Benedict Cumberbatch IS Doctor Strange.

A doctor...of strangeness!

http://io9.com/now-its-official-benedict-cumberbatch-is-playing-dr-s-1666968061

Etc etc

sigh

Ned, do you still read fantasy and SF? I enjoyed reading some of your old talk about James Branch Cabell and Avram Davidson. Your strong recommendation of the latter made me buy one of his books.

Leave behind the dull world of superhero movie speculation and join us!
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I read things kinda at my lazy pace and whim lately. Thanks, though! I'll dip in as I feel the need.

oh god no

Fuck this

eh I mean I find him as annoying as one is meant to these days but it's not like his persona and or schtuck aren't a good fit

he's the worst everything

I don't get the negative reactions? He's seems to be a pretty good actor and decent human being, and even the one bad movie he was in (Star Trek 2) was no way bad because of him. Plus his physique and persona, if not quite similar to the comic book version, still feel like a good match for Stephen Strange. So why do people hate him?

I agree, seems like a p good choice to me.

Yeah he's fine and I find the venom of the ILX backlash against him a bit baffling.

I think Jack Huston could've been a more interesting choice though.

I've only heard of him. What's his best/worst work? Had sort of been hoping for Justin Theroux.

I probably haven't experienced enough Cumberbatching to make a call one way or the other, but the ire towards him certainly seems a bit bandwagonesque.

Will there be pengwengs?

I like Cumberbatch but I haven't seen him in much. He's lovely on chat shows and he was by far the best thing on Star Trek Into Darkness.

cumberbatch can certainly play odd / otherworldly, which dr strange really needs to be. struggling to think who else might have been better tbh

f uck tha poshos

This guy is definitely going to play Dr Who at some point

No he's not, way too famous.

(xp) He already has but, for reason, they decided to rename him Sherlock Holmes.

No he's not, he essentially turned it down right when Sherlock broke.

He might do it when he's Peter Capaldi's age.

I'd be massively surprised, would be an odd career path.

Yeah, he just hitched himself to a money train. Feel like starring roles in Marvel films are, at this point, a direct route to A-list status if one isn't there already.

just ask ed norton

I've only heard of him. What's his best/worst work?

Best: check out Sherlock (skip ep 2), Cabin Pressure (for contrast in his performance if not pure excellence)*, and him clowning U2 at the Oscars or w/e awards show

Worst: not being able to say "penguins" when narrating a documentary abt penguins I guess

*also a good example of him repeatedly returning to a low-paying role out of enjoyment of the material, writer/s & cast, despite his star rising

Ed Norton has no one but Ed Norton to blame for the vagaries of his career.

Watch Spielberg's "War Horse" for joint Cumberbatch/Hiddleston action just as they were both on the cusp of permanent nerd veneration.

i kind of want to see the imitation game, but it's got an actress named "tuppence" in it

Watch Spielberg's "War Horse"

I would advise against this.

i didn't really want to see the imitation game, but then i found out it's got an actress named "tuppence" in it

Just searched to see what Cabin Pressure is and there's a surprising amount of fan art by youngsters for it.

Small role as Doug Rocket's accountant in 'Nathan Barley' is the first time I remember seeing him.

We've already had a former Doctor Who appearing in a Marvel movie, can't see the reverse happening any time soon

i kind of want to see the imitation game

i thought that, then i saw it.

xp tom baker was a leftfield choice for black widow but he did a great job

I thought aside from the Turing potboiler I'd only seen BC in the ensembles of 12 Years a Slave (OK), Tinker Tailor (bleh) and August, Osage County (bad casting, weak adap) and then Letterboxd informed me I'd seen him in FIVE other films, incl War Horse, Atonement and the James McAvoy college-quiz comedy Starter for 10, in none of which did he stick to my memory. It reminds me of the months after Good Will Hunting when I was jostled into realizing that Matt Damon was the bland blond I'd forgotten instantly in Geronimo and Courgae Under Fire.

But I've never heard of Dr Strange, so it's all good.

He was in Atonement?

I don't really care one way or another about BC casting — the script and production design (better bring the fuckin' Ditko) are more important here.

pretty sure Dr Strange is supposed to be handsome tho

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/uploads/MichaelTodd/2011-06-23_195053_Steve-Ditko-Doctor-Strange.jpg

Dr Sinestro

Sutherland in Animal House would've been a good Doctor Strange

Most of the core Marvel characters have benefitted from cosmetic upgrades over the years. Most of the OG silver age crew were malformed cretins during their early days.

also this movie should be set no later than 1973.

lol @ malformed cretins

can they resist the urge to blast Heart's "Magic Man" during the climactic showdown with Baron Mordo

Heavy Doors soundtrack with "Strange Days" and "People Are Strange".

In the spirit of the GOTG soundtrack, let's assume the planned list is:

"Magic Man," Heart
"Strange Magic," ELO
"Magic," Pilot
"Black Magic Woman," Santana
"Age of Aquarius," the Fifth Dimension

. . . what else?

"Mambo Sun", T. Rex
"Cymbaline", Pink Floyd

Bruce Springsteen - "(Every Hoggoth's Got A) Hoary Host"

http://eil.com/images/main/Dr-Strangely-Strange-Kip-Of-The-Serene-299173.jpg

my dreams of a Clooney/Dr. Strange movie finally dashed

No worries, Clooney's gonna shave his hair down to a horseshoe and play Dr. Druid.

i would have cast bill hader

would prefer Chris Parnell to Bumbershoots

No worries, Clooney's gonna shave his hair down to a horseshoe and play Dr. Druid.

this role is Louis CK's and no one else's

ok except maybe mine

actually it'd be a pretty good opportunity for a joss whedon onscreen cameo

surely they could fit dr d in an agents of shield episode for that fan service

literally any human being in the entire universe would be better than benderbunch crampitdash, the heretofore undiscovered sea creature risen from depths technology will never be advanced enough to explore

do people actually hate him for his performances or just his cultural presence? I think I've only seen him in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and didn't didn't like him in that. Grumbles about the content have kept me from Sherlock and Star Trek 2, but do people think HE'S the problem in this stuff?

the "didn't didn't" was not a typo, for once

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/03/07/article-2111538-120FFD9A000005DC-142_306x423.jpg

he's been in a bunch of garbage, he is a totally unremarkable actor, his fans are annoying

fuck that guy

Michael Jayston would have been a good Dr Strange

Why is "fuck that guy" an appropriate response to unremarkable acting and an annoying fanbase?

