Doctor Strange

In 2007, after the disastrous Invincible Iron Man, Marvel decided to take its animated movies in a completely different direction — choosing something that would have an extremely hard time becoming a live action movie. Doctor Strange was directed by Patrick Archibald, Jay Oliva and Richard Sebast, and stars Bryce Johnson as Dr. Strange, Paul Nakauchi as his trainer, Wong, Michael Yama as the Ancient One, and Kevin Michael Richardson as the traitorous Mordo. Richardson is a personal favorite of mine — he's also voiced Trigon on Teen Titans and Panthro on Thundercats.

Now, I do have to preface this review by saying I've never read a single Doctor Strange comic, nor have I seen much of him in any forms of media. I've always known he was the Sorcerer Supreme, and that was about it. I think my limited knowledge of the character helped me enjoy this movie, because I wasn't held back by any ideas of what was supposed to be or how good things could have been. I took everything presented here at face value, and I kind of liked it.

I'll start with the fun opening that tells us exactly what's in store for us. We get a bunch of sorcerers fighting a demon, and everything's pretty neat. The action is good, the variety of powers is nice, and the demon itself was kind of cool looking. I even buy the main premise of magical beings fighting demons unseen in the streets of the "real" world. I'm not normally a big fan of magic, but in this case, I accept it. Actually, I think all my problems with magic arise when it gets meshed with other worlds. I absolutely hate it when Iron Man has to deal with magic, but this movie makes no mention of any other superheroes, so it's all good for me.

This movie had a lot of the same people working on it who worked on Invincible Iron Man. Luckily, it seems they more or less learned their lessons from that fiasco of a film. One of my complaints there was that Tony Stark's injury to his heart was brushed off like it was nothing. But in this movie, Dr. Strange's injury to his hands was an essential part of his character and the story. I also liked the how the accident happened — with creepy ghost kids. This movie did include a nice mix of horror. But even more importantly, we got to see Strange deal with his injury. We saw him travel the world and exhaust all his resources in search of a remedy. It was only after he had done all he could, spent his last dime, when he was ready to enter the world of magic. And that's the way it's supposed to be.

Another problem with the Iron Man movie is that we never saw Tony Stark become a hero. He was just always naturally heroic, then they tried to make him a playboy by showing him in a *gasp* hot tub with a girl! Scandalous! Anyway, Doctor Strange made sure to actually give us a character arc. Dr. Strange truly did start out as a jerk, and we followed his journey toward becoming a hero. We also got a nice backstory with his little sister to show us how he became a jerk. Having your little sister die while you operated on her would mess up anybody. And I give credit to this movie for not making Strange instantly flip a switch when he decided to join the monastery. He still had more training to do, which usually involved him tearing down a wall that was a physical manifestation of the metaphorical wall of emotion and self-doubt in his head. If they ever do make a live action Doctor Strange movie, I hope they remember this essential element.

Now, the entire ending with Dormammu using the nightmares of children to return(?) makes absolutely no sense. However, I was surprisingly fine with it. Part of it was because I was in a more accepting mood through this whole movie. These are sorcerers who fight demons. What more do I need to know? Another reason I accepted this ending was because the action was pretty cool — especially the flying piranha-like demons that instantly devoured the flesh off people. So that's another big lesson for the live action movie people: If you focus on character development and keep the action cool, then people won't worry about the demon's plots making sense.

I enjoyed this movie. I never wanted a sequel to it, or a spinoff TV series, nor has this movie inspired me to read a Doctor Strange comic. And I'm completely indifferent about a live action movie. I'd see it if they made it, but I wouldn't be upset if they didn't make it. And that's because this movie gave me all the Doctor Strange I ever wanted and probably ever needed. Sure, he's been a part of the Marvel universe for a long time, but I think he's best left alone in his own corner, only to be occasionally visited.

Final score: 8