Benedict Cumberbatch IS Doctor Strange.

they were. they had fuck all to do with advancing anything more than marvels next cheque.

...

Can't wait!

Any thoughts on the controversy over Tilda Swinton being Tilda Swinton and not Tibetan? On the one hand, whitewashing (though, weirdly, to ensure access to the Chinese market by not having a Tibetan character). On the other hand, the comic book Ancient One is a Western cliche of an Asian wise man, so ... dunno.

If you have no moral problem with, and indeed get excited just anticipating queuing up to, giving money over and over to Marvel, given the way it's treated human beings for the last 55 years, but you get huffy about the casting of imaginary space wizards in one of their films, you're a fucking clown

A lot of the people angry about this probably don't know about Marvel's history. I did see some Asian sff writers suggest to their twitter followers not seeing this film, Great Wall and Ghost In The Shell for the whitewashing.

I think a lot of people probably differ on who they hold accountable for a company's ugly history. The individuals who did the bad things (many of whom are gone) or just holding the company responsible for every wrong they haven't righted.

Ancient One is a cliche but minus the racial caricature in some portrayals he doesn't seem much different to me than innumerable wise old men in Asian fantasy and martial arts stories. I don't see how that could be worse than whitewashing.

seems almost just as fucked up to suggest that casting an asian in that role will result in a stereotype so better not

As long as Marvel maintains a high level of diversity in their casting in general, they can assign roles to whichever actors they feel are most appropriate afaic. While there's outrage at not hiring an Asian actor to portray the Ancient One or (bafflingly) Iron Fist, there's not much positive attention paid to the fact that they've hired a number of non-white actors to portray characters that have traditionally been white in the comics or that, for example, they've chosen to bring the newer Latino version of Ghost Rider into the MCU rather than the previous versions.

Thought the way they handled The Mandarin in Iron Man 3 was a pretty elegant solution to the problem of bringing horrendous 1960s racial caricatures into the 21st century.

I think I got this from ILX in the first place, but: http://www.cbr.com/opinion-i-dont-want-an-asian-american-iron-fist/

In general I'm not offended, but the specific reason for making this films wise one not Tibetan is fucking disgusting.

If anything, the idea of pushing Marvel to cast an Asian actor as Iron Fist feels a little racist. "Because he does martial arts, see? Why would a white guy do that stuff?"

xpost Agreed on that point.

Shang Chi was the asian guy and son of Fu Manchu or something wasn't he?
Iron Fist was intentionally a rich white guy I thought

Yeah, that's right. Maybe people confused the two characters?

So long as Iron Fist has a fist like unto a thing of iron, I'm cool as to who plays him

My feelings about the Ancient One are complicated by me generally being in favor of more Tilda Swinton everywhere all the time.

shes really good in this tbf

classic RAG, classic sic, good work everyone

???

just listened to the score on Spotify and it far, far exceeded my expectations. Michael Giacchino bats about .500 for me (Let Me In and John Carter were great scores, his Star Trek stuff spotty) but this is one of the best things he's done and probably my favorite score album from any of these Marvel Universe things (though I have love for the first two -- silvestri/cap and doyle/thor).

Seen that P Craig Russell collection (which has Sandy Plunkett too) with a bunch of other Dr Strange books today. It probably wouldn't take too long to read most of Dr Strange. I might get this stuff someday if it ever comes out without the hateful recoloring.
Also seen Russell's Elric stuff with decent scans.

I wonder if all this is going to make Dr Strange a bigger character with more stories or if he'll just go back to his regular status.
I never read any Namor comics but if he gets a film I suspect people won't be enthusiastic about the reprints. I think he's quite cool and his setting is a huge opportunity but aside from John Byrne, Bill Everett, Fantastic Four, I don't think there are many fan favourite stories about him.

I may have asked this before but was there a Warren Ellis story in which the Ancient One sexually abuses Baron Mordo?

if there wasn't, 'ol Warren was asleep at the desk that dat

Enjoyed this. Do like that Kaleidoscope visual thing. Might be a bit cliched in places but I think it overcomes it, certainly not another X-Men Apocalypse. Quite fun really.

