Like any great, mind-altering movie, there is no true way to describe a film like “Doctor Strange.” It isn’t a movie to be summarized, only to be experienced.
With every pun intended, this movie is incredibly strange. It is strange in a way that is endlessly good. This story not only deals with a fight between good and evil, but it engages the audience on the topics of spirituality, the universe, inner strength, death, time and the balance between them all.
This movie earns the credibility to be compared to a Christopher Nolan film in every way. Director Scott Derrickson has effectively pulled off the Nolan-esque, twisting sense of reality this film is all about.
Derrickson makes sure the audience grasps this broken sense of reality immediately in the opening scene. With an epic fight between the masters of good and evil, the audience’s perception is automatically distorted by the bending of time, space and matter.
Also included is the interconnectivity of the universes, the multiverse, as “Doctor Strange” refers to it. Everything is based around the opening of the mind and soul and the ability to conjure up the energy that binds this world to the rest.
While good fights against evil, evil fights against death. Time is the enemy, for it only brings an end. What the darkness offers is a place where time doesn’t exist, essentially promising eternal life. Tempting, especially to Doctor Strange himself, whose beliefs counter the spiritual.
All great power, however, comes with great responsibility, and here the audience follows as Dr. Steven Strange takes on this burden. He begins his journey selfishly arrogant and plans to leave the same, but his transformation is admirable in every sense.
Everything this movie has to offer is absolutely strange and incredibly brilliant. “Doctor Strange” contains enough action to thrill the body, enough wit to encompass the mind, and enough magic to enthrall the imagination. It is certainly one of the better movies film has to offer.
