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Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One.  Interesting.  http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/tilda-swinton-talks-join-benedict-798348 (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/tilda-swinton-talks-join-benedict-798348) 

She has the presence that I think the role needs... I'm just a little surprised that they avoided an Asian actor given the efforts to include Asian influences in the recent films and TV...

I'm not generally a fan of ethnic redefinition in roles that have a strong ethnic component - even when the original version was well over the cultural sensitivity line.  It sometimes works out fine, but I much prefer to see them maintain the core aspects of existing characters and introduce diversity through new characters (in the source material and the adaptations). 

I love Tilda Swinton but I hate Benedict Cumberbund.

Swinton can play a man, I say make her Strange!

Yeah I'm not a Cumberbitch myself, although I think he may do fine in the role. 

As for Swinton as the Ancient One, meh.  I don't mind race/gender changes for these smaller characters.  I have issues with the bigger ones, like the Human Torch.

Sigh. Well, anyway, I'm happy with any of it if the actor is good and the script is good. Literally doesn't matter--the essential thing of the Human Torch is that he's a cocky, not-altogether-bright, slightly shallow young guy; the essential thing of the Ancient One is wisdom, remoteness, age, seeming frailty masking great strength. "White" and "Asian" aren't essential for either.

It's an odd choice, but I'm not married to the Dr. Strange lore so OK.

Questions :

1 - Who's the Ancient One ?
2 - Given my question above, what percentage of current MCU audience is going to give a flying fuck ?

Ancient One is Strange's teacher.  I don't think they are even going to have the Ancient One outside of flashbacks, if they are sticking to their "no more origin stories" plan.

99.99% will not care.

Ah, so the Tibetan Monk type person, if I recall anything about his lore ?

Odd choice, but agreed that no-one will care.  She's played a Witch and an Angel.  I'm sure a monk will not stretch her too much.  As long as she doesn't wield weapons, she should still get plusses to her DR.

Yeah, monk in the Himalayas sort of thing. Pretty much bog-standard holy man at the top of mountain kind of thing, except that he (she) trains Strange in mystic rather than martial arts.

I'm more interested in what they do about Strange's trusty Asian manservant Wong. *That* needs some updating. I also think Strange's usual number-1 enemy Baron Mordo (and the number-2 Big Bad who is usually backing Mordo, Dormammu) need some creative reimagining.

Just a thought - they try to tie the different movies together a bit.  If the Eye is in the hands of the Norse Gods, perhaps they want to tie the Ancient One to the visitations of the Norse Gods we've seen discussed in Thor and SHIELD.  That would give a strong reason for the re-envisioning.

On another note, I don't think they need to overhaul Mordo too much - if they ground him then they have farther to stretch to get to Dormammu.  He needs to be a bit out there to set the stage for the step child of Surtur and Cthulhu.

I agree that the original version of Wong would be offensive to modern sensibilities.   

Didn't Kato get a modern overhaul that wasn't that offensive ?

I mean, sure, Green Hornet was the most offensive film ever, but the actual character, not so much ?

I liked Green Hornet for what it was.

Reimagining characters is fine, stunt casting is not.  The difference between the two is one take a character in a different direction and the other is to shoehorn in diversity, usually the difference lies in how much more you need to explain to the audience for it to make sense. 

"Hi, I'm Johnny Storm, nice to meet you, Reed. Yeah, Sue's my half-sister."

Big stretch.

"I'm a mystic who hangs out at the top of a Himalayan mountain. Welcome, Stephen Strange."

All done. Sure, my great-grandpa who grew up reading Dr. Fu Manchu or whatever might be wondering where the orientals are at in a scene set in the mysterious Himalayas but that's about it.

Unless you're talking about "major comic-book fans who need it explained to them", but I thought we'd long since established that they don't fucking matter as an audience that needs extensive pandering to. Especially in this case, where it's only one segment of comic-book fans who get all butthurt when characters who aren't defined by race get race-changed.

I can really think of only three Marvel characters where you'd really have to do serious work to race-change them: Thor, Captain America and Black Panther. Even Thor you could mess with (think Heimdall), but Captain America has to function as a mainstream symbol during World War II, a time with established prejudices. Black Panther pretty much has to be a king from Africa, it's fundamental to the character.

Fixed.

Not that I care one way or the other, but just making them step siblings fixes that relationship if it's retained in the movie.

Adoption also works.  I think that is the route they're using - Sue is adopted.

It all depends on how much of the Ancient One they use and what elements of the character's history fold into the movie.  There is a lot of freedom if the Ancient One is merely referenced in passing flashbacks and we'll never get a story with her as a focus.  If, however, part of the story incorporates the origin on the Ancient One (where two spellcasters fight over their small village), then there are more impacts.

Mostly, I'm just surprised by the move away from involving Asian cultures into the movie.  I expected them to update the concepts so that we didn't see a reanimated Peter Sellers doing dual roles as Wong and the Ancient One.  Abandoning the Asian cultural identity was not a path I expected... (although it is not certain this is what they've done).

You could argue that a Tuskegee Airmen kind of avenue for Cap could work.

It's not as big a stretch as you might imagine. It's been known to happen, even when siblings have the same parents.

Really ?

I thought it was a shitshow.  Which I guess means it was ok for what it was.

But I can't stand Seth.

I didn't mention FF..... :uhrr:

Yeah, initially I thought they'd done away with the Sue-Bobby relationship with the first trailer and I was as WTF as you. As has been covered, it turns out he's either adopted or a half-sibling. That justifies it enough while also modernizing it in a big way. Modern families aren't the atomic ideal from the 50's & 60's.