Comes with 2 scenes after the start of the end credits. One places it further into the Marvel Universe and the other presumably sets up a sequel.
There's also a warning right at the end of the credits about being distracted while driving being dangerous, which I thought quite apt.

WARNING: distracted driving could lead to passing through several trials and becoming an awesome superhero

Thought this was very by-the-numbers Marvel flick except for the trippy visuals, which were great

Hadn't realised that US didn't get this til today. I saw it a week after it appeared.
Still thinking US get films way before we do. & that we'd be behind UK too. But Xmen Apocalypse had a similar release schedule I think.
Odd since I'd think of Marvel films as being from the US.

now for ya

This is a fun movie

This was basically fun - the kind of thing where you have a good time the whole way through, and it's only once it's over that you start realizing all this stuff that didn't really hang together or get resolved, and wondering whether the often-jokey tone cheapened the affair or was the only way to make this fundamentally goofy premise work onscreen. Better than trying to do it all dark and foreboding, I think. I did like how hard they went in Strange being a genuine total asshole at the beginning, but then that isn't really convincingly paid off: he doesn't really become more humble or learn to meditate or go with the flow or anything, and he wins in the end the same way RDJ did in the first Iron Man, by being mister oh-so-clever at the right time. I get how they probably THOUGHT his clever move (trying to avoid specific spoilers) sorta paid off some of the themes, but it just didn't work especially after his training (which I agree was way too compressed - felt like weeks rather than months or years) seemed mostly about martial arts and reading books, the latter of which he was already good at. His storyline with McAdams really didn't resolve well at all either - what should have been a big big moment between them got sort of thrown off by all the comic-relief stuff in that sequence (funny though it was).

Swinton ultimately was playing the "there is no spoon" kid from the Matrix over a whole movie - just not complete enough as a person for us to care what choices she ends up making. Everyone else did manage to elevate their parts a bit above what the movie would look like on paper - a shame Ejiofor's character kinda makes no sense, but he does what he can - and Cumberbatch was really enjoyable to watch I thought.

Thing is, for all that, the comic bits really were funny even if it has that Force Awakens thing where you suspect the movie would be considerably stronger with, say, five or six fewer jokes. And the action and trippy stuff were all well done if not wildly original. We were way down in the front row and it was sort of impossible to even understand what was happening in most of the action scenes but I think that helped the movie a bit. The main thing I was glad of was that we got any "trippy journey through astral planes and Sights Man Was Not Meant To See" type stuff, which is like the whole reason to bother with a Dr. Strange movie at all but the thing you could most easily see somebody chopping out in order to make more of a "it's superheroes but also Harry Potter!" kind of movie. Overall, for one of their lighter or more comic efforts, it's not quite as fun or consistent as Ant-Man but boy it could have been a lot worse.

Yer a wizard, Steven!!

That car accident was really brutal!

one aside: "sling ring" sounds totally stupid and out of place here. if they had to make up a gimmicky object to enable dropped-lightsaber "o no" shots, they should have called it anything but "sling ring."

'tomfoolery jewellery'

Thanks beefheart

I have yet to have seen more than a couple 3D movies that really benefited from being in 3D. Typically I avoid 3D movies, not just because they are a waste of money but also because I and especially the kids don't like wearing the glasses. So the question is, should I see this in 3D?

i saw it in 2d but afterwards i had the unusual and unique sensation of wondering whether it might have been more fun in 3d

make of that what you will

I think some of the trippy sequences COULD potentially have been cooler or more absorbing in 3D but only if wearing 3D glasses itself doesn't take you out of the movie, which it sometimes does for me.

One thing I'll say about this is that it points up certain inadequacies of Marvel house-style CGI - not really limited to Marvel (I guess it's in tons of mainstream CGI blockbusters, Transformers, etc.) but it's the kind of look and feel I associate with them. Basically it's going for 'naturalistic' and everything is sharply-defined and clean, things have edges and reflect light more or less the way objects in the real world do, though there remains some gap between the world as we see it and the world as CGI does it. I think they're kind of bad at trying to render things that don't make physical sense.