Why does someone getting overrated have to have an absurdly disproportionate backlash? It's like a celebrity gossip forum here sometimes.

George Clooney doesn't seem quite right for Dr Strange to me.

there would be some meta-irony in Clooney being Dr. Strange (similar to the meta-irony of Downey playing Tony Stark), he has the look/hair, he's made a career out of playing lovably smug assholes who are also capable of doing good (ie, the Dr. Strange origin story), etc. It'd be fun to see him against a backdrop of psychedelic weirdness. It's true I can't really picture him delivering some of the requisite "BY THE HOARY HOSTS OF HOGGOTH" dialogue but whatever that's minor.

RAG OTM. I think Strange has to be something of a cold fish, at least initially - Clooney wants to be loved too much.

I initially misread soref's post as Michael Jackson would have been a good Dr Strange.

cumberbatch is a fine actor with a terrible name

"Cumberbatch" is classic, but "Benedict" in front of that is even more classic, several more posh middle names would make it even better. "Tuppence" is classic too.

Also I cant imagine Clooney having the right nimble wizardly posturing talents that Cumberbatch could probably pull off. Or pulling off that sort of Vincent Price hamminess straight enough.

cumberbatch is a fine actor who is a bit of a prat and takes a lot of roles which fall within a core persona and thus mb don't really demonstrate much 'acting' per se. good in 12 years a slave i thought

Anyone would think he was the only posh actor in the world, pretty much all of the English ones are these days.

yeah f uck tha obvious poshos e.g. tom hiddleston eddie redmayne plus more covert ones e.g. dominic west damian lewis

... and that's just the ones who went to Eton.

Give me a posho any day over some of the venal Thatcherite cockney wanker stereotypes taking up space in the upper reaches of the British acting establishment.

Don't know too much about Turing outside the obvious but I enjoyed the Imitation Game, I don't see Cumberbatch convey emotional vulnerability too often (/ever) and I wasn't sure he could pull it off but he did.

venal Thatcherite cockney wanker stereotype does sound strongly revolting and while being one is sort of more of a daily choice than is being a posho it shouldn't discourage the general denunciation of poshos

Was Cumberbatch's performance as Turing better than working class Derek Jacobi (just checked his wiki hoping he was going to be to make this thing even more 'fun' than it already is, love how his wiki actually states "His family was working class" with a ref to a link to an interview he gave to The Guardian that doesn't work)?

"His servants were working class."

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--GHYzrgN6--/pdkub5xk9pei5aa9j2xh.jpg

I love that they're going with his real beard. My beard is also a sparsely populated garden of fluff that's thinner than my eyebrow hair, so this magazine cover has just helped drain a fairly substantial reservoir of self-doubt that I've kept dammed up for years

Good thing you don't have the launch codes, right?

I'm not very fond of Marvel these days so I'm a little bit annoyed that they're doing the property of theirs I like the best and with a promising cast. But I'm curious because I'm sure Marvel will know this requires a stylistic departure from their previous films and I wonder if they can do it. There's little doubt that this will rely heavily upon cgi for valid reasons, so it'll be difficult.

That's straight up the Soul Stone in his Eye of Agamotto piece

Although that raises the question: how did like 4 of the 6 of the Infinity Gems/Stones wind up on Earth at the same time and the Living Tribunal or Eternity or even Death don't show up and be like WTF PAUSE

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CfYgAidUAAAOhI1.jpg

first trailer due next week...

In the climactic astral battle he will overcome fresh injuries to the broken hands that ended his surgical career, save the world and BE REDEEMED.

I like Doc's hand gestures. Magic on "The Magicians" revolves around sequenced gesturing. Makes it fun to watch, like voguing, or working a Rubik's Cube. Doc's flowery spell language is a treat, though. Lots of '70s Marvel alliteration.

Countdown to some conservative concerned parents group boycotting the movie for teaching kids gang signs.

david blaine lookin motherfucker

his head looks waaaayyyyyyyyyyy too big for his body, it's disconcerting

After learning the ways of The Force, Stephen Straangebatch walks around Greenwich Village in civilian clothes, sees a young man making odd and aggressive hand signals, and sets his shoes on fire for lulz. [14]

should've been Clooney

I heard he recently showed up at a comic store in costume.

almost as stoked for this as my mom

(is stoked for this)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CfIkCWaXIAAbzf9.jpg

People are guessing Mikkelsen = Magus? Which seems a weird choice for a Dr. Strange villain. I'm guessing a redesigned Dormammu (or like a pre-Dormammu Dormammu).

his makeup is rad

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CfIlvvEXIAAnfUa.jpg

Yeah, see, it's like Dormammu flames crackling underneath his skin.

I heard he recently showed up at a comic store in costume.

He was filming around the corner from JHU.

surely that's Baron Mordo?

No, Chiwetel Ejiofor is playing Mordo.

Although I'm holding out hope that he's playing Zom.

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/8/8b/Strange_Tales_Vol_1_156_031.jpg

By the moons of Munnopor, we have a trailer!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwcSki7r9cQ

This had me grinning like an idiot by about the halfway mark.

http://i66.tinypic.com/r8dvg2.png

So is this a Serenity spin-off?

well that certainly looks like Inception

is there any look that tilda swinton can't effortlessly carry off? this looks like it'll be fun for sure

xpost But remember how Inception did that shit for like five minutes and then Nolan pretty much forgot to capture any kind of visual dream logic for the rest of the movie? This thing won't be like that thing.

otm - inception ended up being way less trippy than i was hoping it would be

fuckin' nolan

I'm hoping that half the running time will be like Ant-Man's voyage into the Microverse.

like all trailers now, that trailer sounds like inception too

it actually looks like a mash-up of Inception and Batman Begins tbrr

BWWAAAAAH......BWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH

Waaaaitaminute...so Marvel has specifically linked that Microverse sequence from Ant-Man with doings in the Doctor Strange movie. What if Mikkelsen's unknown villain is Psycho-Man? Again, weird choice for a Doctor Strange villain. But possible.

But probably not.

Finally, we will learn how Dr. Strange became Spider-man.

Is that the final trailer? Odd that there's no outer dimensional stuff. I generally don't like these films but I might see this, I like most of the cast but I doubt it will deliver on the psychedelia and juicy orientalism.

no it's a teaser trailer

It's basically the trailer for Batman Begins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vak9ZLfhGnQ

Or, fair enough, just the first half. One of these days one of these movies will find a better way to just get past the origin stuff. I want to say Ant-man, of all things, was more sprightly in this regard than most of them. Or hell, Guardians of the Galaxy got it out of the way quickly.

love that effects shot at 1:21 and how it looks like it's a practical dolly zoom at first

They said a while back that Doctor Strange was going to be one of the rare 'origin story' MCU movies. Which is fair, since I wager the general public ain't that familiar.

