Why ‘Doctor Strange’ is the best MCU movie: 10 reasons

[and other superhero-movie hot takes]

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Movie series, by the numbers (a stealth longread)

“Is there a better Marvel movie than Captain America: The Winter Soldier?” asked my friend Denes House on Facebook last year.¹ This is not an unpopular opinion; here is Denes’s take on the case for this movie:

It is a taut, paranoid spy thriller that just happens to feature superheroes. The characters are vividly drawn, the action sequences are fantastic, and the whole thing has stakes that are both personal and global. Scarlett Johansson is at her Marvel best in this film; it features the best Captain America costume, and some of the best Captain America moments. Robert Redford’s Alexander Pierce is a serviceable villain, and if it’s not Redford’s best performance, at least the man on his worst day is better than most actors at their peak.

My reply to Denes, which reiterated things I’ve said before over the last ten years, continued to evolve in subsequent discussions, ultimately becoming this post.

Historically, I’ve said that my Top 5 MCU movies are, in alphabetical order:²

• The Avengers (2012)

• Black Panther (2018)

• Doctor Strange (2016)

• Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

• Iron Man (2008)³

Regarding Captain America: The Winter Soldier, for what it’s worth, while I’m not the biggest fan, I do appreciate its relatively grounded action sequences (at least until the typically outsized, monumental finale), from the opening commando assault on a pirated ship to the celebrated elevator fight. Keeping action grounded is one way to make a superhero movie stand out in a sea of forgettable CGI spectacle. (If you do it well! Otherwise, it’s pedestrian. The Winter Soldier does it well.)

Then there’s the opposite tactic, employed by Scott Derrickson and his collaborators in Doctor Strange, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Dr. Stephen Strange: making the action as fantastical and unreal as possible. This, too, needs to be done well, or it becomes weightless and cartoony. Doctor Strange does it well.

This is the first and most important reason that Doctor Strange has become my favorite MCU movie:⁴

1. A unique visual language

Cinematically, above all, Doctor Strange is the only MCU movie that develops its own visual language for action scenes and other set pieces,⁵ so that it doesn’t look like every other MCU movie, or like any other superhero movie.⁶ Not that it has no precedents or inspirations. Most obviously, Doctor Strange draws on The Matrix and Inception (there are also moments that remind me of Gravity⁷, Interstellar, and Labyrinth⁸) while also going beyond its influences with a kaleidoscopic approach unlike anything I’ve seen in any other action movie.⁹

Architecture folding and fanning in iterative and fractal patterns, and people running or falling in perpendicular or opposed frames of reference, are a lot more interesting than one super blasting another through masonry for the 20th time. As sheer eye candy, nothing else in the MCU compares to Doctor Strange; some of the visuals are just trippy, but much of it has a logic and structure to it.¹⁰

2. Time, space, gravity

In particular, the way the film plays with time, space, and gravity make for the most unique action sequences in any MCU movie, and maybe any live-action superhero movie.¹¹ The two urban showdowns between Tilda Swinton’s Ancient One and Mads Mikkelson’s treacherous Master Kaecilius are among the most visually spectacular action sequences.

Conceptually, I like the New York sanctum hallway sequence pitting Kaecilius against Benedict Cumberbatch’s Dr. Stephen Strange. Still a novice in the mystic arts, Strange tries to flee, but Kaecilius telescopes the floor under his feet, stranding him in space, like in dreams where you run and run but somehow make no progress. Then Kaecilius twists the hallway around Strange, or turns Strange’s gravitational frame of reference, from side to side, rolling him back and forth; finally, he upends the hall, threatening Strange with falling the length of the hallway—a move that Strange, however, manages to use to his own advantage.

Especially brilliant is the Hong Kong finale with overlapping, opposite timestreams running backward and forward at the same time.¹² Heroes battle villains as the ruined city repairs itself around them, constantly challenging the combatants with vehicles racing backwards and rubble leaping up from the ground to form intact structures again.

Speaking of that Hong Kong finale…

3. An urban battle royale that ends without massive urban destruction

For what it’s worth, among my Top 5, with subsequent viewings I’ve found that, along with Doctor Strange, one other film rises to the top: The Avengers is the arguably first true superhero ensemble movie,¹³ and in my view it’s still the best in many respects. On the other hand, like Winter Soldier and so many others, it too ultimately succumbs to the epically epic urban-destruction finale that all but defines the genre.

Of my top 5 MCU movies, in fact, only one, Doctor Strange, finds a way to rise above this trend. The Hong Kong finale’s backward-and-forward timestreams allow Derrickson to have his cake and eat it too, offering a climactic showdown wreaking havoc in downtown Hong Kong while also ultimately leaving the city unharmed. This is welcome and refreshing in its own right; it’s also a notable character moment, as we’ll see.