As the Actor himself stated recently, FF is about very different people coming together as a team & family.

Other way around - Sue is the adopted one by all appearances - the father looks like Johnny, not Sue.

I have to admit I don't like the FF casting because it does fundamentally change the relationship. Now if they were both black that would be fine, but adoption / half-sister is very different from full siblings. At the same time I'm not super angry about it or something though - I mean, black Johnny Storm can't be any worse than Jessica Alba was.

The gender of The Ancient One isn't really important as far as I know.

Maybe the Ancient One is like Dr. Orpheus' mentor and can change shape. 8-)

You can genetically get light and dark skinned siblings too. It's not out of the question.

They have said she's the adopted sister though.  Now you can have that awkward, not related, brother/sister romantic chemistry.

Marvel. You can have that with biologically related siblings, too. Ultimate SW + Q.

Sigh. Do I need green text? Welcome to the sarchasm.

heh.

I've been having this convo since Jordan was announced as Johnny so I just post out of reflex now.  :grin:

The sad part is that it looks like the re-raced Johnny Storm may be the best thing about the new Fantastic Four movie.

I'm hearing that people are really going to be looking forward to the end credits...

Excuse me? My sister and I would like to refute that with you.

(http://escapedredpanda.net/hotlink/smiley/huh.gif)

I'm not sure why.  My best friend growing up was adopted, and I never thought of him and his sister as any different from other siblings.  Or that his parents weren't his parents.  They're as much a full family as mine is.

I was thinking less about in real life and more in comic book terms.

For almost every comic book character with unknown parents, a mysterious past, parents killed in an accident at birth, etc, (that I can think of anyway) that becomes a major plot point. And these days in movies / TV there's a push towards being overly clever in terms of relationships with everyone somehow secretly connected - for example in the new Spider-Man move how his parents work for Oscorp or something.

If one of them is adopted I fully expect there to be some hints that their parents are Howard the Duck and She-Hulk or some shit. Look at all the people jerking off about who Starlord's father might be. Even if that's not the plan now it's the sort of thing future writers will have trouble staying away from because it's so obvious and lazy and make that a plot point. (There is already a sequel planned)

In the past Marvel has milked "who are their real parents???" storylines for years. (See the Summers family)

If there is just a throwaway line like "I'm adopted deal with it" that's fine but reports have called it a "sub-story" which worries me. Basically I fully expect that a major plot point of FF4-2 will be the hunt for Sue's biological parents.

I didn't mean to imply that in real life adoptive siblings love each other less than biological ones. I apologize for that.

You know, with this new movie, worrying that a sequel might feature a storyline about Sue Storm's "real parents" strikes me as being about a thousand miles ahead of both people who are like "meh, not that interested period" and "meh, I love the Fantastic Four JUST LIKE STAN AND JACK DID THEM AROUND ISSUE #49 IN THE 1960s".

This is like showing up at a fetish conference with a fetish so weird that there's no one else there to be kinky with.

Are we going to talk about the FF more in this thread than the thread for that piece of junk....?

Says the guy who kicked off the thread whilst muttering about ethnic redefinition.

Also, welcome to F13. During your travels here, you may notice that we go off topic from time to time.

Also there's a reason why a lot of the time we wait until a trailer is out to make a thread. "Supporting character is cast" is not exactly a great conversation starter.

Yeah but at least we know the Marvel movies are 100% going to be released.  If this was like a thread for DC's Aquaman or something then I would understand.   :awesome_for_real:

I'm most intrigued at this point by the statement that they're not going to do an origin movie per se. They still have to do the origin at some point in the film--and especially with this character. The one thing that distinguishes him from Mandrake the Magician or some other mystic dude is the origin--the rare case of an adult superhero with an adult story (not that kind of adult, though Strange also has a pretty good sex life in the comics). But you can just reduce that to a character-establishing hook at some point. No, what I wonder really is: what are they going to use at the main story?

We know Mordo's in it, I think, so that narrows the field a lot. If they're adapting a classic Strange story, it'll probably be the big Mordo/Dormammu v. Strange story that ran through most of the early Lee-Ditko Strange issues. Lot of good story beats in there. Be curious to see if they send Strange to the Dark Dimension or to meet Eternity--that opens up a lot of new visual and narrative moods for the MCU as seen to date.

They can do the origin in 1 minute - as they did in the credits for Hulk.  They can also continue to reveal bits about the Sorcerer Supreme in the other shows and movies.  I expect we'll hear more about him before he hits the big screen.  I would not be surprised if we get our first glimpse of him during next season's SHIELD, even if it is a 5 second reveal in the coda of an episode...

I'm betting the story involves Eternity and Death (to tie into Thanos) in addition to Mordo and Dormammu.

I am thinking they will stay away from Death--I think Thanos' motivation is just going to be "I want to rule the entire universe". Bring Death into it and you start to verge uncomfortably towards scales of action that all the human characters, even a Sorcerer Supreme, seem irrelevant against. It's one problem the mainstream Marvel Universe has had over time--the banalization of "cosmic entities" so that Death and Love and so on become just really powerful superbeings.

The Hulk is a much better known character, and a lot of the audience is aware of the fact that if Banner gets angry he transforms against his will into large green monster. They aren't going to do any one minute summaries of Dr. Strange's origin, and I wouldn't expect to see much if anything dropped into TV shows (and Civil War is already looking pretty full). I'm guessing this isn't an "origin" movie in the sense that it's not a chronological telling of his story from his time as a surgeon through his training as in magic, culminating in his first major battle with an enemy. They'll probably still do quite a bit of his origin in flashbacks, but at the start of the movie he will already likely be well-trained in magic if not fully established as Sorcerer Supreme.