I am 100% down for this

Eh, Guardians pretty much introduced an entire new universe and did OK. The Marvel movies still haven't even properly introduced/motivated/explained Thanos! Are they saving that lil the end?

From what I understand, he isn't showing up again until the next Avengers movie. So, yeah, basically.

Wonder if Marvel are going to do that thing where whichever character is getting a movie becomes extremely important across several comic titles.

I've never read the Dr. Strange comic, and superhero movies have pretty thoroughly alienated me at this point (last one I saw was Winter Soldier, or maybe Iron Man 3, can't remember which came out last) but this looks more like the Keanu Reeves Constantine movie, which I liked a lot, than anything else, so I think I might check it out.

xpost They're currently publishing an ongoing Doctor Strange title, which translates as 'extremely important' in Doctor Strange terms since that hasn't happened since the mid-90s.

Which just really dawned on me as I was reading your post and which now strikes me as really (pardon the pun) strange.

Dr Strange was fairly important to the second half of Bendis' Avengers run

Yeah, he's definitely been around, but I can't think of another consistently major Marvel character who's gone that long without their own title.

How did I not realize until now Tilda Swinton is playing the Ancient One? fuck yeah

xpost

Wonder if Marvel were a bit wary abt doing a new Dr Strange title after all that Amy Grant hoo-hah

Yeah, he's definitely been around, but I can't think of another consistently major Marvel character who's gone that long without their own title.

Black Panther and Ghost Rider both spring to mind as having a publication history at least as punctuated.

Also, without going too far into obscurity i.e. also film/tv properties, Howard The Duck, The Inhumans and Luke Cage/Power Man haven't exactly been in continuous publication either.

Black Panther didn't have an ongoing title in the '80s, true, but he hasn't otherwise gone more than a few years between relaunches. Ghost Rider (as a concept, since there have been several different Ghost Riders) doesn't have more than a few gaps in publication since the '70s.

Until recently, the Inhumans only had one short-lived ongoing series that didn't even focus on the most familiar cast of Inhuman characters.

Panther: 73-76, 77-79, 88, 91, 98-03, 05-08, 09-10, last week
Ghost Rider: 73-83, 90-98, 2001 mini, 2005 mini, 06-10?, non-Johnny Blaze book last year
Inhumans: 75-77, 98-99, 2000, 03-04, 14-15, current

In comparison Strange is in almost continuous publication until the 00s with only 3 minis outside of the latest book.

In terms of series publication, I'd say that the Inhumans are second-tier. Despite being a near-constant presence in the Marvel U since their inception, they never had a series that lasted longer than 12 issues until the last couple of years.

I am 100% down for this

How did I not realize until now Tilda Swinton is playing the Ancient One? fuck yeah

― μpright mammal (mh), Wednesday, 13 April 2016 15:14 Bookmark

http://www.clickhole.com/video/beautiful-video-shows-why-we-need-diversity-hollyw-4063

looks cool but where is the outer space

Dr Strange was considered such retail poison by Marvel a few years ago that Brendan McCarthy's Dr Strange miniseries was released under the title Spider-Man: Fever

^ one of the best mini-series of recent years. to be fair, it does feature spider drugs casualty.

it'd be hilarious if they titled it that and Spider-Man only showed up in like two panels

That's basically what happened in the Seth Meyers/Bill Hader Spidey one-shot iirc.

This guy is so weird as Southie Irish in Black Mass. Good accent but mannerisms are totally British.

my main interest in this is wondering what tilda swinton will do with the huge paycheck they've sent her. expand her film festival? open a museum?

current doctor strange comic by jason aaron & chris bachalo is fun, inevitable apocalyptic threat aside

At Captain America tonight, two consecutive trailers used the line "Forget everything you think you know" (X-Men and this).

Yeah, we got 3 out of 4 superhero trailers in front of a superhero flick. The 4th one was Rogue One

I wish they had the volume cranked for the Rogue One trailer in my theater :(

We also got Mother's Day, which seems like it's probably past its shelf life.

Um, I don't buy Legos but I think I will be buying these Legos.

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--OLn4y_YA--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/iuxjq0vtb83fcbv5vafa.png

Lego is plural.

Not in American English, buddy

we can afford many legos

love to make structures with many of the bricks lego

Would buy all this Legi.

New trailer from Comic-Con:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSzx-zryEgM

lame

first trailer better, nice swirling cities tho

I am 100% here for this movie

https://twitter.com/kibblesmith/status/757243299396775937

Swinton casting is super-irritating

idgaf I'm sure it'll be fine

she does some pretty well when put in ominous powerful cipher roles

there's just so many other decent people it could have been. I don't like Cumberbatch either, and vastly prefer cosmic-time-and-weird-dimension-straddling Ditko and Englehart type Dr. Strange stuff so this is clearly not for me

Also trailers out there from Comic-Con for "Wonder Woman" (which looks good), "Justice League" and "Kong: Skull Island." I'm not starting threads, though.

Man, that "Skull Island" trailer ... it makes it look like Michael Bay's "King Kong." Kind of a bummer, amplified by yet another glaring, righteously indignant SLJ performance.

They should change Comic-Con to Movie-Con or Media-Event-Con

xp Ape-ocalypse Now

what that trailer really drives home is: i could watch chiwetel ejiofor doing his chiwetel ejiofor thing ALL DAY

vastly prefer cosmic-time-and-weird-dimension-straddling Ditko and Englehart type Dr. Strange stuff so this is clearly not for me

Me too and I think this looks great. 🤔

He was definitely Asian in his first couple of appearances.

https://storify.com/charlesatan/kurt-busiek-on-dr-strange-as-asian

Anyway, new trailer. Should it be making me think of Inception so much?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xoxeCWpZyU

p much hate everything about this - the casting, the Inception-style effects, the visual style

oh well

I'm kind of relieved there's nothing Marvel are doing for me to give them money any time soon.

Is this the same Universe as the Netflix stuff? Which is a peripheral part of Avengers/SHIELD one of course.

Yes. Luke Cage talks about The Avengers NYC craziness it in the pilot.

I love that in the newest teaser trailer they namedrop Steve Ditko while showing art by Gene Colan and Dan Adkins.

