Hacker Cinema
Doctor Strange
2016 · Film · 115 min
Part of Doctor Strange Collection
Directed by Scott Derrickson
After his career is destroyed, a brilliant but arrogant surgeon gets a new lease on life when a sorcerer takes him under her wing and trains him to defend the world against evil.
7 positive4 negative18 neutralfrom 29 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
29 comments on Hacker News
> people who think we should remove pages from knowledge book.
"No knowledge in Kamar-Taj is forbidden. Only certain practices."
You reminded me of that quote from the Doctor Strange movie.
Even the most "dangerous" knowledge can be life-saving, depending on the circumstances. When I was a teenager, I read the Terrorist's Handbook, which was a text file circulating on bulletin boards. After 9/11 it vanished, because posession was considered a crime in some jurisdictions.
Knowing how to build a bomb is useless and/or dangerous in civilian life. Ask a Ukrainian if it is useful knowledge!
Knowing all about nuclear weapons doesn't mean you're going to blow up a city. But if someone else does, then you'll have the knowledge needed to avoid the worst of the radiation and maybe survive.
A half-satirical, half-true hot take by yours truly (imagine that the me from another multiverse wrote it):
Marvel films are largely morality plays punctuated by explosions and contrived witticisms in service of a secular, polytheistic religion for the postmodern age. Everything is a weird cultural buffet of pastiche, relentlessly-punchy dialog, and formulaic storytelling designed to tug on the audience's heartstrings while allowing them to say "I know that thing!" They're a cultural soma for the post-Cold War generation raised on Pokemon that will never know the happiness of the Clinton years again. The studios that make them are more like pharmaceutical companies hocking a hot-selling miracle drug than filmmakers. Everybody else is trying to replicate their financial success and is therefore failing at making actual _movies_.
- A filthy, no-good hipster that dislikes things other people enjoy and likes things that other people hate just because
(I thought "Doctor Strange" was great fun in a trippy way. The multi-verse "Spiderman" was OK. Hated "Guardians". I wouldn't go out of my way to see either again and only see these films in theaters with friends).
Filename indicates the Doctor Strange film.
It's important to note that big movie gross earnings shifted significantly to favor international markets over the last ~15 years. Doctor Strange is a great example - the international gross was nearly double the domestic [1]. And international audiences tend to really like flashy SFX over memorable stories in big Hollywood movies, especially when said movies are going to be subbed or dubbed anyway.
[1] https://www.boxofficemojo.com/releasegroup/gr2284737029/
> three years of covid have eradicated savings
Saving went up because of the lockdowns.
> The amount of content that Disney pumps out in the MCU is too immense to follow up - the cinema movies, okay
I would diagnose a radically different problem - the MCU only has a lot of content measured in minutes of film. Measured in plot, there's almost nothing. I watched the 2016 film Doctor Strange. That was a huge mistake. I couldn't tell you anything about the film other than "Benedict Cumberbatch is in it" and "don't waste your time; there is no reason you'd ever want to see this". Ask me what happened, or indeed if anything happened, and I'll be stumped.
It doesn't come as a surprise that with the decline of the idea that a movie should tell you a story, movies are getting less popular.
> Maybe within the genre the films are different to each other
Remove the Marvel bits from Love and Thunder or Doctor Strange, and they still stand on their own with entirely different art direction, thematic elements, conflict, and stories.
> they all look the same
See my previous comment. I don't see it. I can easily spot differences between each property, the same way I can spot similarities between any other two random non-Marvel movies. I suppose you're going to see what you want to see.
And as far as Marvel movies go: Iron Man, Spider Man, Doctor Strange. Even Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and Thor:Ragnarok.
Comic books are long gone counterculture. Look at all the marvel/DC movies as of late.
No counterculture item is going to be front page news like the whole new "Doctor Strange" movie.
Which, I get, knowing this makes me so not counterculture.
It's also at the point where even recreational substances, which were the idealogy of what countercultre was - is now legalized. We see this now with Marijuana and Mushrooms (Denver, at least.) - For medical reasons or not.
I think it's more about the stakes, obstacles, "psychic wounds" etc, than the actual superpowers. Being born with superpowers isn't that big a deal, if you're in a film where every other significant character also has superpowers.
Spider-man lets his uncle die because he's busy showing off. Batman in The Dark Knight "has no cartilage in his knees, scar tissue on his kidneys, concussive damage to his brain, and a host of other issues". Bruce Banner is subject to fits of uncontrollable rage. Logan is dying and in constant pain. Doctor Strange's hands are mutilated due to a car crash caused by his own arrogance.