Isn't that how Batman Begins worked? Some flashbacks to his training / origins but the plot of the movie wasn't an origin plot per se? (I genuinely don't remember but I think that's how it went)

I'd expect something very similar. I mean - the origins are pretty much the same. Travel to mystical Asian place, get training from cool old guy, etc. This is also how the animated movie worked IIRC. (The best Marvel animated movie IMO)

Also I think they can draw the motivation of Death without explicitly going into the anthropomorphic side of things. Thanos could be conceptually in 'love' with death and wants to murder all life in tribute. Have Death as more a religion for him or something, even though that does turn him into more a religious fanatic than a being powerful enough to have tete a tetes with the personification of a universal force.

I think that's about the only way it works, yes--but even then it's pretty cornball. It's a bit like 4th Season Babylon 5 when we realized that yup, the Shadows and the Vorlons are really just lords of Chaos and Order, and a lot of the mystery and complexity went out of them like a punctured tire.

Maybe, but it was nice to know they could cast Gooey Blob when they needed to.

Chiwetel Ejiofor is our Baron Mordo, although it sounds like this Baron Mordo will merge a few Strange villains into one (much as the villain in Ant-man is a mix of a few characters).

Magic is obviously British in the MCU.

In the comics too, for whatever reason British heroes (they had an MI7 run for a bit with Excalibur) tend to be magic focused.

Merlin and whatnot.  Pip pip.  Wot wot.

Marvel’s ‘Doctor Strange’ Is Courting ‘Hannibal’ Star Mads Mikkelsen as Villain
 (http://www.thewrap.com/marvels-doctor-strange-is-courting-hannibal-star-mads-mikkelsen-as-villain/)

Ejiofor is already Mordo so?

Seems a waste to cast Mikkelsen if you're going to put CGI flame over his face, so either they have a different idea about how to do Dormammu or the other Bad Guy is going to be somebody else.

He'd make a great Nightmare.

Mephisto or Nightmare were my guesses. Perhaps a Norse figure... we do need to get the Eye from Odin's vault, at least in theory.

A note on who is writing on Doc Strange... (bad news for those of you that hate AICN):

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/73989 (http://www.aintitcool.com/node/73989)

AICN has produced some ok writers. One of the guys from there wrote a Masters of Horror episode that was very good, for example. As long as it's not Harry or one of the other huge idiots I don't mind.

First look: http://www.comicbookresources.com/article/look-benedict-cumberbatch-makes-magical-first-appearance-as-doctor-strange

I think he looks spot on.  Whether that works on film or not will depend on the aesthetics of the film.  My hopes are still high, but until I see one of the special effects intensive trailers, I'm going to be nervous...

More photos: http://www.ew.com/gallery/marvel-doctor-strange-photos/2421943_doctor

Not much reimagining in those. I wasn't expecting the blue and red robe.

Not a lot else to say.

Yeah, I was hoping for some sort of reimagined attire. They did a good job on Cap, Thor, Falcon, Widow and Hawkeye so this is almost disappointing.

I would've been surprised if the cloak wasn't red. The shirt doesn't need to blue, however.

It makes me really curious what the other players in the game will look like...

I also wonder if this is a way of telling us, "This IS Dr. Strange, not a watered down version.  You're getting the comic character inserted into the MCU, not a hedge like we did with Thor.  Full costume, full sorcery, full everything."

Honestly, Stranges outfit looks right up thre with the others in terms of "faithfull to the source material, but tweaked to not look stupid".

It does crack me up a bit that we've come full circle from the days of people complaining when wolverine wasn't wearing yellow spandex to those complaining that it's TOO similar.

Yeah they didn't travel very far afield on that costume did they?  :why_so_serious:

Mads Mikkelsen's role has been somewhat revealed, but not by name. 

http://comicbook.com/2015/12/28/mads-mikkelsen-to-play-main-villain-in-doctor-strange/ (http://comicbook.com/2015/12/28/mads-mikkelsen-to-play-main-villain-in-doctor-strange/)

A bunch of different names they could use, but it sounds like a mix of a few different ideas including Mordo, who is another role in the film.  I'm wondering if they'll use Xander as the name for the character - the character it is a rough fit for the description.

The Wolverine one? That was my point.

No, I meant the Dr. Strange one. I'll have to see him in more than just costume shots devoid of context. After all, the original shots of the Flash costume were kind of dark looking but in context it looks great, especially now that they have the white symbol on the chest.

Different people. And no actual complaining.

FWIW I was expecting something more like this...

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/85841906/tumblr_m9x1bmyFmC1qawbqgo1_500.png)
or this
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/85841906/1790551-aofunivers2017.jpg)

But only based on what they'd done with the other characters.



The other thing I couldn't help but notice on the EW cover was how much the stance and facial hair looks like Iron Man.

Ok, I think I know what Mikklesen is playing.

It's Kaluu.

Which I think is a great idea and a smart way to play around with the character/mythos. Much better than Dormammu.

Edit by Trippy: Egads spoiler alert!

That's not exactly shocking or really a spoiler is it? I mean they still had a couple more to reveal and everyone was betting Strange would introduce one.

Yeah - sorry if anyone considered that Spoiler territory, but I don't think it'll be a hidden story element.  It'll be obvious.

Oh I'm sure it will be obvious but I don't think it's a generally publicized plot point at the moment.

I like his outfit, but of course we'll see how it looks once they've run it through all the filters.