Is he going to at least cameo in the Defenders? Since he was a founder member in the comics and seems to have been in every line up afterwards. Seems a bit of a coincidence that he is introduced to that universe in the run up to the group team up which will now just be the Netflix team up characters.
BGeen a while since I read the origin of the team but wasn't he the forming member?

But then again looks like they have been trying to get a Dr Strange film under way for years.

Just surprising that they'd go ahead with a group name being used with none of the main members being included. I think all those that are going to be in it are more on the level of associated members in the comics.

I don't think there's been any direct crossover between the movies and the Netflix shows. It's just a coincidence. The Defenders is simply a convenient name plucked from

Marvel history

The main notable thing about the Defenders is that they're... not the Avengers. The original lineup was Doctor Strange, the Silver Surfer, the Hulk, and Namor. Marvel Studios doesn't have the rights to half of those, currently, the Hulk is on the Avengers and played by an actor who isn't too likely to pop in for a tv cameo, and Dr. Strange isn't even out yet.

There's a point in the New Avengers stuff from 2010ish when it was a team led by Luke Cage, with Iron Fist and Doctor Strange in tow along with a mishmash of others and someone makes a crack about "New Avengers? Shouldn't you be calling yourself the Defenders?"

It's always been a mishmash of whatever characters editorial decides is available for a team book

No Son of Satan no credibility

oh yay more exploding cgi cities

as they would say in the tv corner of the marvel universe, you're thinking of the avengers

this is the warping and inverting cgi cities movie that looks like inception

tbh i was disappointed that the city-warping weirdness promised in the inception trailers turned out to be confined to one short sequence :(

my main concern is that this movie will have flashes of psychedelia but ultimately it'll end up with doctor strange and the villain going more-or-less conventionally toe-to-toe at an nyc landmark

surprisingly the landmark is a deli

Wasn't Patsy "Hellcat" Walker a Defender for a long time? If she'll be in the Netflix show, at least they'll have one genuine member from the comics.

surprisingly the landmark is a deli

[INT: KATZ'S DELI, NIGHT]

A close-to-broken DOCTOR STRANGE is on his knees between tables, surrounded by SMASHED CROCKERY and OTHER DETRITUS as terrified patrons look on. His hands GLOW with ELDRITCH SYMBOLS as he desperately fends off a BLAZING SUPERNATURAL ATTACK from KAECILIUS, who is ADVANCING TOWARDS HIM, bent on MURDER.

Suddenly STRANGE's defences are BROKEN! He screams and screams as KAECILIUS' BLASTS of power SURGE through him and he FALLS TO THE FLOOR, exhausted.

ELDERLY PATRON
I'll have what he's having!

if it's the movies, ELDERLY PATRON is Stan Lee, for better or worse

https://scontent.fman2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/s480x480/14650158_139884096475868_6264790131856466078_n.jpg?oh=f1a4054b1e56a604ce2e8191ff879796&oe=5895342B

Is the kid to Stan's right dressed up as the Man himself?

Wonder Man without glasses?

burt reynolds in boogie nights i think

it's rick jones, come on

Strangin' it up

http://mashable.com/2016/10/20/doctor-strange-clip-benedict-cumberbatch/#zZ_MLC5CPkq2

off to see this tonight - will report back on whether katz's deli provides the backdrop to the final battle

are any of the post-60s Doctor Strange comics worth reading? I feel like once you remove Ditko and Colan's trippy artwork and Stan Lee's "hoary hosts of Hoggoth" dialogue, the basic concept itself is not really that interesting?

The issues drawn by Gene Colan and Tom Palmer are as beautiful, and as psychedelic, as the Ditko issues. There's a very good 60s run written by Roy Thomas, and drawn by Colan and Palmer, where Dr Strange gets to wear a mask for a while. In the early 70s, Steve Englehart and Frank Brunner (and later Colan and Palmer again) had a very good run on the title - Englehart was probably the first Dr Strange writer to actually have some knowledge of the occult. In the 80s, Roger Stern (w/ artists like Marshall Rogers and Dan Green) also wrote a fine sequence of issues (the Rogers-drawn stories are full of weird colour overlays and effects that are visually pretty striking, tho' the printing on the comics themselves was not always up to the task).

Colan is tremendous, probably my favorite marvel artist after Kirby.

I adore those Marshall Rogers/Terry Austin issues (#'s 46 -52 I think?) and there was a one-off Michael Golden drawn issue in there that's one of the most beautiful Marvel comics to see print, in my opinion. Paul Smith's run soon after this was very good, too.

What about P Craig Russell?

There's quite an interesting story behind PCR's Dr Strange story:

A Dr. Strange story was originally conceived, albeit in a much different form than either of these two, by Russell in 1973. It was envisioned by its creator as a 60-page story, and he drew up the first 20 or so pages. It was accepted by then-editor Roy Thomas…and then promptly sat in a drawer for three years. It was eventually released in a much shortened form (scripted by Marv Wolfman) as Dr. Strange Annual #1. Now fast-forward 20 years to 1996. Writer Marc Andreyko suggested that PCR resubmit it, in a form closer to the original 60-page opus. Russell did, and it was (again) accepted. Russell realized that he’d need to redraw and rethink the whole thing, seeing as two decades had passed.
http://gfbrobot.com/2011/11/17/uncollected-classics-doctor-strange-by-p-craig-russell/

Def agree abt that Golden-drawn issue of Dr Strange, AH; and I bet ppl like Arthur Adams and Jim Lee looked at it v closely.

P.S. That particular uncollected classic has just recently been collected (or the collection will be released soon).

nice!

it's over-referenced due to it being stuck firmly in Dr. Doom's continuity at this point, but the "Dr. Strange/Dr. Doom: Triumph & Torment" book (with art by Mike Mignola!) is pretty cool

paul smith sounds like a good fit for strange. i never saw those back in the day.

so is this cool and trippy?

trippy as in outer space and crazy colors, not trippy as in Inception/Matrix CGI buildings

I regret getting rid of a bunch of those Paul Smith issues that I got in the 80s, those were v good. Is the Michael Golden one referenced upthread the one with the crazy artist/Salvador Dali character..? that one was great

i'm definitely doing some torrenting tonight, i only have the 70s stuff

xpost No, that one was by Tony Salmons which I love as well. The Golden dealt with Strange (SPOILER!!!!) grieving over Clea and then entering some alternate Marvelverse where everything is a facade (maaaan). Sort of an "A Christmas Carol" type scenario if I recall. Gotta dig that one up again.

