have been an audacious choice to have the Ancient One actually be Tilda Swinton, like she defends the Earth with magic and she also does movies.
- “That’s the Ancient One? She looks like Tilda Swinton.”
- “That’s because she is.”
- “What now?”
- That’s a twist you would not see coming, as opposed to the other twists in the movie which you can be sure of before even leaving your house.
- Again: this movie is Super Hero Product – subsection: origin story.
- First half is the Call to Action, and the Shaman, and the Training; second half, the hero gets thrown into a situation he can’t deal with, but overcomes through believing in himself and also by using something he got in the first act.
- I only had one major quibble, and it is a ludicrous one.
- The secret magic monastery (NOT Hogwarts) in which Doctor Strange learns to wave his hands around mysteriously has a library, naturally, because you kinda have to have a magic library.
- I mean, what’s the point of anything if you’re not going to have a magic library?
- And this particular magic library, like all others, has a Librarian.
- (The most magical of libraries only hire orangutans as librarians, but that’s a whole other story.)
- He is Wong, who in the comics and in the next films plays Strange’s assistant.
- In the comics, he was referred to as Doctor Strange’s manservant, but I have a feeling they’re going to drop that terminology.
- Wong is your prototypical magic librarian: you don’t check out the books so much as ask him if you may borrow them.
- You can’t have just anyone walking in and grabbing the Necronomicon.
- That’s how you get demons.
- Do you wanna get demons?
- Because that’s how you get demons.
- Which is all good and proper, except either Wong or whoever his boss is simply has no idea how to run a magic library.
- For example, the Ancient One’s private stock of occult literature is not hidden in a secret vault, or turned invisible, or protected by giant, fanged bookworms.
- They’re chained to a bike rack in the middle of the room, and not even with mystical chains.
- Chains.
- Like the Ancient One went to Home Depot and they cut her a length.
- The Orb of Agomotto is also sitting in the middle of the room, and they try to slip in some bullshit about “the relic choosing the owner,” but I think this is just a case of lax security.
- Plus–PLUS–the library has apparently had no protection spells cast over it whatsoever.
- The magicians in Doctor Strange can create portals between places, and not with any great effort: it is literally the first trick that Strange learns.
- Wong won’t give him a book he wants, so Strange zaps a little portal between his room and the library and grabs the book.
- You have to be shitting me.
- What kind of magic library is this that you can just blip in and out of?
- The whole movie is about how Tilda Swinton and the rest of the magicians protect the world from the Dark Dimensions, but someone who has been learning spells for two weeks can apparate into the room where all the important books are kept?
- We learn in the next scene that what Doctor Strange did was against the rules.
- Rules?
- Are we using the honor system, Doctor Strange?
- It’s against the rules to steal money from a bank, too, but they still lock the doors.
- Get your shit together, Wong.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: doctor strange
- If you do not plink on the piano in an ominous fashion to start your trailers, the movie cops come to your house and shoot you right in your cocaine.
- Beeblebrox Castanet is sad, and wants to know things.
- He learns things, and shaves.
- But someone is evil, and has also learned things.
- Burpandfart Crapandpiss doubts himself, but he is encourages by a Magical Negro.
- Literally.
- There is Inceptioning.
- We end with a joke.
Odds I See This Film In A Theater 30%. I like the character, and I like Mads Mikkelson, who plays the bad guy, but I’m tired of people throwing computer graphics at each other.
- I am standing strong on my “pass” on Eddie Redmayne.
- His face is like a whimsical dodecahedron.
- And the other guy, the fat guy?
- Between the two of them, there’s a lot of theater-kidding go on in this trailer.
- If you sang the first line of a Sondheim song, the two of them would finish it, in harmony, at the top of their lungs.
- They’re desperate for more Harry Potter bullshit, except this one’s set in Depression-era New York instead of Magic Eton, and instead of cute kids and scenery-chewing veterans, it’s Colin Ferrell and Jon Voight and terrible CG.
- The main guy loses some monsters and has to get them back or blah blah blah.
- Basically Pokemon Go with wands.
- We end with a joke.
Odds I See This Film In A Theater 1%. If Amanda Seyfried called and wanted to see it with me, I would go. Other than that, it’s not going to happen.
- Yes, please.
- Vietnam movie with a giant ape?
- Viet Kong?
- Yes, please.
- Samuel L. Jackson and John Goodman glowering at one another, and then monsters vs. Charlie Company?
- Again: yes, please.
- Brie Larson is having a great year.
- She won an Oscar, so now she gets to be a super-hero, and also the blonde lady in the monster movie who looks up at the monster.
- “Blonde Lady Who Looks At Monster” is a coveted role in Hollywood, if you think about it.
- I am, however, not buying Tim Higgledypiggledy as an action hero.
- I am also not buying him as Taylor Swift’s boyfriend.
- I will continue to buy him as Loki.
- This film is apparently the first in what will hopefully be a series: the next one will star Godzilla*, and the third will be the showdown between the two.
- Yes, please.
*I was wrong: that last Godzilla, the one he was in for eight minutes? That was the first, and it was so terrible I forgot it existed.