I want to hear Cumberbatch say "Crimson Bands of Cyttorak."

That's actually kind of interesting, maybe minor spoilerish, since I would have put the odds on him having the Soul Stone as much higher then the Time one.

Known stones are:
Tesseract - Space
Scepter / Vision forehead gem - Mind
Aether - Reality
Orb - Power

Leaving just the Soul and Time gems.

So if that is the case, I wonder who has the Soul Gem?  Wasnt the collector supposed to have one?  In which case, where would it be in outerspace after his collection blew up in GotG?

The Asgardians have the Tesseract/Space Stone, presumably locked up in their vault. But with Loki in charge, who knows what will happen to it.

The Asgardians gave the Aether into the Collector's keeping at the end of Thor 2. Presumably he still has it, even after his little shop blew up.

The Eye of Agamotto was supposedly an Easter Egg, on display in the Asgardians' vault, in the first Thor movie. We'll see how they reconcile that, if it indeed contains either the Time or Soul stone.

The Asgardians have been sloppy, IMO, with their custodial duties w.r.t. the Infinity Stones. No wonder Ragnarok is coming.

Right, but I thought the collector was supposed to have had one BEFORE the Asgardians gave him the Aether.  Or did I interpret that scene at the end cretits when they first introduced him at the end of Thor 2 incorrectly?  Could have sworn he said something along the lines of "two down", or something like that.

Space Stone is in Asgard-Loki probably controls it
Mind Stone is on Earth-in Visions forehead
Reality Stone is in Knowhere-in the Collector's collection
Power Stone is on Xandar-in a 'secure location'

The other two, Soul and Time, remain at large.

He said,"One down, five to go."

So he should still have one.

The Asgardians have been sloppy because Loki keeps fucking taking the goddamn stones and using them for evil purpoes. And now he's Odin so all bets are off.

Citizen filming of the London set has hit the 'net today, filmed by a "guy across the way" from inside his office. Link here if you want to watch some footage of 'how movies are made' while a guy who's clueless about what he's seeing comments for 20 minutes. (Cummerbatch and multiple-takes start 10-15 mins in. The stuff prior is set-up.)

http://comicbook.com/2016/02/21/doctor-strange-filming-in-london-video/

Hype train begins systems check (http://comicsalliance.com/marvel-releases-new-official-photo-of-benedict-cumberbatch-as-doctor-strange/), leaving the station soon.

Cumberbatch will be appearing on Jimmy Kimmel's show next week, to premiere the trailer.

The link also contains an official pic of BC in costume as Dr Strange.

Quite a few shots recently of the filming out there too. I am wondering, I have to say, who Mads Mikkelsen is. He doesn't really look like anybody in the canon. He might be Dormammu pre-CGI, or Nightmare pre-CGI. I am almost wondering if he's Kaluu, the Ancient One's rival from when they were both young. That could be fun--Kaluu is a more relatable character who actually makes a pretty good case for black magic.

That is the best theory I've heard.

Now a teaser poster, featuring the Sanctum Sanctorum. (http://comicsalliance.com/doctor-strange-first-teaser-poster/)

Marvel has posted a teaser trailer to Facebook page.  Looks like it'll be quite interesting.

https://www.facebook.com/Marvel/videos/10154014393382488/ (https://www.facebook.com/Marvel/videos/10154014393382488/)

Looks promising.

Origin-heavy. I think that's to keep the later plot and such a bit more mysterious for now.

So did Tilda Swinton shave her head, or is it a bald prosthetic?

Not sure.

I like her as an actress but she's the one part of this that really didn't work for me. I am not one to rush to the head of the line when people complain about whitewashing, but maybe that's why she doesn't work? I'm not sure the wise-old-Oriental-who-teaches-the-white-pupil-the-secrets thing is an archetype I'd be in any rush to demand either, mind you--making the Ancient One a faithful Mr. Miyagi type doesn't necessarily work better. But I do feel like he/she should feel old, at least? I guess they're going here for ageless, gender-neutral serenity.

If you want an androgynous mystic you go to Tilda Swinton. That's been her typecast for a while now.

I had to double check but she's actually 55.....fuck maybe she really is the ancient one.

If you're on a budget, there's always Alice Krige.

It's Tilda Swinton. She probably shaved her own head. With a straight razor.

Latest rumor based on toy merchandise is that Mikkelsen is playing someone named Kaecilius. In the comics, he's a follower of Baron Mordo who gives Strange a bit of a tough time early in his career and then later on is a kind of chump wizard that Strange disposes of easily. Could be that they're going for a plot where Strange thinks he has to stop Kaecilius and then Mordo backstabs him at the end of Act II. Seems a bit of a waste for Mikkelsen if so though.

That sounds right.  I was hoping they'd have Mordo's dark side be hidden from the main characters but clear to the audience from the start - too many people know he is a bad guy to have him do a surprise betrayal.  However, if you told me there was going to be one movie in the MCU where they had to use a really vanilla plot, I'd pick this one.  It is such a huge departure from the existing MCU and introduces so much new ground - complex plot twists on top of the new elements and visual WhatTheFreakery might be too convoluted for Joe Sixpack to handle.

