When I was very young I was a voracious reader.  Almost any book and comic I got my hands on I would read.  In time the first “adult” book I read, a meaty 500+ pager, turned out to be Clive Cussler’s Vixen 03.  I was entranced by the book’s cover and, to this day, still love the image…

The book, my younger self thought after reading it, was terrific.  So impressed was I with it I quickly looked up and read all the other Clive Cussler books available out there, which at the time amounted to only four, including the also terrific Raise The Titanic!

As the years passed and Mr. Cussler released more books, I read them as well.  However, after a while I came to realize that every one of his books post-Raise The Titanic! were curiously similar, plot-wise.  It was as if Mr. Cussler hit upon a successful formula and was determined to repeat it…over and over and over again.

Sometime into the 1980’s I gave up on Mr. Cussler’s novels and this was due completely to that repetition.  Mr. Cussler (and his various co-writers) have continued making books up to today and I honestly have no idea if he continues to present the same general plots (I would hope not), but the damage was done and I completely lost interest in reading any of the man’s works.

When Doctor Strange came out last year, I was curious to see it.  I like actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays the good Doctor, and have found the Marvel movies, at least until roughly last year, to be by and large pleasant entertainment even as the more I saw of them, the more I realized they were, like Clive Cussler and his novels, works that followed a certain formula.

(There is one big exception, the wonderful, and I would argue best Marvel film, Captain America: Winter Soldier)

Worse, many reviews of Doctor Strange released concurrently with its release noted the film was essentially a magic themed remake of the film that started the whole Marvel movie industry rolling, the original Iron Man.

As good as Iron Man was, that film’s fingerprints have indeed been all over just about every Marvel film since.  Robert Downey Jr. was terrific as Tony Stark, the troubled, arrogant, and brilliant head of his self-named company who, thanks to a personal misfortune and a near death experience (his heart is very weak), devises the Iron Man armor and essentially makes himself a hero.  But this hero, unlike others on the screen to that point, retained his cockiness and glib attitude even in the face of death.  And, I repeat, Robert Downey Jr. was terrific in the role.

Unfortunately, not everyone fits that type of role as well.

Subsequent Marvel films have featured the “glib” hero in various stages, even if they don’t have the same arrogance.  It seems with every new Marvel film released, we have heroes -and villains!- offering jokes in the middle of what should be life and death situations.  Sometimes this works but, increasingly, it doesn’t.  At least not for me.

I was not blown away by Captain America: Civil War, though in my original review (you can read it here) I thought it was an enjoyable enough confection whose main problems lay in too many characters running around and too broad -and incomprehensible- a plot.  My opinion of the film, I must say, has taken a bit of a downturn since that original review.  While I still think the airport fight was good and Robert Downey Jr.’s meeting with Aunt May was fun, today I feel the film was more of a wiff than a success.  The very best films are those you are willing to come back to and see again and I seriously doubt I’ll ever watch CA:CW again.

With Doctor Strange, I hoped for the best but, frankly and based on those reviews I mentioned, anticipated the worst.  I feared the critics were right and the film would indeed be Magic Iron Man and I’d turn into my younger self and decide I’d had enough of the Marvel movie universe and their repetitive nature.

Doctor Strange starts with Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen, sadly underused), breaking into an ancient library, killing the man in charge of securing it, and stealing pages from an ancient tome.  He is then pursed by a mysterious figure who, we find, is the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton, easily the film’s best element).  Despite the Ancient One’s pursuit, Kaecilius nonetheless gets away and we then cut to…

Doctor Stephen Strange, neurosurgeon/surgeon extraordinaire.  The Iron Man comparisons are apt as he is glib, ultra-wealthy, arrogant, and, shortly after we’re introduced to him, has a life changing accident which destroys his hands and, therefore, wipes out his ability to be a surgeon.

His girlfriend, Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams, truly and sadly wasted in a thankless role) tries to make Dr. Strange see that his life isn’t over but the arrogant and bitter man will not listen to her.  He chases her away while spending all his remaining money on experimental procedures to try to fix his hands.

While in rehab, Dr. Strange hears the story of a man who overcame what should have been paralysis and meets up with him.  The man tells Dr. Strange of a trip he made to the orient and Dr. Strange follows the man’s path, eventually coming upon the Ancient One and her/his (I’m not sure what his/her sex is supposed to be) magic arts study group.

It is there that the skeptical Stephen Strange gains knowledge of the magic arts and not a moment too soon as Kaecilius -conveniently- has waited all this time and politely allowed Dr. Strange to become reasonably proficient in the magic arts before making his move and attempting to destroy Earth.

I’ll get to the bottom line here: I didn’t like Doctor Strange all that much even as I’ll acknowledge it is a perfectly acceptable Marvel film and far from the stable’s worst (I know I’m in a very small minority here, but I really didn’t like Guardians of the Galaxy and feel it is easily the worst of the Marvel films).

The problem with Doctor Strange winds up being similar to the problem I had with the books of Clive Cussler.  I’ve seen this stuff before and, while there are new wrinkles here and there, the repetition is becoming tiresome.

Worse, though, is that the film never engages as much as one would hope.  The direction and editing never give us any big rush or sense of breathless action. The effects, good as they are, also become repetitious after a while.

As good as Robert Downey Jr. was/is at playing the Tony Stark role, even a great actor like Benedict Cumberbatch looks a bit lost trying to emulate that glib/arrogant-yet-funny/heroic type.  The others around him with one notable exception don’t really contribute all that much either.  Chiwetel Ejiofor is only OK as Mordo and his character’s change in the last minutes of the film feels like a plot contrivance rather than something his character logically earns.  I’ve already noted that I felt Rachel McAdams was wasted and Mads Mikkelsen was also underused and presented in a silly way.  He too engages in the glib/”funny” dialogue in inappropriate moments and this further destroys whatever threat levels we should have to the confrontations between Strange and he.

The big exception, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, is Tilda Swinton’s Ancient One.  She’s just enigmatic and stern enough to be intriguing but, when all is said and done, she’s in the film for no more than perhaps 15 minutes.  Nonetheless, I enjoyed just about every scene she was in and it says a lot that I would have rather seen a film about her/him than Dr. Strange!

In the end, while Doctor Strange isn’t a total disaster, it was just…there.  It was only okay.  Perhaps a little above mediocre.

Now that I’ve seen it, I seriously doubt I’ll ever bother watching it again.