IIRC Wonder Woman has a naivity due to growing up on a remote island populated by women, but she's basically confident and hypercompetent throughout. Captain Marvel's big issue is she's forgotten she has galactically important superpowers. Black Widow's character has a bit more going on, and I liked the film better than the other two. But, I think there is a difference between the amount of freedom big budget movie screenwriters have with male and female characters.
At lower budgetary levels, you're more likely to see women with less straightforwardly heroic characters, facing more interesting or engaging stakes.
Before Captain Marvel Brie Larson was doing great indie flicks like Room and Free Fire. She's said she was quite conflicted about taking the role, and I can't blame her for taking the money but I think I understand her hesitation.
This is featured in the Doctor Strange movie, in fact. IIRC the good doctor is presented with a patient whose case is so difficult that he's one of the only people in the world with a chance at successfully performing the procedure they need—but he turns it down because he thinks the odds would still be too low, and it might hurt his record. I think there might also be a karmic turn with that when his hands get messed up—I wanna say there's a scene or short sequence of the same thing happening to him, at least implicitly.
I would comment as follows.
Iron Man - sort novel for setting marvel tone but mostly banal action movie
Iron Man 2 - banal action movie
Thor - banal action movie
Captain America: The First Avenger - particularly banal action movie
Marvel's The Avengers - banal action movie
Iron Man 3 - banal action movie, sort of interesting to see protagonist suffering PTSD anxiety from being a superhero
Thor: The Dark World - banal action movie
Captain America: The Winter Soldier - first interesting take. Patriotism is not the same as government obedience. Real fight choreography approaching a soft john wick.
Guardians of the Galaxy - Early rock and roll aesthetic pretty interesting
Avengers: Age of Ultron - banal action movie, perhaps mcu lowpoint
Ant-Man - superhero heist movie, literally deconstructs larger than life superhero tropes. I think thumbs up
Captain America: Civil War - by this point doing the mcu's own thing, which is novel, but probably not interesting outside
Doctor Strange - banal action movie
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 - aesthetic still feels mostly fresh.
Spider-Man: Homecoming - super down to earth high school drama, frustrated working class villains suffering the fallout of superheroes, seems interesting to me
Thor: Ragnarok - great film, very genre savvy. Rare achievement to make godly strength brutes feel really engaging to watch. Taika Waititi is a genius.
Black Panther - pretty good. interesting aesthetic. directly addressing racial tensions.
Avengers: Infinity War & Endgame - Mostly fan service and not too surprising but honestly still novel.
Ant-Man and the Wasp - Ehhh I really don't remember
Captain Marvel - Beginning had some great hard sci fi imo. Thought the ending message of newly apotheosizied female not needing to prove herself to her evil male mentor was a solid take, whereas a classic "mano a mano" kind of showdown would be so typical of the genre
Spider-Man: Far From Home - Villain emphasizing themes of the power of deceptive media? heck yeah.
Wandavision - Really bizarre and interesting start. Unfortunately non-self-aware conclusion
Falcon and Winter Soldier - Active discussions of race and the problematic nature of superheroes being supremacists? Very good.
Loki - kind of a super cliche topic (time cops) that is also somehow really rare? eh.
honorable mentions for Logan and Deadpool for being just great; and the Amazing Spiderman for its excellent aesthetics despite terrible writing.
> And like any serialized TV series, you can't really skip episodes without missing key parts of the story, so once you commit to the show you're on the bandwagon.
There’s a flip side to that, though: once someone is off it’s a lot less likely they’ll jump back on (or even jump on in the first place)
I count myself in that group. I’ve watched Marvel movies here and there (either Thor Ragnarok or Doctor Strange was the most recent) but at this point I’m turned off from watching more because I know there are numerous plot points I won’t get. And I don’t want to commit a week of my life to catching up.
Now don’t get me wrong, clearly Marvel doesn’t need people like me to be an enormous success. But I think it’s a bit of a high wire act that other pretenders to the throne (DC etc) run the risk of failing at.
> Comment was removed (why?), this loads it eventually:
> https://snew.notabug.io/r/worldnews/comments/h7ghoc/zoom_say...
This is what was posted: (some hyperlinks missing)
Fuck reddit and it's censoring.
Business Hall of Bootlickers:
Reddit: took $150M from Tencent. Removed threads like this
Activision Blizzard: banned player for supporting Hong Kong democracy protest. Confiscated all his winnings. Fired his interviewers
Apple: censors Taiwan flag emoji in iOS in Hong Kong
Apple (partial entry): censored Hong Kong protest map from App Store. Relented after backlash, now letting app into App Store.