Comic-book writers conventionally have complained that Strange is too hard to write because his powers are so undefined and potentially expansive. But I think you can see more it's that his stories never got out of the Lee-Ditko initial run and in those Strange got almost no personal development and had almost no meaningful supporting cast. So there was nothing to build on--there was just this one story, really, and it started rather curiously in the middle of things. We're told that Strange has been a master of the mystic arts for a while (he meets one woman who says, "Thanks for saving my life many years ago, sorcerer", and it's clear she doesn't mean back when he was a surgeon). He's essentially on the run from Mordo and Dormammu (twice) and occasionally gets glimpses of an attractive alien princess (Clea) whom he never really gets to talk with or meet. When he finally beats Dormammu after years of stories, the writers sort of bummed around, puzzled, and eventually had him chase down Clea. He still doesn't really have a well-realized cast or any meaningful relationships--the Ancient One just shows up and yells at him and then compliments him while talking about how weak the Ancient One is becoming. He's kind of like the Aunt May of Dr. Strange. Then they introduce Umar, who is basically female Dormammu, and the plotline repeats itself.

Finally they moved forward to the more standard Strange situation, which was at the house in NYC with Wong as his servant/aide, Clea as his disciple/lover, and a slightly wider range of enemies and situations (though a lot of those were in the Defenders,  the team book he frequently appeared in). But it took a long time after the character appeared--Strange has none of the layered storytelling richness from his early years that Spider-Man etcetera have. It kind of means that the movie folks have fewer 'classic' stories and situations to draw on and work with. If this film works, they might be able to adapt the one truly great Dr. Strange story of recent years, which is "The Oath"--that would make a very good film script, I think.

Luke Cage, naturally.

I can dig it.

Not enough 'fro.  Maybe he gets it from Misty Knight.   :awesome_for_real:

Comic-Con trailer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSzx-zryEgM

That looks like Inception on acid.   :awesome_for_real:

Hell to the yes. I'm digging that whole vibe.

Who is the villain supposed to be?

It's Hannibal Lecter, duh.

So Mikkelsen is listed on IMDB as "Kaecilius".

In the comics, Kaecilius is a sorcerer who gives Strange a bit of difficulty early in his career but he is always a henchman for Baron Mordo.

Edit: Oops, fucked up my spoiler tags! Fixed.

I suspect they're going to try to make Mordo genuinely sympathetic to give him some ongoing legs, a la Loki/Hiddleston.

If you strip away the Stan Lee melodrama/mysterious Orient stuff in the early Strange stories, Mordo's story has some potential complexity to it.  In the comics, he's the son of an irrelevant, grandiose, melancholy Central European aristocrat who knew some odds and ends about magic. He finds his way to the Ancient One and studies dutifully with him for a long time. He begins to sense that the Ancient One is not telling him everything--is holding back some of his knowledge. So he starts to study darker magics on his own and realizes just how much the Ancient One isn't telling him. Then some white guy who is a total asshole shows up and the Ancient One is instantly "come study with me" and treats Strange like a favorite son.

Basically, this suddenly becomes a re-telling of Amadeus: Mordo is Salieri, the man who isn't quite good enough no matter how hard he tries, displaced by a person who is naturally gifted at the art. This could be especially good if Cumberbatch retains some traces of Strange's pre-magical arrogance. The way the MCU has developed, Strange and Stark are turning into really great mirrors/foils for each other--they have got to set aside some time for them to interact in one of the Avengers Infinity War movies.

Cumberbatch's arrogence meter STARTS at british nobility and only goes up from there. 

Dan Harmon to insert a few new scenes... I guess they wanted to lighten it up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubNFViNtA80 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubNFViNtA80)

The creator of Community?  Seriously?

I think you mean Dan Harmon the creator of Water and Power! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2lrnFXR-YE)

Well this was decent fun. Another origin movie but Marvel seem to have the template for that down, the inclusion of magic felt pretty natural although there wasn't a lot of exploration of how it works or what kind of limits it has beyond some vague suggestions of unintended consequences. There's strong set ups for future plots and the mid credits sequence pretty clearly shows the next appearance of Strange

I keep forgetting that the US is a secondary or tertiary market for movies now.

 :oh_i_see:

Wait, Google says US release date was 13/10. If it's later that would explain the silence in this thread.

Or was that a dig at the movie having stuff happen in Hong Kong and London? Cause I think they actually did a fairly good job of not feeling like they were shoehorning in location shots but keeping things international.

The Marvel movies are all released a week or so ahead of the US Release, which in this case is Nov. 4th.

No, it was a general comment that the US doesn't seem to get movies (at least from Marvel) in the first week of actual release.  It's usually the second or third week.

Which I find weird.

That... actually is kind of weird. Well, let me tell you poor third world yanks that this is a pretty fun Marvel movie. I'd say it's probably an Ant-man level flick with better quality actors and more impressive visual effects.

So I had to go look at this (Marvel opening movies overseas) and apparently, it's a deliberate marketing strategy (http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Why-Marvel-Opens-Its-Superhero-Movies-Overseas-First-71409.html), by opening in the UK a week or two earlier, positive buzz actually makes the US opening bigger.

--Dave

So,

good enough, I guess.

Cumberbatch did not entirely work in the role, I think. I'm hard-pressed to say why exactly. Maybe that he never really gets a moment of gravitas, just cleverness? Strange needs the occasional moment of portentous gravitas, it's in the DNA of the character. I did like that the climax does not depend on Strange suddenly becoming a completely finished master of the mystic arts--that's important for keeping the character viable, to give him things he still needs to learn, some room for future emotional growth. I like Mordo's arc also. More later as other people see it--there's much to like, the visuals are the first really imaginative ones in a Marvel film, but I think they're definitely coming up against a narrative wall that may be impossible to overcome that's a result of the source material.

I thought the situation at the end was the perfect set up to have him go from amateur to badass if they were willing to let it go long enough.