To get back on track here I cannot wait to go see this flick.

xpost that's giving me dematteis defenders feelings

aka i'm in

http://www.supermegamonkey.net/chronocomic/entries/doctor_strange_55.shtml

I'd forgotten about 'Les' and 'Ted'! Terry Austin inks, always helps.

my main concern is that this movie will have flashes of psychedelia but ultimately it'll end up with doctor strange and the villain going more-or-less conventionally toe-to-toe at an nyc landmark

well, this ended up having some pretty genuinely wiggy sequences, the wiggiest of which weren't hinted at in any of the trailers i saw, and the ending was a bit cleverer than i expected, so i guess it's a thumbs-up from me in that regard. hey kids: watch this movie on shrooms!

it's enjoyable overall, and there are a few shots where i thought 'wow benedict cumberbatch looks just like doctor strange!' but it did suffer a bit from superhero-origin-story syndrome and the timeline of his training seems weirdly, unnecessarily compressed. poor rachel mcadams is wasted in a thankless role, tilda swinton and benedict wong are fun, and the doctor's cape puts in an unexpectedly charismatic performance. solidly mid-tier marvel movie i guess?

apart from the relatively original resolution to the big boss battle and the occasional visual bit (although the Inception-style effects didn't do it for me at all) this is probably the most Marvel Marvel movie yet. Competent, respectful, but ultimately pretty tedious.

McAdams, Mikkelsen and Ejiofor shouldn't have bothered (weird to see Michael Stuhlbarg too, but he probably needed the cheque), and the attempts at snarky humour are really bad too.

rubbish, rubbish, rubbish

earned nothing. impossible to follow. tedious cliche after cliche rushed through. unbeatable odds for incredible stakes explained by bored actors in harry potter level performances and the inevitable handy resolution happened somewhere left of screen just before credits id have been embarrassed to have my name in.

I would think "tedious cliche after tedious cliche rushed through" would be really easy to follow

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwlzbpzyFdE

Ugh... that review kinda cemented my long-looming sense that I'm way overdue to cut those guys from my viewing list. I like their rhythm and I'm a sucker for things like Wheel of the Worst, but they've been tilting more and more into this anti-PC, anti-intellectual zone reminiscent of aspects of GamerGate, or that whole culture. So anyone raising questions about the racial or cultural politics of this film must be some over-sensitive women's libber Puritan getting all offended for no good reason.... lame. (I find it telling that the 1-2 women who used to show up from time to time have disappeared completely from time to time.) Are there any good podcasts/shows that scratch the same itch without those qualities?

This was like TV quality with movie quality FX.

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."

― dustalo springsteen (Doctor Casino), Saturday, November 5, 2016 12:33 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p_xEZWAtow

I find it telling that the 1-2 women who used to show up from time to time have disappeared completely from time to time

Gillian moved to LA and Jessi deliberately took herself offscreen because she started getting unnerved by the attention she got from crepey-types

Ugggggggh I hate the Internet.

Not sure if I'm in the target demographic for video movie reviews in this style, but that's the second recent video I've seen of those guys and while they have some camera presence, I've cringed every time I've heard them.

I used to watch Ebert and his partners (Siskel, later Roeper) review and I don't remember cringing too often. If I did, it was usually due to Roeper having bad ideas about movies, not underlying cultural politics.

I think the RLM dudes are often pretty smart and perceptive, but I find it weird that they spend virtually all their time on mainstream Hollywood films and VHS bargain bin crap. I've watched a bunch of their clips and I've yet to pin down their tastes or even knowledge of, say, international or independent cinema. They act and are cynical about avoidable product, just like someone raised exclusively on McDonald's would sound talking about hamburgers.

This movie is fading from memory faster than I thought it would. Another one of those crappy looking (not talking the awesome FX, just the general bright look of the thing) superhero movies that seems to take place on like three sets; I was shocked that they even bothered with location shooting in Nepal. I also couldn't tell what the bad guys were doing at those three portals/shield places. It's like, they'd show up to London, immediately kill one guy, and then omg, London has fallen! And then they show up in New York and quickly kill someone, and OMG, New York has fallen! Hey, Ancient One, maybe you should have installed more than one easily killable sentry at these vital points of cosmic energy? Most of the fights in this movie indicate you need three (but no more than three!) people on a side for an epic battle for the future of the world.

Also, Dr. Strange becomes a super wizard by just doing some cramming at the library?

This movie also illustrates the problem Marvel movies have had with Scarlett Witch. Namely, how to depict "magic" as more than just waving your arms and flashing some laser-fire in the air to make a series of poorly-explained powers manifest themselves. Like, in the movies, what does Scarlett Witch do? She just ... does stuff. Same thing, sort of, with Strange in this one. He makes a couple of shields appear, I guess, but they repeatedly show without his magic brass knuckles or even his Eye he can't really do crap. Astral plane ghost fights? That's one reason I liked the end of this a lot. As RLM pointed out, it ends (spoiler) with a destroyed city coming back together, and Strange outsmarting the impatient super demon villain, which was a nice flip on the usual carnage. I hope, between this series and GotG and upcoming Infinity War that they delve further into the cosmic and celestial stuff. I think it's a big bummer that Galactus/Silver Surfer doesn't exist in this particular Marvel universe.

Also, Dr. Strange becomes a super wizard by just doing some cramming at the library?

Between you and RLM I'm wondering if I got a special cut with the scene where he gets stranded on Everest.

heh.

Or the fact he spends most of his fighting time making teleportation portals that look janky as hell compared to the instant perfect circles of his comrades, all the way to the end of the movie

How he actually "won" fights:
- Barely holding on against attack
- Lucking into his magical totem during the fight, and the cloak takes on most of the work
- Fleeing to his old hospital to get non-mystical help
- Defeating a second dude via hospital equipment
- Flailing around as other people fight
- Using his brains and a magical artifact to make a bargain, involving one artifact-assisted spell he'd already played with

There's a good five minutes of him falling off buildings while Mordo calls him a jackass, really

I think the RLM dudes are often pretty smart and perceptive, but I find it weird that they spend virtually all their time on mainstream Hollywood films and VHS bargain bin crap. I've watched a bunch of their clips and I've yet to pin down their tastes or even knowledge of, say, international or independent cinema. They act and are cynical about avoidable product, just like someone raised exclusively on McDonald's would sound talking about hamburgers.