This movie does just fine in the Inception/Escher handling of the various "city" sequences, I thought those were great actually. But when it comes to taking us into bizarre other dimensions, they kind of aren't that bizarre because they still feel like familiar three-dimensional space, just populated with weird purple and green objects instead of the objects we know. Whereas in the comics you really could get this sense of something that didn't add up visually, a totally other kind of world. These panels from 70s Strange kinda get at what I mean maybe - there's (maybe comics-specific play) with simultaneity, flatness versus depth, color changes... I dunno, this just seems like it should have been considerably stranger and some of that got consumed by the visual effects machine. The Phantom Zone from Richard Donner's Superman films is kinda weirder than anything in this film.

you need the 3d glasses to really see the three dimensions of the movie imo

Doctor Casino OTM. Almost exactly my on-the-record take coming out, including "i mean, it wasn't Ant-Man but..."

I told my friend who partakes to smoke some weeds and see it in 3d

best use of 3D in a movie that i've seen in ages, 100% worth it

good stuff, fun and great effects. i like how all these side marvel movies have a specific tone/gimmick they're shooting for (buddy space adventure, super science caper, LSD-Inception wuxia)

btw, I am concerned about the orientalism in the movie which unfortunately is buried pretty deep in the source material. appreciate that they tried to alleviate it by gender and racebending the roles (and actually making Wong not be a weak stereotype, good there) but - as good as her performance is - it's incredibly weird for me to see bald-headed Tilda Swinton wearing Buddhist robes doing kung fu in what clearly an Asian role. the director's "dragon lady" excuse was complete horseshit.

i like Ejiofor and Swinton, they both do fine. but is Strange's disappointment in Western medicine leading him to plumb the Mysteries of the East super important to this story? could that not have been adapted in a more creative (or at least more insightful) way in 2016? Agree with the comment above re: The Mandarin in Iron Man 3, where it's a complete shit-take on the concept (though later revealed in the MCU shorts that there actually IS a real Mandarin we haven't yet seen...)

a fair article on the wiping of Tibet and the racial casting: http://screenrant.com/doctor-strange-china-tibet-ancient-one/

i saw it in 2d but afterwards i had the unusual and unique sensation of wondering whether it might have been more fun in 3d

I've liked a total of 1 3D movie in my life (Gravity) and I kind of wish I had seen this in 3D instead of 2D as well

is Strange's disappointment in Western medicine leading him to plumb the Mysteries of the East super important to this story?

I think it's intended as "he's an asshole and a fool" - he's convinced that The Ancient One is running an unlicensed medical facility until such point as something undeniably mystical happens to him.

That is a good article, thanks Nhex.

I enjoyed this. Neat that they finally realized both Steve Ditko Cosmic batshittery and one-upped everything Terry Gilliam tried to do that Christopher Nolan wouldn't.

Again, why does it always seem like the script is the hardest part for them to get right in any Hollywood film?

Spitballing but maybe because scenes are so beholden to FX that it's tough to go back and rewrite scenes or shoot additional stuff when the FX heavy sequences are locked in. I imagine it's also tough that these Marvel movies are adaptations of long running properties that by and large still demand origin stories, at least to some extent, and that further locks in the arc. They're like really expensive Easter eggs: always the same shape, some better painted than others, but all equally fragile and messy if they break.

Guardians of the Galaxy was a nice exception, in that it had traditional character introduction and was not all "this is how Spider-man became Spider-man, and by the way, this is who Spider-man is and what he does."

I did notice that for all of the "The Howling Heads of Vishanti is the spell I need for this occasion" of the comics, there was a limited amount of types of magic - space folding, magic weapons, teleportation, time magic - I think that's it? It made the fight scenes clearer (and even then it made clear that the time stuff was hard and requires concentration).

I missed whether anyone invoked the hoary hosts of hoggoth