Dr. Strange

[Barry]

Just went to get tickets. It is sold out on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  We can only get Monday afternoon tickets, evening is sold out.  It's at our local Dolby Theatre.

[bmoney]

Looking forwrd to this one

[AVSCraig]

Looking forwrd to this one

Same here!

[tripplej]

We saw "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" last night very late, 11:15pm Show. Everything else was sold out.
Overall, we enjoyed, lot of cameo's referencing various characters from the comics (Barry will have to give us some insight on those) and the special effects were incredible. Although, the only negative that I would say is that the level of violence was a bit too much and some scenes not good for young kids to see.

P.S. Stay for the post credits.

[Barry]

I just saw Dr. Strange at my Dolby Theater. I give it a “good” rating, it was fun to watch with amazing special effects and a lot of them.  The plot was a bit thin, but with everything happening who cares? It did, on occasion, have the fell of a B movie.

Dr. Strange was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, in 1963 the same pair that created Spider-Man. He was originally a “filler” but grew to have a series of his own comics.  I always thought that Dr. Strange was the most powerful hero in the Marvel Universe.

Stan Lee 1962: Well, we have a new character in the works for Strange Tales,  just 5 page filler named Doctor Strange. Steve Ditko is gonna draw him. It has sort of a black magic theme. The first story is nothing great, but perhaps we can make something of him. T’was Steve ‘s idea, I figured we’d give it a chance, although again we had to rush the first one too much. Originally, we had decided to call him Mr. Strange, but thought the “Mr” was a little too similar to “Mr. Fantastic.”

An interesting component of the movie is the search for the book of Darkhold, which is a book of magical spells.  It has many functions in the Marvel Universe but to me the most important was the Montesi Formula:  The Monk Montesi studies the book of Darkhold and develops an incantation that can destroy a vampire. It will be known in the Marvel Universe as the Montesi Formula.
“HOLD ERASM A RABIS KATERAMA LUCEM DEI PARADOXIS SATANNICUS BELGREM.”

Dr. Strange would use this formula to kill DRACULA once and for all!  See Death Certificate.



Spoiler Alert:
In one of the dimensions Dr. Strange meets the Illuminati, an idea which was taken from the comics.  They are Captain Carter (Hayley Atwell) who was in Marvel’s recent What If Series as well as the Captain America Movie and Agent Carter on TV; Black Bolt, (Anson Mount) from Marvel’s Inhuman’s TV show; Captain Marvel (Lashana Lynch )who was in the movie, but not yet the Captain Marvel; Mr. Fantastic( John Krasinski) of the Fantastic Four, but not either of the actors who played him in the Fox movies and Prof. X, once again played by Patrick Stewart.

   

[tripplej]

Hi Barry, glad you enjoyed the movie..

SPOILER -- SKIP below.




Any thoughts on Charlize Theron as the sorceress Clea?

[Barry]

Hi Barry, glad you enjoyed the movie..

SPOILER -- SKIP below.




Any thoughts on Charlize Theron as the sorceress Clea?
She is a wonderful actress and I’m sure I will do a very good job. But to me there are two interesting things here. Stars like her used to run away from movies like this and now they’re running to them. Second it’s nice to see that you don’t have to be 25 years old to play an attractive girlfriend.

[randman]

Just noticed it's now available for streaming at Disney+!

[bmoney]

Thought it was very well done. Dr strange is one of my favorite marvel characters. 

[Barry]

The folio society is putting out, regularly, collected stories of the most famous Marvel characters. They don’t have the comics so they actually ask me to scan them for them. I also help them choose which Comics to reprint. Believe it or not the volumes are about $125. And they have three that are $125 each.

https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/catalogsearch/result/?q=Marvel

We just did a volume for Dr strange. I don’t know when I will be out. But I had to scan and a bunch of Comics for them

[SRW1000]

I must be getting too old and curmudgeonly, since I just couldn't get into this movie.

Let's start with the good:  The visuals were all interesting and mostly well-done and approaching the trippy nature of what they were going for in the old comics.  It's fun to see a really different look to the Marvel universe, and Dr. Strange is a natural fit for that.  And some of the sound work, while lacking dynamics, was also cool in some of the scenes.

There are heavy reminders that this is a Raimi movie, with his style and gags present at various points in the movie.  This may be good or bad, depending on your personal views of Raimi-vision.

But then there's the plot and story.  These movies are starting to feel rather formulaic and paint-by-numbers.  The stakes are huge and the resolutions feel trite and rote.  There's little in the way of suspense, twists, or dramatic challenges.  Opportunities for serious discussions are either shortened and rushed (like the debate among the Illuminati) or used for things like discussion love interests when nothing less than the fate of the multiverse are at stake.  

Then throw in the way that all the heroes are all being portrayed the same way.  Strange here is almost a clone of Tony Stark, albeit with mystical knowledge rather than scientific.  They're often presented as secondary characters in their own movies.  And then there's the quips, almost endless and omnipresent.  Could we maybe have a serious superhero again, instead of a one-line spouter?

I find myself in a weird position.  For decades I was dreaming for a time when we might be able to see technology advance to the point where comics could make it successfully to the big screen.  That time has finally arrived, Hollywood is actually producing the kinds of movies I could only dream of, but the products are ultimately unsatisfying.  

I contrast that with one of my friends who grew up reading comics the same time as I did.  He's delighted in everything coming out and tells me I should be thrilled that we're living in a time where we can actually see this stuff in live action.  But I just can't share his enthusiasm or that of the general public.  It feels like what we're getting is just a superficial version of what once thrilled us, lacking in imagination and wonder.

Scott

[AVSCraig]

I'm glad I never read any comics as kid, since I go into these movies with absolutely no preconceived notion or even knowledge of what they are about. It may be better that way. They do stick to a certain formula, but you can say that for a lot of Hollywood movies.