This is a problem with movie discussion culture on Youtube as a whole. It's very focused on Hollywood action comic book stuff. I don't know of a big channel that regularly covers international, independent, or documentary films. I get the sense that Jay from RLM has seen a lot and has wide taste, but the films they pick to review are clearly calculated to maximize views.

Looking at all their video archive, what a wasteland.
Really disappointed that for all the discussion of social justice in fandom/geek culture, it seems like nobody is challenging the gross consumerism and franchise obsession/loyalty.

I've heard criticisms that young social justice people aren't really interested in criticizing rampant capitalism but I doubt that's a widespread problem among them. But it does seem like a lot of them are mostly into the biggest pop culture (poptimists?).

I wish I had what it takes to do it. Even if I could I'd be very afraid of the backlash because it might seem like a bigger affront to them than talking about misogyny because it's a more fundamental criticism of their way of life.

I did make this thread though and its my dumping ground for all the things I hate about geek culture.
http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=10397

yes there's this weird hyper consumerism going on w unhealthily strong emotional attachments to products.

Yeah, that's called the last 50 years, dipping _slightly_ when Gen X had the mic.

Wasn't he trapped on Everest for ... two minutes? I guess that's enough extra time to become a super wizard. Time flies when you're having fun!

There's also the months of studying beforehand, which didn't do him any good because he didn't have the unlearnable spark that he found on the mountain - I'm confused now what you're complaining of, that he didn't earn it or it didn't take long enough.

Actually no, it's not I think that it didn't do him any good, but until you have the spark you can't apply the knowledge - like learning how to drive a car by reading the manual.

Yeah, that's called the last 50 years, dipping _slightly_ when Gen X had the mic.

― Andrew Farrell, Tuesday, 8 November 2016 15:55

I know all sorts of people are very attached to all sorts of products but I think (perhaps wrongly) that for geeks it generally runs far deeper and becomes more religious.

like when the Brady Bunch movie came out people didn't say it destroyed their childhood

semi-ironic commercialization was pretty cool at the time

like wow, we liked some garbage, let's lightly mock it in comedic movie form.

buying my OK Soda, acknowledging "I am a consumer, and how!" with a big grin and pointing at the cool independent art on the can

now it's this humorless, unflinching need for parity with history and perceived parity. any wink at the audience about how the original work was full of bad ideas from the time is seen as an attack

do you guys like watch sports

Brady Bunch movie was p good tbh

no pro sports are garbage

xp

or rather

no, pro sports are garbage

sports are fine, not that into them, seem like people get pretty into them

do you guys like watch sports

― Nhex, Tuesday, 8 November 2016 16:26

No but I'm not sure if you're alluding to the sponsors or the way people follow teams, which never made sense to me and doesn't make sense to people when I ask them why they're so invested in a specific team. But that's only team sports.

Right, but it is massive capitalist pop culture, and has been for a long time.

no IPs though

Not sure about the US vs the UK - I'd be amazed if the former was easier on EG selling significant amounts of bootleg merchandise. Isn't there some thing about being unable to reproduce anything with baseball footage without the express permission of MLB?

no narrative-based IPs then

player trajectories, personalities, all that crap that's hated by about half the players is pretty narrative-based! "will lebron be the greatest since blah blah" basketball stuff, along with the star players having really lucrative merchandising

I mean, however many years after Michael Jordan stopped playing basketball, Air Jordans are still a strong brand

"weird hyper consumerism going on w unhealthily strong emotional attachments to products." - if you say that sports don't count for some reason that's fine, but I'm not currently seeing why.

not to mention the near ceaseless clowning of those steph curry shoes

the entire starter jacket thing which was huuuge when I was a kid, to the point where people with no investment in actual sports had them and picked them based on colors/team mascot imagery

https://img1.etsystatic.com/030/0/7585222/il_570xN.657173131_1t4r.jpg

being a comics/sff/gamer kid in the early 80s didn't feel like being a sports fan at all, thank god

though that happens to also be the last time i cared about sports

Looking at all their video archive, what a wasteland.
Really disappointed that for all the discussion of social justice in fandom/geek culture, it seems like nobody is challenging the gross consumerism and franchise obsession/loyalty.

I've heard criticisms that young social justice people aren't really interested in criticizing rampant capitalism but I doubt that's a widespread problem among them. But it does seem like a lot of them are mostly into the biggest pop culture (poptimists?).

It's not part of the culture yet, is it? The kinda folks who are most gung-ho about genre entertainment and spreading it online tend not to be the ones who'd be able to handle doing a critique of it.

Then again, this kind of thought is firewalled into academic (sub)culture. Hell, even Jacobin only has like three articles about this stuff.

Might need to introduce you to a site called Tumblr, Kingfish...

Or, it's in the culture but it isn't the culture yet, it will be when the people who are 25 now will be 45.

I really don't know what fans and players could do to change things in sport but I think it is necessary to criticize specific cultural areas rather than only criticizing consumerism as a whole.

And I think there are probably negative aspects to tied into consumerist geek culture that aren't only due to our current economic system, which you could get rid of but you'd still have hype for time/attention.

Sad to see people my age so predictably whining that these days aren't as cool as the 80s and 90s and wallowing in nostalgia so soon.

I owned that shirt Adam linked but never got into sports. Liked Kriss Kross, though.

watched the RLM video. yeah they don't touch on the Tibet/China politics at all for some "both sides are complaining!" bs. they could have mentioned the real world politics involved but apparently it's too nuanced to fit into their simplistic PC/not-PC dichotomy.

I really don't know what fans and players could do to change things in sport but I think it is necessary to criticize specific cultural areas rather than only criticizing consumerism as a whole.

And I think there are probably negative aspects to tied into consumerist geek culture that aren't only due to our current economic system, which you could get rid of but you'd still have hype for time/attention.

I think this is more what I'm referring to; plenty of Tumblr et al gets into identity and representation, but maybe I just haven't hit enough sources both knowledgeable of and fans of nerdshit who are able to dig into the economics of it other than very superficial means.

This was okay. I didn't get my fantasy of a Splet/Lynch sound design for maximum creepiness, oh well. It moved the MCU along and introduced a big player. Very imaginative fight choreography. Most of the attempted jokes fell flat, imo. The idea of the cloak being sentient and opinionated is pretty cool. Good MCU fan service, but I wouldn't recommend it to any non-Marvelite.