Yes. It's a good set-up for him to step into the role in his next film. That part was very nicely handled--they left something for him to do/become in the next movie. You could compare it to Thor where all of the character's growth is handled too neatly in the first film--from arrogance to humility in one short week or so, after centuries of being an over-confident dick. Strange has plenty of room for further growth.

I do wonder

I saw this today and it was fantastic, IMO. No, it didn't break any huge narrative ground or acting but what it did do was be visually stunning. The climactic fight scene where the combatants are fighting forward in time as everything around them goes backwards in time was incredibly clever and well-done. That may have been one of my favorite sequences of all Marvel movies just on how insanely difficult the setups must have been, how complex of a concept that fight was and yet it was filmed so well, there was no need for exposition about what was going on. That scene was just an amazing piece of film.

The story didn't break any ground. It was a very necessary origin story both in terms of an unknown character (by film audiences) as well as adding a very important piece to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (mysticism) and it did that very well. Of all of the Marvel movies, I felt this one worked so well on its own without having to be tied in by anything but the merest of mentions. There was a lot of meta subtlety to how they set this movie up that really impressed me. There's also plenty of story threads for future movies.

I only  really had two somewhat minor complaints about the movie.

First, having seen the movie now, I get a lot more why people are comparing it to the matrix.  Considering the source character, there was far too little overt "magic" and "mysticism" going on for the vast majority of the movie.   It just didn't wow me like I was hoping for from a Dr Strange movie.  It needed a bit more harry potter and a bit less matrix to make it feel right, I think.

Second, I just really don't like the timeline.  Much like my major gripe about Thor 1, where as mentioned, they compressed most of  his character development into a single bloody week, Strange feels off.  I mean, unless I totally misread one of the line drops in the movie, 99% of this entire movie takes place AFTER Civil War, which  just somehow seems wrong.  They should have had Stranges story take place over several years in-between other movies, unless they are really,  hardcore, trying to sell the idea that Strange is the magical prodigy of all prodigies and mastered the mystic arts in a handful of months.......

But he hasn't really mastered the mystic arts. That he survives the movie at all is largely due his affinity with a couple of artifacts, one of which has a mind of its own and protects him on multiple occasions. Even his victory at the end is thanks to him outsmarting his enemies rather than beating them through being a better sorcerer. As far as magic goes, we seem generally see him do the same basic stuff most of the other sorcerers do. I liked that because at least to start with it avoids one of the recurring issues in a lot of the comics in that it's hard to create dramatic tension when magic can do anything as required by the story. I felt that they ended this movie with Strange still having a lot of room to grow, both as a sorcerer and as a person.

As far as timeline, I think we only know that at some point while Strange is training, the Avengers have formed. They're careful when he gets back in touch with Dr. Palmer to not have her specify how long it's been since she saw him last, except that it's been a long time. I think you could reasonably infer years--that he begins training well before the events of the first Iron Man film, even. If someone picked up on something specific that I missed, let me know--the first time that I think we get a concrete time marker is when Wong says that mystics protect the world just like the Avengers do, and that comes well into Strange's training. From that point on, I think things happen in relatively quick progression, but there's even potentially weeks or months in between Wong's speech about the sanctums and the big battles.

The timeline is certainly muddled, but there's absolutely nothing that says it took place within a week. In fact, I inferred that Strange was training for years. Palmer certainly hasn't seen him in a long time. It's well within reason that his crash could have taken place before Iron Man 1. The last half of the movie, from the destruction of the sanctums to the final battle was certainly a day or two, but we only know that it took place sometime after Avengers 1 (can't even firmly say it was after Age of Ultron). The after-credits scene with Thor is certainly after Ultron but doesn't even have to be after Civil War since Thor wasn't involved in that at all, and it clearly shows Strange as a more assured, seasoned sorcerer with a reputation. In fact, if you remember they mentioned Stephen Strange in Winter Soldier, meaning he had to have been established as a mystic expert after Avengers 1 and before Ultron.

It's been confirmed that the patient with the back injury mentioned in the car scene if the hammer tech that got his spine crushed in iron man 2 so that is when the initial accident happened.  I'm not sure how much time passes between that scene and thor ragnarok however.

I saw Avengers Tower early in the movie, in one of the shots of NYC. It had the "A" logo on it.
But, I can't remember if that was before or after the car accident. If it was before the accident, they made a boo boo in the timeline, as IM2 came before either Avengers movie.

The computer in Winter Soldier doesn't have to know he's a sorcerer; it's a predictive model of people who might eventually cause trouble for Hydra. The old Stephen Strange could well have been targeted.

I heard the oblique reference to IM2 in the phone call; though it could also have been to Rhodes in Civil War, actually, based on the description? And yeah, Avengers Tower too. I really wish they'd run it back all the way to before the other MCU movies--I would have loved the parallelism of Strange's hero journey running quietly alongside the rest.

Just got back. Loved it, kids loved it, even wife liked it, and she's not at all into comic book movies. Her favorite character in this flick was the cape :-)

I don't disagree with the critiques here though. Limited gravitas, more Inception than Harry Potter, and the timeline was weird. I don't have any clue about the source material though. The analogy I don't go with is the Matrix though. Matrix was all about Neo and his m4d fightzorz skills, with some environmental impact when convenient. Strange (the movie anyway) was all about messing with reality with some "oh by the way" martial arts thrown in for action. That felt more like the trippy Inception stuff, even if the SFX themselves weren't a deadringer for it too.

I missed most of the clues you all here saw. They only implied length of time with things like "when you first came here" (which isn't something used when talking about yesterday :wink:) and I think at one point Mordo saying something about "back when you began".

