“Doctor Strange” stands apart from all the other superhero movies out in the last decade because the previous success of all the different Marvel movies allowed them the comfort and room to expand their visual language and open up their stories to the realm of wild ideas made possible by the metaphysical and existential quandaries and principles brought up by your typical Saturday night college dorm room toot circle or mushroom-induced nighttime forest explorations punctuated with questions such as whether or not there are alternate dimensions beyond time which can be reached via astral projections. Sure there is a guy wearing a cape and a bad guy who wants to destroy the world and a training montage and whatnot, but there are definitely aspects of “Doctor Strange” that keep it separate and unique and interesting in this world of increasingly uniform comic book movies.

Boiled down to its essence, the story of “Doctor Strange” is rather basic. A character goes through a transformation that imbues him (or her, but let’s be real, most of these movies and stories are still about dudes) with skills and/or powers that can then be used to immediately stop a villainous person from destroying a city/country/world/universe. Along the way this new hero also becomes a better person, which almost always means becoming more selfless and helpful than at the beginning of the story.Continue Reading …