LOL at no IP connected to major league sports

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f7/Odell_Beckham_Jr._Madden_NFL_16_Cover.jpg

https://media.easports.com/content/www-easports/en_US/fifa/news/2015/fifa-16-cover-athletes/_jcr_content/par/image_9.img.jpg

Finally got over my post-election trauma enough to go and see this. I won't say they were objectively the best special effects ever but they might've been my favorite special effects ever. Although it didn't go balls out wrt having Strange battle cosmic entities in altogether unfamiliar environments, I think it was a pretty fair compromise for a big blockbustery movie, and that final Dark Dimension sequence certainly did it for me on a visual level. Also, I'm not a motion sickness sufferer at all and I can generally handle shaky cameras and frenetically disorienting sequences all day long but the NYC battle sequence had me feeling some legit vertigo. A+ use of 3D. Overall, up there with the ending of 2001 and the DMT scenes from Enter the Void on the trippiness scale.

Also the movie was fun and good like all of the other MCU movies and I acknowledge once again that I have little in the way of critical distance when it comes to well-adapted Marvel properties.

i really enjoyed this - admittedly i went in with little to no expectations

but it felt like a legit adventure & i loved the way the effects blended with the dimensional superpowers stuff. also Tilda looked kinda like Tripitaka from Monkey Magic <3

FINALLY saw this. Doctor Casino OTM; it was really fun, not quite as good as Ant Man (which really punches above its weight class re: expectation vs actual experience of watching the movie).

I am not super familiar with Stephen Strange's origins so I kept wondering if he REALLY was the magical Tony Stark in the comic books or if it was shorthand characterization to acclimate people to the character.

Yeah we watched it a couple of weeks back here -- not bad, if it's of a Marvel type it was still engaging enough, and the trippier sequences looked fantastic.

I fast-forwarded through most of this. the initial trip-out sequence w the Ancient One was p good.

I am pretty happy that my least favorite of these movies has been Iron Man 2, which I still enjoyed.

casting was terrible, origin story was yawnsville, yr usual Marvel Movieverse bullshit imo

I dunno why but I am still curious about Ant-Man. In general all of the Marvel movies lack drama/tension imo and as soon as they're over I have no interest in ever seeing them again, they're all so rote and stiff, with nothing at stake.

Maybe you're curious because it's the one we've been saying to watch?

I have not been saying to watch it, but if you want "The MCU movie to watch if you hate MCU movies" then it's a good fit.

I would think that is self-evident, but my predisposition to various castmembers (Rudd, Pena, um Turkington)

xp

is also a factor, I meant to add there

I guess when I was saying "I dunno why" what I really meant was "in the face of all these movies being terrible and against my better judgment I still am curious about Ant-Man"

You should catch ant man. I agree with you about all the others btw, decent popcorn fodder but tiresomely self aggrandising with a dash of good comedy chops.

Ant man is that but not as self aggrandising and cast is good

it's ok to watch things you might like

if you end up liking it we can walk you through how to post positive opinions

tiresomely self aggrandising with a dash of good comedy chops

accurate

if you end up liking it we can walk you through how to post positive opinions

you read the wrong threads, I am positive about all sorts of shit

darragh otm

I'm overly into comics garbage and the amount of joy I get from watching each progressive ensemble cast Marvel movie has bottomed out but Ant Man was fun

Peyton Reed comes from more of a comedy background so it gives everything a certain rhythm and flair. These two scenes alone are worth the price of admission.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYUFx_Ltjn8

Wife and I gave this a shot too a couple of weeks ago despite being extremely superhero-movie-averse. Gave up after about an hour, don't remember exactly what I said upon switching it off but it was the equivalent of DDDOOOONNN'TTTT CAAARRREEE. Same was true with Avengers and Deadpool, then again I liked Nolan's Batman flicks so I know I'm a real outlier here. Idk, I really do try to not be a snob about anything pop culture but I just find this shit to be aggressively stupid.

the first two Nolan Batman flicks are fine

first two X-Men movies are fine too

Fine is overpraise for the first and incorrect on second batman flicks

rly want to watch dr strange just havent gotten around to it

rudd is a mixed bag

definitely netflixing or torrenting both

We watched Dr Strange the other night. I was disappointed. Way too much origin story, and I didn't get why Strange was the chosen one or whatever. He seemed impatient, arrogant, etc. which makes me think he wouldn't be good at learning the ways of magick. Also, the usual MCU sense of humor seemed out-of-place in Dr Strange.

Ant Man was good, though. The Thomas scene slayed me.

Ant-man had the good sense not to take itself seriously, but that only made its villain problem worse, imo. Wow, another crazy military guy who wants to use the technology to take over the world ...

Dr. Strange, if anything, didn't take itself seriously enough, imo, and for a movie set on a cosmic scale spent a little too much time on redundant fights between Strange and the same 3 bad guys. Liked the evil cosmic villain, though.

i saw this last weekend, it was pretty awesome. the kaliedoscopic effects were really cool. i also liked the ending. how they won that final battle was pretty clever.

one cool trick

I didn't get why Strange was the chosen one or whatever. He seemed impatient, arrogant, etc.

well tbf at the end of the movie he still didn't get what he initially went searching for

Yeah the arc bothers me more, looking back on the film. He doesn't really have to grow or change at all, he just chooses a different career. The idea must be that, oh, see, he sacrifices himself over and over, the old Strange wouldn't do that. But he knows he's got it all figured out and he expects to come out okay in the end, so we're still in smug Iron Man territory. He'd be a much more interesting and distinctive character going forward if his thing was he is brought to do real introspection and soul-searching, he becomes humble in some real way. But actually everything pays off his assumption that he's the greatest at everything for no reason. Doctor Privilege.

I like how there's this template for british actors to just mimic Hugh Laurie's approximation of an american accent

I have to say, I think that's a pretty shallow reading of it. He's not the same man at the end as the start, and it's important to spot that the solution to the final confrontation is to threaten Dormammu with an eternity with Stephen Strange - he has belatedly reached the wisdom to realise that he's an absolute weapons-grade asshole.

Lashing him with that accent for eternity

forgot this thread existed, posted this to Rolling MCU

Doctor Strange is a very good looking nothing-burger of a movie

Rachel McAdams as Christine Palmer was the most memorable character, I think. Certainly the only one I actually sort of cared about, and they didn't even bother to put her in any peril other than having an astral punch-up sort of knock some things around. They somehow got Mads Mikkelsen to be a terrible, boring villain who strides so purposefully everywhere he goes it's like an inside joke we're not in on.

any credit for christine palmer has gotta go 100% to rachel mcadams cuz man that was one terribly underwritten and one-dimensional character. mcadams is the real magician in this movie imo *arches eyebrow mystically*

I really enjoyed this movie despite Strange effectively being played as "Tony Stark, genius surgeon"

tbh all smart, egotistical white men with facial hair are pretty interchangeable

Says himself huh

who you calling smart

Relatively for an American is the implicit

It was a good thing that they didn't put her in danger btw

White male wealthy superheros are more than their relationships with women

terribly underwritten and one-dimensional character

they all were though

I demand full realism from stories involving astral planes and time spells.