Odds I See This Film In A Theater 99%. If someone were to pay me a substantial-enough fee, or there were mutant bikers setting peacocks on fire outside my door the day I wanted to go, or my girlfriend Amanda Seyfried didn’t want to go, then I would forego seeing this masterpiece in the theater. Otherwise, the whole point of this movie is the big screen: King Kong’s all scaled up so he can fight Godzilla, and John Goodman’s in it.
- This looks dreadful, but I am prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt having just seen The Man From UNCLE the other night, also directed by Guy Richie, and enjoying it throughly.
- And I also liked Snatch and the first Sherlock Holmes movie, even though it made no sense.
- King Arthur has a black friend now, played by Djembe Houston.
- I am sure that the guy who is playing King Arthur auditioned for the par of Thor.
- Is Jude Law the bad guy?
- Is he Merlin?
- Why are there elephants in England?
- It is cold in England.
- Elephants would die, especially in the past.
- Why do you have elephants, King Arthur?
- And do not tell me that the black guy brought them, because that is racist as shit, King Arthur.
- Fuck you, King Arthur.
- How’d you get to be king, anyway?
- …
- You all did the Monty Python bit, didn’t you?
- Predictable.
- King Kong>King Arthur.
Odds I See This Film In A Theater 10%. This seems like something CotD (Cousin on the Dead) would enjoy and he always buys the popcorn, so I’m going with 10%.
Any more videos will crash a page or two, so I’ll do the stupid DC movies in a separate post. Stay tuned, true believers!
- Let’s just get this out of the way:
- Blarneystone Crumblybuns.
- Bigbabyjesus Cappadonna.
- Barnacle Cupmyballs.
- Binglebangle Coopersmith.
- Henceforth, he shall be known as BC, because I am a child and cannot resist the siren song of that man’s deeply ridiculous name.
- This is the 19th Marvel film, and 27th overall superhero picture, to come out this month; there will be think pieces on many blogs declaring Peak Superhero in the coming weeks and months, but remember I called it first.
- Or maybe this is what we want, as a species.
- Maybe this what we deserve.
- This particular Superhero Product® is another origin story in the increasingly-crowded Marvel Cinematic Universe: the death of Stephen Strange, MD, and his rebirth as Dr. Strange, Sorcerer Supreme of Earth.
- It seems they’ve kept the basic story: an arrogant but brilliant surgeon is crippled in a car accident, causing him to grow a beard and wander the earth, winding up in Nepal; there he meets the Ancient One and learns magic.
- From there, Dr. Strange moves back to New York and into a kick-ass brownstone in the Village, 177A Bleeker Street, and it was called the Sanctum Sanctorum and looked like this:
- Holy shit, how much you think that building costs now?
- $50 million?
- Barbara Corcoran would get the listing, I know that.
- The skylight is a mystic sigil that protects the building and its occupants from magical attack, plus it looks bitchin’.
- Also, you have a bit of a yard, as pictured here:
- People in the Marvel Universe want to live in Manhattan so badly, that they’ll live next to that unholy light show.
- That’s not the climax of a battle on the ethereal plane with his longtime nemesis the Dread Dormammu: that’s just a Tuesday night.
- It always looks like that.
- In this building lives Strange, along with his manservant Wong.
- Swear to God.
- There he is.
- Wong is doing kung fu because of course he is.
- In the movie, Wong will be played by a guy named Wong.
- Marvel is hoping that two Wongs make a right.
- …
- I apologize.
- Strange was always a tough character to write for: he lived mostly in the visuals and he was drawn best by Steve Ditko.
- Clearly, no one was reading it for the words, although Dr. Strange had some of the best words.
- There was the Wand of Watoomb.
- The all-seeing Eye of Agamotto.
- And, when startled, he would yell “By the hoary hosts of Hoggoth!”
- Which is the best thing to say in any situation.
- Try it the next time the doctor gives you bad news: it’ll lighten up a tough moment.
- And he fought wonderfully-named villains like the aforementioned Dormammu, and Baron Mordo.
- Ditko drew him well during the Sixties, then he had series on-and-off through the years, but mostly joined up with teams and appeared in those books: he was an Avenger, a Defender, he may have been a member of the Fantastic Four for a minute.
- The character was prickly, though, and tough to root for and impossible to identify with; he was at his best when trapped in a room with other superheros bickering with them.
- (Which brings up the question: why does the Sorcerer Supreme need to team up with, say, Beast? What does the blue monkey-person bring to the table that the Sorcerer Supreme doesn’t? The Beast is good at hanging upside down with his mutant feet; Dr. Strange could solve the problem on his own. Don’t get me started on the Defenders: that team had Hulk, Namor, and Strange. And then fucking Nighthawk and Hellcat, who were people in costumes. And Gargoyle, who was a rock-person. Defenders was the charity team of the Marvel Universe.)
- With that out of the way: the trailer.
- Car accident.
- Oh nooooo.
- How are Billybibbit Cumberland’s cheekbones?
- They’re fine, thank God, but his hands are now shaky, which is disadvantageous for a surgeon.