Loved the mid-credits scene.

My only complaint was that the majority of the mystical fighting ultimately boiled down to punching with glowy fists and melee weapons.  Otherwise, I thought it was pretty good.

Magic punchy glowing fists?  In the Marvel universe?  

(http://cdn4.thr.com/sites/default/files/2015/12/iron_fist.jpg)

It was after the accident, when Strange is first running from Kaecilius. That puts that portion of the story after IM2 but prior to Ultron when the tower was destroyed/ abandoned. If they'd showed us more Infinity gems we'd have been able to better nail down the timeline.

That they mentioned Strange having 7 surgeries on his hands means a series of years from the accident to that point at least. They gave some subtle visual clues with the hair as well, but I think something more concrete was needed. Not bludgening like timestamps but a few more in-universe cues like the tech accident reference. I can see the difficulty there, though as there's no real good way to weave them in when he's off in Kathmandu.

I can dig the criticism of "too much punching." I was a little dismayed that they were punchy wizards, but at the same time it gives the actors something to react to and be familiar with. When's the last time you saw ANYONE do spell-flingy maneuvers that didn't look sad and overplayed because it's very easy to ham-up that sort of thing. Even with good CGI the actors look silly. I think Ian McDermond in ROTJ was the last time I saw anyone even halfway convincing with magic, and he couldn't replicate that for ROTS.

One continuity goof - when Strange is putting on his watch, it shows some of his awards. One of them clearly says 2016. Meaning it couldn't have been set before Avengers because that was 2012.  :why_so_serious:

Of course, none of those movies were set in a specific year so it means nothing. Just a funny observation.

The timeline makes zero sense so trying to figure it out is pointless.  His Lambo is also a 2016 model, so we have as many hints that the movie starts in present time as anything else.

Time line aside,I enjoyed it a lot. I especially enjoyed that the final victory was not achieved through repeated punches... well, not in the traditional sense.

One of my favorite things about the very best arc in the Lee/Ditko Strange comics was the visualization of the battle between Mordo and Strange after Strange returns from seeing Eternity. But basically it would look phony, I think, if you tried to do it straight up in that style. Basically, Mordo fires complicated energy forms at Strange, Strange uses shields to desperately defend himself against a wildly overpowered Mordo, and it's very kinetic in the sense that they are doing both martial arts physical forms and complicated hand gestures. Strange eventually tricks Mordo with a spell that makes him seem to have a duplicate (it's just an illusion), pretending he learned that from Eternity, and when Mordo finally is shown that it's a trick, he's out-of-control angry, which means he leaves himself open for a counterattack.

I think the "punchy" style in the film is as close to that as they could get--doing it straight out of the comic would mean something like a Star Wars gun battle only with curving, unpredictable energy forms and shields on the other end--it would require, among other things, that the protagonists be at a distance from each other--the cinematography of it would be complex and unsatisfying. So I was pretty happy in the end with what they did--there's even room for them to move to other visual styles if they like, as Strange gains a deeper or more complex understanding of magic.

They're not backing away from the "magic is sort of science" approach at all. That grounds the magic in many ways which manifested in the way the magic battles took place. They were less fantastic and more mechanical than we see in the comics. I enjoyed it, but it didn't quite scratch the itch. However, it was still a great movie. There was just a touch of Sam Raimi style humor in there... I'm wondering if that is what came from Dan Harmon...

I thought I spotted all of Harmon's jokes and they were pretty bad--they stuck out awkwardly. The thing about Wong just having one name, etc.  The cape was funnier than any of the dialogue.

The wifi password was pretty good.  Caught me completely off-guard.

Pissed me off because it's another one of those regional tricks they do.  Strange should have said "What's Shambala?" but instead didn't specify what was on the card because the text will change depending on the region the movie plays in.  Basically it's a half assed joke.

Never read a Strange comic. Saw the movie Wednesday. In the grand scheme of the Marvel movies since 2012, I would put it close to last (last being anything Fantastic Four) but that doesn't mean it was bad. The folding and rolling buildings as the backdrop was meh to me.  I enjoyed it for the most part, though.

Honestly, it's my 3rd favorite Marvel flick (after Cap 1 and Spidey 1). Nothing too deep, but good fun and caught the feel of the character and setting. Bonus points for making it for Cumberbitches, as well...I'll probably be seeing it in IMAX 3D if we can get over to that theater in time, she loved it (in our local 3D theater).

Too bad they can't use mutants, would love to see Magik as an acolyte in the next one.


Because yeah.

Seriously - has nobody seen this high yet?

I've heard this before, and I feel like this is the kind of movie people who don't get high would think is fun while high. But would actually be fairly boring while high.

I'll wait for the research.

That was my take on it.

If you want to know what being high is like, watch the MTV music awards sober (assuming you're over 40). Weird shit and constant confusion.

Uhhhh... do you guys really think that most people don't know what it is like to be high? 

Yes.

I don't

Did blackout drunk once, despise the loss of control and memory. Dislike the awareness but lack of control of regular drunk.   Not trying high.

Yeah, never been high before and only had mild drunkenness from back in college.  Not everyone does recreational stuff, mostly for reasons.

Based upon my experience in life, you're in the minority.  I'm not saying everybody has been high, but most people I've known have been.

Nothing wrong with being on either side of that experience, btw. 

Depends on who you run with and where, reallly. When I was in a band, everyone I knew smoked pot and got blackout drunk. Now that I don't do either, almost nobody I know does or has, either.

Yeah, based on my experience and friends those who tried pot are in the minority, nevermind harder drugs. I met more people who smoked from working in an office of creatives than I had from the rest of my life up to that point.

