It scares me how much we think alike. I've been thinking that Gary Oldman would be perfect for Doom since his performance in Bram Stoker's Dracula. He might be a bit too old now, but Doom could easily be played as an older villain. Christian Bale would be another excellent choice. He looks a lot like pre-disfigurement Doom and has the acting chops to pull it off. 

Couldn't agree more about the value of Doom, Galactus and the Surfer. I love the FF, but they were screwed up so badly in all three films it's going to be a long while before anyone will attempt to use them again I'm afraid. Since we've never actually seen Doom yet in my mind, or Galactus, and the Surfer was the best thing about the FF films, they're still more or less untarnished. 

The Strange movie sets up

Doctor Doom could be tainted, but I feel if he was done right, and presented to the audience as basically a modernized version of the definitive Lee/Kirby/Byrne version, all would be forgiven. The only problem I see, even if he's done right, are the unfortunate comparisons to Darth Vader. As we all know that should be the other way around, but as far as the average movie-goer is concerned, Vader came first.

I saw it late last night and I came away impressed by it and I think it a great visual-oriented movie and I find the movie spellbinding, magical, and it's quite good in all means ... Benedict Cumberbatch who played Doctor Strange did a great job and he was a breath of fresh air and Rachel McAdams was not bad at all as Christine Palmer.

I saw it in 2D and I don't care for 3D at all because it's messes up my eyes and I find it too much for me to handle.

I give this movie a Solid B+ for it's outstanding photography and visual effects.

No, I largely agree with you, shax. Though the film probably worked fine for mainstream cinema audiences who had never read a Dr. Strange comic in their lives, as soon as you start to compare it to the source material, it runs into trouble.

For one thing, I get the feeling that the film was mostly based on more recent comics, such as The Oath, rather than the classic Steve Ditko comics of the Silver Age. That's not really a problem per se, but personally, I prefer the earlier, Silver Age comics. Visually, it had that same de-saturated look as most of the other Marvel Studios movies and consequently it looked very "corporate", for want of a better term. It looked like it had just rolled off of the Marvel production line, which, of course, it had. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that it looked formulaic.

The CGI effects were also wildly uneven -- they looked great in some places and decidedly ropey in others. I did appreciate that the filmmakers made the effort to try and capture the mind-bending, psychedelic, M.C. Escher-esque look of Ditko's magical realms, but often it came off looking like a tired retread of Inception, rather than looking truly Ditko-esque.

I also really disliked the Sling Rings that Strange and the other magic users had. They were something that originated in this movie, right? I think so, because I'm sure I've never read a Dr. Strange comic with Sling Rings in. To me, they just seemed way too "Harry Potter" -- as if some studio exec had decided that audiences wouldn't believe that Strange could enter magical dimensions or travel through space and time by simply using his hands. He needed to have some kind of "wand" or other magical tool in order to do it. Likewise, seeing Strange getting martial arts training just felt wrong.

On a related note, it's a shame that we never got to see Strange uttering any incantations or saying any of his colourful catchphrases, such as "By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth!", "By the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak!", or "By the Flames of the Flawless Faltine!" That was a shame.

On the plus side, I thought Benedict Cumberbatch was excellent in the title role, although Tilda Swinton was less so, in my view. I also liked what they did with Mordo, potentially making him a much more nuanced character than he ever was in the comics. The astral projection scenes were spot on and really looked like the comic book come to life, while the time loop trick that Strange caught Dormammu in seemed very in keeping with Dr. Strange.

All in all, like I say, I enjoyed it while it was playing. In fact, I enjoyed it more than some other Marvel movies, such as Iron Man, but that's probably because I'm much more of a fan of the character and setting. But in the days after watching it, I began to pick holes in the film and decided that, actually, it was a 6/10 superhero movie and a 4/10 Dr. Strange movie.

Sing Rings were introduced into the comic just ahead of the film.

Just one of many of the things I felt the script did to Hollywoodize and simplify the premise.

"How do we make Dr. Strange struggle in this story?"
"We could visually depict battles of will and ectoplasmic energy waging war against itself"
"Or we could give him a magic ring. And he could lose it sometimes"
"Yeah, that's easier."



I presume they thought that would be too campy. And yet the sight of Cumberbatch running while spinning his arm in a circle repeatedly made me have to restrain my laughter on a number of occasions. With all that advanced magic, they can't find a way to overcome that ridiculously impractical necessity?

Oh, absolutely. That was totally my point.




I don't think those lines are necessarily critical to a good Dr. Strange film; all I'm saying is that they should have been consistent. If you're going to take the lines out because you think they're ridiculous, don't have the characters doing something even more ridiculous in their place.



Tim Burton thought he was being realistic