- Oh, look: Amy McAdams in in this.
- Or Rachel Adams.
- One of them.
- I’m sure her character will be as well-developed as the other female leads in Marvel films.
- A shot transitioning from New York to Nepal, and BC now begins narrating; he is using Dr. House’s American accent
- I don’t know why Strange couldn’t have been British; after all, the Ancient One is now a white lady.
- We’ll get to her, but first there is a man with a sword walking down the middle of the street, as one does.
- Chiweti Ojiofor is the guy with the sword and he should be in everything; I have previously enjoyed him in the film Serenity in the role as “guy with the sword.”
- He is playing Baron Mordo, who in the the comics kills the Ancient One, but does not do so in this trailer.
- (Also, you can’t really kill anybody named the Ancient One: he just Obi-Wanned right back as a ghost.)
- Speaking of the Ancient One, and white ladies, Strange now meets the Ancient One, who is a white lady.
- In fact, it’s the whitest lady.
- Helena Bonham-Carter is a close second, but Tilda Swinton is the whitest lady actress.
- This is what the Ancient One used to look like:
![[PDF] Ancient One (sorcerer) -](http://thoughtsonthedead.com/wp-content/uploads/PDF-Ancient-One-sorcerer-.jpg)
- It’s a bold casting choice in 2016, is all I’m saying.
- Perhaps being that magical turns you into a white lady?
- When Gandalf got more magical, he turned white.
- I’ll give Marvel this: they could have turned him white, or made him a lady, but they went all in.
- She is also a bald white lady, and knows kung fu; she punches Strange so hard his soul flies out of his body and onto the astral plane.
- Even Mike Tyson can’t hit that hard.
- Then there are special effects.
- People magic at one another, via the use of special effects.
- Blackberry Campanella makes faces at stuff, and then has a character moment.
- To level with you, Enthusiasts: at this point in the trailer I was noncommittal.
- But it closed with this shot:
- Take my money.
We’ll discuss this later.
This is a terrible Super-Team, honestly. I can’t even see these four agreeing on a name, let alone getting anything done. There are a number of different agendas going on, plus Galactus would eat the earth the first chance he got.
Electro (this is the old comic book version, who was white and had the coolest costume ever, not the movie version, who was black and sucked) is pretty much just a bank robber with zappity powers. This should give you an idea of how dumb comic books were back then (and still mostly are today): the guy controlled electricity and he used this ability to rob banks at noon.
Luke Cage and Doctor Strange are both getting their intellectual properties serviced this year, Strange in a movie and Cage on Netflix. Is this racist? Maybe a little, but Doctor Strange needs a lot bigger effects budget than Luke Cage: the Doctor battles demon dimensions and has a Cloak of Levitation and goes to Tibet, while Luke mostly hangs out in Harlem and punches people.
Luke Cage was Marvel’s stab at Blaxploitation: he’s just Shaft, except Shaft wouldn’t wear buccaneer boot. (Superheros were big into buccaneer boots.) Luke was convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, and volunteered for an experiment while in prison that gave him super-strength. Basically, Super-Shaft. Lately, the character’s been allowed to wear human clothes and turned into an actual human being and an Avenger; he no longer uses a chain as a belt.
These are Toy Biz Marvel Legends: for the first time in the ’00’s, Marvel finally got some good toys. They were big hunks of well-sculpted (mostly) plastic with a good heft to them and many points of articulation, plus it wasn’t just Spider-Man and Cap every time. The figures came out in waves of five or six; you’d get one superstar, but the rest would be obscure weirdos like Captain Britain or Deathlok which no one wanted to buy.
So Toybiz got smart: starting around wave 8 or 9, they included a piece of a larger figure in with each individual toy. It was called a Build-A-Figure. You had to buy the entire wave to make Galactus, which got pricey. In Toy Biz’s defense: HE IS SO FUCKING COOL. (Also, the strategy was faulty: with a gnarly and super-desirable BAF like Galactus, you could put some real scrubs in the wave and people would still buy them, but I just looked and it’s Nightcrawler, and Professor X, and War Machine, and First Appearance Grey Hulk. Later on, they had shitty BAFs like Mojo* and the characters were Longshot and Psylocke. I ain’t buying Longshot and Psylocke.)
(As to what this is apropos of: I collected this junk for years and they’re sitting in a box in my closet. Gonna sell them on Ebay, I think, so I have to take pictures of them all. I won’t subject you to the whole thing, unless you’re entertained by it. I think I’m opening this one up to a vote. Every landowner over 18 is entitled to a vote, and the poll tax can be paid by clicking the Donate Button.)
YOU COULDN’T FUCKING HELP YOURSELF, COULD YOU?
In my defense: name another daily Dead-themed satirical blogs that could wrap up a post on children’s toys with a poll tax joke.
…
Yeah, kinda.
Right? Worth something.
We need to have a talk.
We’ve been talking for years.
Yeah, about that.
- Trust me when I say this: if you don’t know who Mojo is, then you’re better off. He came from the Mojoverse, and let that piece of information be your warning sign.
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