There’s something reassuring, even comforting, about competence—not genius, but rather the elusive combination of craftsmanship and care that can sometimes be more welcome than the unexpected. Competence is why Marvel Studios, which has been making superhero movies since 2008, has become the most successful motion-picture maker of our time and possibly of all time. Every one of Marvel’s 14 movies has been a hit. Only Pixar can boast a similar record of popular achievement.
There is a consistency to the movies Marvel makes, and its enormous audience has learned over the past eight years that its members can enter a theater and be assured they will be provided with two hours of carefully conceived and executed entertainment. I found the latest Marvel smash, Doctor Strange, pretty much a snore, but there’s no denying the meticulousness with which its creative team, led by director Scott Derrickson, approached the material. Doctor Strange doesn’t look like its predecessors either in its visual scheme or in the design of its special effects. It is rich, dark, and plummy, befitting a story about an arrogant nerd who basically becomes a superhero by studying ancient books in a well-appointed library in Kathmandu.
When the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (as these interlocking pictures are called) are fun, they’re really fun, and the three outright comedies—Iron Man, Ant-Man, and Guardians of the Galaxy—are among the most delightful pictures of our time. But the other 11 I would have had no problem skipping, and they have largely faded from memory. Doctor Strange is not quite a comedy and not quite a melodrama, which is one of the reasons I didn’t enjoy it that much. Still, there’s no question something remarkable is going on here under the guidance of a visionary executive named Kevin Feige, a comic-book aficionado who got himself a job on the first X-Men movie in 2000 and who has been guiding the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2008.
The title character of Doctor Strange is a surgeon who smashes up his hands in a car wreck and, in desperation, travels to Nepal to seek a cure from a guru. What he discovers is the world of magic, which his rationalist mind finds hard to accept. This is where the movie lost me, because it makes clear that Dr. Strange lives in a universe in which the Avengers and other superheroes are flying around all over the place—one of whom is the Norse god Thor. Why would anyone in this universe doubt the existence of the supernatural or alternate realities?
Even worse, from my perspective, Doctor Strange never establishes the rules of magic in a coherent or comprehensible way. All we know is that, in some circumstances, reality can be manipulated so that whole cities bend in on themselves and turn into the workings of a gigantic clock. The effects are astounding, if derivative: We first saw these sorts of images in the wildly underrated Dark City from 1998 and then in the overrated Inception, with Leonardo DiCaprio. And if that’s all you need, fine. But why do they bend? How do you bend them? Why is it okay to bend them sometimes but forbidden at other times?
These are the inevitable problems that come when a movie presents us with characters who possess magical powers; the way those powers are limited is always frustratingly arbitrary and makes it very difficult to suspend one’s disbelief. Fortunately for Doctor Strange, the two characters who know how it works are played wonderfully by Tilda Swinton and Benedict Wong, who make the nonsense palatable for as long as they’re speaking and acting.
These objections are beside the point, really. What Pixar and Marvel have in common, aside from the fact that they are both owned by Disney, is a thoroughgoing commitment to excellence. That is not to say that their movies are uniformly excellent. Far from it, in both cases. But both studios figured out that if they’re going to make computerized cartoons or superhero films that will draw millions of people to theaters the first weekend, they have to be careful, lavish, and thought-through. Do it right. Don’t go cheap. Photograph it beautifully. Be sure to surround it with a memorable musical score (preferably by the miraculous Michael Giacchino). Get the effects right, and make them look novel every time.
And finally, get the best actors you can. This was the great innovation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe; previously, only the villains were carefully cast in superhero movies while the heroes were largely interchangeable. Here Benedict Cumberbatch, the super-neurotic British actor, makes a dazzling impression in the title role (even with a problematic American accent), aided immeasurably by the ineffably charming Rachel McAdams as his long-suffering girlfriend.
The point is that audiences trust Marvel to deliver the goods, and for good reason. They’re not for me, but I’m getting old.
John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, is The Weekly Standard‘s movie critic.