It's all about you and the people you enjoy spending time around.

When I was thinking about jumping back into the music scene and hanging out with a talented singer/producer a couple years ago, I'd go to various venues. Once I was with a few 'new friends' (post-music scene life) and they kept giving me funny looks when the singer dude would keep dropping by to let me know about parking lot events (ie: drugs). One of the weird things about post-band life was finding out drugs weren't free (I mean, I knew they weren't, but I rarely had to pay for them if I were so inclined).

And the funnier thing (to me) was his confusion every time I'd tell him, "Nah, I'm good."

Hell, I don't even know if I'd smoke if it were legalized in NY and I used to looooove smoking pot.

Eh, weird place for this topic, but my stance on drugs is simple: I decided that my grip on reality was too tenuous to grease the rungs, and gave them up early. There aren't any drugs that I find the experience pleasant, pot makes me paranoid, for example.

--Dave

I used to consider myself a borderline alcoholic until I dated a girl who regularly got blackout drunk (totally new thing for me to even witness, I've never managed to hit that level of intoxication even when I've done stupid things with Everclear) and ran with a crowd for whom that (plus assorted drug use) was considered completely normal. 

I mean I might still be a borderline alcoholic regardless, but it showed me how completely different your perception of "normal usage levels" is based on who you hang out with.

Truth.  My circle of friends from back in the day did do stuff regularly, but now that I'm a 9-5er with a respectable job, not a single person I know does anything harder than booze and most haven't even tried drugs or marijuana.

No sense in arguing over stuff a Google search answers. A  Gallup poll in 2015 said 44% of Americans admit to having tried pot. Obviously, different social circles will skew the numbers,  so some people won't know anyone that has ever been high and in other social circles everyone has been high. However, if 44% admitEd it, it is safe to say most people have either been high or have seen it enough to understand it, even if they do not partake. Heck, the 44% number only includes pot and doesn't include people that have only been high on nitrous, sniffing, pills, etc...  It is also from before the start of 2016.  Legalization expanded twice since then - start of 2016 saw expanded legalization in several states and post election in November 2016 saw immediate legalization in California.

I'm in California, have about 9 years education beyond high school, have social circles that span gaming to theater, and have worked in everything from banks to law firms with people from all across the nation... and I'd say the percentage of people I've known that has been high (pot) is closer to 80% amongst the hundreds of people I have known well.

I'm a white collar professional that interacts with blue collar workers in the Deep South at a government agency where any drug use is cause for termination. The amount who have actually done marijuana here is extremely low and it's still viewed as a gateway drug. My social circle in California used to have cultivators and I was probably one of 2 people in that group that didn't partake. Point is where you live and who you interact with color the issue considerably...

A surprisingly large number of companies do random testing (any with a DoT contract, for instance) and "Random drug testing" means "Are you actually drunk or on drugs right now, plus, have you smoked pot in the last month".

That's all it does. It can tell whether you're on something now. The only drug it's decent at detecting anything older than a day or three is pot. They might as well call it "random stoner testing".

Already acknowledged... nobody is arguing that there are no social circles that have less/no exposure to pot.   

Market Size and Demand for Marijuana in Colorado (https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/sites/default/files/Market%20Size%20and%20Demand%20Study,%20July%209,%202014%5B1%5D.pdf)

Check out the table on page two. Unsurprisingly (at least for cannabis) a small proportion of the users account for a huge percentage of the demand. So the statistics about how many people have tried a drug don't really have any bearing on how it is actually being used.

And? The question on the table, which has been discussed to death, was how many people have been high, not how often they get high.

This thread took a weird turn.

I thought the movie was good, and I saw it stoned, drunk and on pain medications. Wasn't strange enough to warrant a drug discussion for 2 pages.

I thought the question was whether people here had seen this high, and this table supports the idea that the actual proportion of the population that is regularly high is actually quite small. So it's not all that surprising, especially once you factor in the demographics of people who post on this board, that the answer is not that many.

If you're defining high as pot in this case and wondering how it would effect one's viewing of the movie, I'm guessing that at the very least you don't have much experience with it personally. Asking if anybody has seen this high yet sounds like something a 14 year old would ask if their experience with weed was watching Half Baked and one time getting some second-hand smoke from a joint that one of the friends found and was trying to smoke despite it being nothing but ash left.

It's not like we're talking about watching Inception on acid or shrooms here. Dr. Strange is a fairly straight-forward Marvel origin story with a few scenes of cool imagery and pot isn't going to drastically alter your perception like a hallucinogen. People that watch Dr. Strange high are likely going to be people that watch most movies high.

Nailed it.

Back on topic, I went to see the movie today finally. Actually really enjoyed it even though it was "just" an origin movie. A few of the astral scenes and the CGI out-of-body Stuff felt a little cheesy in the beginning but overall, I thought the effects were really well done. I enjoyed myself.

Think for 5 seconds. When I've said that nearly eveyone I''ve known smokes pot, eveyone social circle I've been in has smoked pot... and your conclusion is I do not have much experience.

If I'd tried to avoid pot I don't think I could have. And I rarely passed. Well, I passed it, but did not pass on it often.

And I have no idea why you guys think this would not be great high. I'll let you know if I get the chance.

When you're talking about the percentage of people who you know that smoke and searching for statistics on google, yes that was exactly the conclusion I came to. There was nothing in any of your posts that suggested firsthand experience.

This movie is loud, aggressive and fast-paced.  I imagine it would be scary or at the least impossible to follow while high.  And definitely don't take any psychedelics.