4. A redemption arc with only one possible rival

The original Iron Man established the precedent and set the bar for MCU heroes who start out as gifted bad boys of one kind or another—self-absorbed, arrogant, rule-breaking, and/or irresponsible—before undergoing a process of redemption. The trail blazed by Iron Man was followed by Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Ant-Man, while Black Widow and Hawkeye had partially converging redemptive back stories. None of these later redemption stories, though, rivaled the original, thanks in part to the strength of the script of the original film and a through-line to The Avengers, not to mention Robert Downey Jr.’s charismatic performance in the role.

Only Strange’s redemption arc rivals Tony Stark’s; it may even surpass it. Stark’s initial playboy celebrity persona is larger than life; Strange as a domineering egoist devoid of empathy is (a very recognizable surgeon type, according to Suzanne, RN), starts in a more human place. From his desperation, self-pity, and rage following his accident to finally his slow journey of transformation, Strange’s journey is not just moral, but spiritual.

5. Victory through ultimate sacrifice

By the end, in fact, Strange reaches ultimate sacrifice territory—and such an ultimate sacrifice!—instead of waiting till his first Avengers movie to get there, like Tony. A superhero movie in which the hero overcomes satanic evil by his willingness to suffer and die—over and over again, eternally if necessary? What’s better than that?

6. Rachel McAdams’s Christine

Far and away the MCU’s most engaging love interest is Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts in the original Iron Man, and it’s not particularly close.¹⁴ I have no hot take here in favor of Rachel McAdams’s Christine, who has substantially less screentime and less dialogue than Pepper.¹⁵ Where Paltrow is effectively a female lead, McAdams has a secondary or even tertiary role; she isn’t even a proper love interest, just a character with a romantic history with Strange. Still, Christine has the same kind of grounded strength of character as Pepper, and pushes back on the hero’s failings and foibles in the same way; she can also be funny. As realized by McAdams, she’s at least arguably the MCU’s second-best love interest.

7. Acting ensemble

Speaking of acting … I mean, Cumberbatch, Swinton, Mikkelson, McAdams, and I haven’t even mentioned Chiwetel Ejiofor as Mordo. Come on. This is hands down the best ensemble cast and the best set of performances in any MCU movie. Benedict Wong as Wong is also solid, and Benjamin Bratt has a strong cameo as a paraplegic who recovered by studying with the Ancient One.

Swinton in particular is outstanding; her offbeat line readings combine depth and humor with understated power, and a Mona Lisa–esque sense of enigma plays on her face, as if she knows more than she’s letting on.

8. The Ancient One and Mordo

Derrickson’s take on the Ancient One might be the MCU’s most interestingly morally ambiguous character. In fact, my hottest Doctor Strange take is that the Ancient One, though heroic, was fatally compromised morally, and that Mordo, though ultimately villainous, was right about this.¹⁶ This also means that the movie crafts a compelling origin story for Mordo as the MCU’s most interestingly and tragically fallen villain, based on what he saw as the hypocrisy of the Ancient One (rightly in my view) as well as of Doctor Strange and Wong (wrongly in my view) regarding Strange’s manipulation of the Hong Kong finale timeline. (That this promising Mordo arc is, alas, never realized in later films is not the fault of this movie.)

9. Thematic depth (for a comic-book movie)

Thematically, Doctor Strange is the first MCU movie to take a stab at transcendence, and it’s still the most persuasive such stab. Has any other MCU movie made a philosophical statement more notable than this film’s rejection of Strange’s atheistic materialism? (“There is no such thing as spirit! We are made of matter, and nothing more. You’re just another tiny, momentary speck within an indifferent universe.”) How about the Ancient One’s parting words of wisdom to Strange? “Arrogance and fear still keep you from learning the simplest and most significant lesson of all: It’s not about you.” 

10. Location, location, location

Finally, from this NYC area native’s perspective, Derrickson might make the best use of locale of any MCU movie. In particular, from the early midtown Manhattan shots and the George Washington Bridge to the Greenwich Village reveal halfway through, the film’s use of New York is more persuasive to me¹⁷ than any other use of locale in any other MCU movie, including the Battle for New York in The Avengers. The movie’s use of London and Kathmandu I leave to others qualified to speak to those locations.

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1. To be clear, Denes was talking specifically about Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, not any and all movies featuring Marvel Comics characters. (He and I are in agreement, above all, that the animated Spider-Verse movies are in an empyrean class by themselves.)

2. Honorable mentions: Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) and Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). I also have a soft spot for Spider-Man: No Way Home due to its nostalgic fusing of earlier franchises (though I’m still salty regarding its Nicholas Hammond erasure). MCU movies with which I have serious problems include Black Widow, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, and Thor: Ragnarok.

3. As I wrote in my recent piece on almost every movie series ever, “basically all the best Marvel Cinematic Universe movies are origin stories, either of an individual hero … or of a team.” It is technically true that Black Panther isn’t strictly an origin story, but it’s at least origin-story adjacent in notable ways. The prologue provides the back story for the Black Panther lineage, and we see T’Challa assume the throne of Wakanda and undergo the process of becoming superpowered (after first de-powering himself). We also see Wakanda emerge from the shadows as a world power. So it’s at least the origin story of King T’Challa, a promising world leader (though that promise was cut short, alas, by Chadwick Boseman’s death from colon cancer).