100% to rachel mcadams in scrubs basically the whole movie

Realism isn't the issue tho, is it?

The characters were drawn well enough to string the story along. I didn't really care about any of them except McAdams and Ejiofor but it didn't affect my enjoyment of the movie.

Strange himself was such a shitty person that i am glad they didn't plumb the depths of his character.

It's only a character

the movie worked for what it was, a big budget cartoon of mysticism. closer to Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 than Autobiography of a Yogi. if you tried to add much substance to it, it would have all collapsed.

Strange pre-mystical rebirth or whatever in the og comics *was* an arrogant, shitty person. I thought this did a good job of delivering the origin story along with some fun eyeball kicks. As far as Marvel movie villains I thought Mads was no better or worse than, say, Loki. My fave MVV so far has been Red Skull because ... a red Nazi skeleton guy is just gonna be cooler and more evil than, say, CGI Josh Brolin. Rachel McAdams is a pretty terrible actress so I was glad her role wasn't that substantial.

That's an awful lot of wrong packed in to a pretty short post u must practice

Nah you just disagree but that's par for the course

Par for the course takes practice tbf

It had a Ditko blacklight dimension and everyone did their best to not bust up when they said "Dormammu". Featured egregious collar popping, not sure if the Wand of Watoomb got a mention, but with the aforementioned already there I'm not sure what there was to complain about.

Definitely mentioned wand of watoomb, in the little sparring / relic exposition bit in the middle.

You guys are right, this did indeed contain numerous things that came from the comics and were referred to by name, and many parts of it were watchable or even entertaining! Obviously no big budget cartoon type movie has ever featured memorable villains, developed female characters, or a paid-off arc for the protagonist, so I really don't know what I was thinking to suggest that it could have been improved in any respect.

I guess I could nitpick more about things I'd have liked to see, but I thought it was pretty entertaining and well put together. I thought this one seemed to have more potential to go badly than some of the other Marvel productions, so I was pretty happy to see how it came out. If they can manage to do a second installment that improves on this I think it ought to be pretty good.

The MCU films have frequently allowed the talent to be talented instead of letting the sfx be the point of the movie, so when this one completely wastes Mads Mikkelsen As A Supernatural Psychopath and also pretty much wastes Benedict Cumberbatch as An Arrogant Brainiac while an actual red CGI cape steals multiple scenes is not actually a reversion to form here, it's a letdown.

Given how the Avengers movies, the Winter Soldier, Ant-Man and Guardians turned out, I fully support the way Feige is trying to use different directors with different genre backgrounds to try and keep these movies fresh. Handing Strange to the guy who remade The Day The Earth Stood Still starring Keanu Reeves looks almost like a guaranteed misfire in retrospect.

It was certainly watchable, nothing was so stupid that I actually groaned, but I thought the Doctor Strange movie was intended to add some extra heft to the COSMIC nature of the Infinity War stuff that's coming up, and instead it made it feel completely featherweight.

also this has been beaten to death everywhere but Tilda as the Ancient One was dumb as balls on eighty-two different balls-dumbness dimensions that I can see from here without even a sling ring

haha

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8gzkhHW0AEQLux.jpg:large

The training and discovering tripping balls parts early on were good, the action later on was pretty dull, but I think that about just about every superhero movie, barring Deadpool and GOTG (which was relatively light in the one-on-one combat IIRC). Maybe you just can't have the right kind of stakes to action in a PG-13 blockbuster to make it interesting to me.

(I'm also bored senseless by high-concept martial arts movies like Crouching Tiger, which feels closest to MCU fight choreography.)

Much as I did find a lot of enjoyment in this film, Crouching Tiger blows it away on pretty much every level.

It's amazing to me how many of the film's problems come down to the thing everybody knows is a problem with all these movies: hustling to cram in a first "villain" story keeps yielding blah, underwritten and non-memorable villains (incidentally wasting fun actors who could otherwise have left a real mark on the series), while crowding out payoff for all the interesting character work. Cut every scene with "Kaecilius" (had to look it up) and you gain soooooo much time for more genuinely awesome trippy freak-outs, and real development of the McAdams and Ejiofor character relationships. You still can have all the Inception kung fu (just quickly establish that Dormammu has some powerful magic henchmen), and the time-stop/time-loop ending (which is the villain confrontation people are ACTUALLY going to remember from this film, even though Dormammu requires only seconds to be the nonentity that Mikkelsen portrays over acres of footage).

damn now i wanna live in the universe where there's a bowie/jodorowsky doc strange movie

it def woulda been more interesting than this limp pile

the confrontation w Dormammu was very Dr. Who-like I thought

Yes!

Yes, that was it!

That was why I hated this more than I could put my finger on!

Thanks

lol

Hello.

https://variety.com/2020/film/news/doctor-strange-2-sam-raimi-1203475309/

Boy, that could really go one of several different ways. Here's hoping that, since it's already been referred to as an MCU horror film, it goes one of the good ways.

I have no stock in how this goes but his last movie fuckin sucked (can you remember what is was without checking?). I fear he's lost his touch completely. (but then this is the MCU so it might not matter)

Yeah, but the one before that, which was actually written by him, was Drag Me To Hell.

Dr. Agmetohell iirc

Oz truly sucked, SM 3 truly sucked, but the one about the Dr. was v good. I guess we'll see. I remain hopeful.

"MCU horror film" oh god what a nightmare

Why are you here, itt

ubiquitous, unavoidable cultural force = we all get to cruise in and take a potshot now and then

oy, that could really go one of several different ways...

― Dr. Teeth and the Women (Old Lunch)

yeah i uh hm

i am very much sold on a horror-leaning doctor strange (are they bringing in Nightmare for this one?) but was kinda thinking more creepy cosmic horror that gets under your skin vs uptempo slapstick horror... i guess it'll be worth it if at some point someone summons an animated chainsaw?

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).

― his eye is on despair-o (Jon not Jon), Wednesday, 26 October 2016 22:03 (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Watched this last night and the score fairly ruling was a pleasant surprise.

Yeah I listened to it a couple of weeks ago - it holds up real well