4. Doctor Strange turns 10 years old in November, or at least November 2016 was its U.S. debut. Maybe I should have saved this piece until then, but I didn’t feel like it.

5. How many MCU movies even have set pieces that aren’t action scenes? The Ancient One opening Strange’s mind to the mysteries of the multiverse (the bravura “Open your eye” sequence near the 30 minute mark) is one of the best sequences in any MCU movie. I also like the Ancient One’s bullet-time astral-plane death scene with slow-motion lightning and the frozen helicopter.

6. Until a few months ago, the MCU had a team responsible for ensuring that MCU movies shared a consistent visual language. I don’t know if this is part of the reason that so many Marvel action set pieces look similar, but I could probably count most if not all of the really outstanding, memorable action sequences on the fingers of one hand. (I am not going to attempt this here. If I ever rank my favorite MCU action sequences, I intend to get a whole post out of it. You’re getting more than enough here as it is.)

7. My favorite sequence in Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity—one of my favorite sequences in any space movie—takes place during the second of the two prolonged opening shots. (Most sequences are made up of many shots; Gravity opens with two shots that together account for almost the first 19 minutes of the movie.) This sequence, which takes place after the catastrophe that sets the plot in motion, depicts Sandra Bullock’s character spinning in the void, first objectively, then gradually syncing the camera to her movement until we see the universe spinning around her, and finally de-syncing the camera again. Derrickson and cinematographer Ben Davis echo this (it’s so striking that I want to say they quote it) in the beginning of the “Open your eye” sequence (see note 5).

8. Most obviously, the relativity of gravity in Doctor Strange connects with the Escheresque chamber in the finale of Labyrinth; you might also think of Labyrinth’s Helping Hands bit during the “Open your eye” sequence when a not-necessarily-helpful sea of hands washes over Strange, not to mention the fractal fingers shot.

9. The Academy gave its Visual Effects award that year to Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book—a delightful film, but Doctor Strange was robbed.

10. Even a moment as simple as the Eye of Agamotto apple scene, in which Strange first experiments with manipulating time, has a specific visual grammar: When Strange rolls time backward (restoring the partially eaten apple to wholeness), the camera dollies left; when he rolls time forward (reducing the apple to a browning core), the camera dollies right.

11. “Live-action” because, of course, of the animated Spider-Verse movies (see note 1), as well as The Incredibles and even Incredibles 2 (not a patch on the original film, but still fantastic set pieces). After Doctor Strange, what live-action comic-book movies have the best superpowered set pieces? I would nominate Spider-Man 2 and X-Men: Days of Future Past, with an honorable mention for Captain America: Civil War for the airport brawl.

12. I adore time-bending. Some time I’ll write a piece all about my love of time travel.

13. I would perhaps rank two of the X-Men movies, X2: X-Men United and X-Men: Days of Future Past, above The Avengers in important respects. X2, though, is undermined by its middle-movie unfinished business and reliance on a sequel that turned out to be Brett Ratner’s mediocre X-Men: The Last Stand, while Days of Future Past, like other X-Men movies to one degree or another, is less a true ensemble movie than a “Wolverine and His Friends” story.

14. Pepper’s character loses something in the sequels, mostly by receding into the background, but also in Iron Man 3 by temporarily acquiring Extremis superpowers. Giving Paltrow’s Pepper superpowers, even temporarily, robs her of her specialness, which depends on her being a very competent, grounded, practical, realistic, ordinary person.

15. Fan estimates suggest that Paltrow is onscreen in Iron Man for about 23 minutes, while McAdams gets just 13 minutes in Doctor Strange.

16. In private correspondence, Derrickson told me in 2016 that he found my criticism of the Ancient One and my partial vindication of Mordo interesting and thought-provoking, but he didn’t agree with it. Over the years, though, he has increasingly come around to my way of thinking. We still aren’t in full agreement, but we agree that what the Ancient One did was morally wrong, and that Mordo was right to say “The bill comes due.” `

17. Which isn’t to say that Doctor Strange doesn’t engage in geographical cheating! In the first act, Strange races out of Manhattan over the George Washington Bridge and then cruises along a winding road running through what we might reasonably assume is the Hudson Valley at the base of the Palisades before losing control and wrecking his car and his body. Since the river is on his left, it seems he’s heading south, but after the accident we see a bridge in the background—seemingly the GWB, since there are no bridges over the Hudson south of the GWB—with the river on the left side of the screen, which would place us north of the bridge. Anyway, there is no such road at the base of the Palisades on either side of the Hudson, so the sequence wasn’t filmed in the Hudson Valley at all.

It seems the accident sequence was actually shot in the Delaware Valley, on the Hawk’s Nest stretch of NY Route 97 near Port Jervis, on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River. This is likely two hours or more from NYC. If that were the diegetic location of the accident, it hardly seems likely that an ambulance would bring Strange back to his own hospital in the Big Apple—though without a helicopter it looks like he’d be over an hour away from Level I trauma care in any case. (This is why Suzanne, RN is glad we live where we do in the NYC area.)