Vans: censors pro-HK democracy design in its shoe design competition
NBA (partial entry): rebuked Rockets manager for his pro-HK tweet, saying NBA was "extremely disappointed with Morey's inappropriate comment." Backpedalled after backlash, now saying they support Morey's freedom of speech.
Disney / ESPN: forbids mention of Chinese politics when discussing Rockets manager's pro-HK tweet. ESPN hosts castigated Morey & speculated about his sincerity, but they will not talk about what caused the tweet: China's encroachment on HK
Viacom / Paramount: censors Taiwan flag from the jacket worn by Tom Cruise in the new "Top Gun" movie
Disney / Marvel: censored Tibetan monk from "Doctor Strange" and turned him into a white woman. Movie screenwriter: "if you acknowledge that Tibet is a place and that he’s Tibetan, you risk alienating one billion people who think that that’s bullshit".
ASICS, Calvin Klein, Coach, Fresh, Givenchy, Pocari Sweat, Valentino, Versace, Swarovski: details here
Marriott: apologized to China & changed "Taiwan" to "Taiwan, China" after China threw a hissy fit
Nike: removed all Houston Rockets products from their China webstore
Activision Blizzard: cut livestream when American University team held up pro-HK sign.
Apple: handed over iCloud data & encryption keys to China
Riot Games: censors the words "Hong Kong", forcing casters to refer to team "Hong Kong Attitude" as "HKA".
Cathay Pacific: fired employees for FB posts supporting HK protests.
Apple: minimized the seriousness of iOS exploits that enabled China to track Uyghurs, when 1M+ of them are rounded up by China in concentration camps
Google: censored pro-HK game "The Revolution of Our Times" from Google Play because it was about a "sensitive event".
Gap: apologized to China for selling T-shirts IN CANADA that didn't include Taiwan as part of China
Tiffany: removed tweet showing model covering 1 eye after China accused it of supporting HK
Marriott: fired employee who liked tweet from Tibetan group
Mercedes: apologized for quoting Dalai Lama on Instagram
American, Delta, United: deleted mention of Taiwan as a country from websites
Audi: apologized for using "incorrect map" of China that left off Taiwan
Muji: destroyed store catalogs that contain "incorrect" map of China
Zara: apologized for listing Taiwan as country
Medtronic: apologized for publishing "illegal content" that listed "Republic of China (Taiwan)" as country
Ray-Ban: changed "Taiwan" & "Hongkong" to "China Taiwan" & "China Hongkong"
Qantas, Air France, Air Canada, British Airways, Malaysia Airlines, Japan Airlines, ANA: changed "Taiwan" to "Taiwan China" on websites
TikTok: censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, Falun Gong
Sheraton: banned Taiwan National Day event. China called event "illegal & a crime against international law"
Disney: shrank/removed non-white characters from Chinese poster of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”
Philadelphia Sixers: ejected fans for supporting HK
Princeton: doesn't talk about the 3 Ts: Tibet, Tiananmen, Taiwan
Leica: released ad on Tiananmen protest. Apologized & distanced itself from ad
Rockhampton, Queensland: censored Taiwan flag in student art project
Cisco: helped build the Great Firewall including module to persecute Falun Gong
MGM: changed Red Dawn's villain from China to N Korea to placate China
Global Blue: fired staff for calling Taiwan a country
L'Oréal / Lancôme: canceled concert of HK artist Denise Ho for her pro-democracy activism
After decades of opening up Western market to China while turning a blind eye to rampant Chinese IP thefts, forced tech transfers, & protectionism, we are looking at widespread control of Western firms by China. Firms that are not under outright Chinese control still kowtow to China out of fear of China's retaliation.
REVERSE ENTRIES:
Matt Stone & Trey Parker: South Park "Band in China"
Red Bull: released video supporting protests for freedom & liberty
Ubisoft: listened to fans, said no to China after initially saying they would tone down game content to be China-compliant.
Prague: cancel partnership with Beijing over 1-China principle
Immutable: offer to repay banned gamer's winnings that was confiscated by Blizzard, got cyber attacked as a result
That was exactly how it was used in Doctor Strange. It's just a movie, they play fast and loose with the rules all the time.
I think the Marvel movies do okay upconverted because some consideration is given during 2D filming to how the upconversion can be facilitated. The trippy 3D in Doctor Strange, though, is one of my favourites as well.
I'd probably go with Black Panther or Doctor Strange.
Captain America: The First Avenger wouldn't be a bad recommendation either (and follow it up with the Agent Carter TV series, which is one of the finest examples of dieselpunk I've seen).
Where do Disney's TV channels fit into this? Besides the obvious Disney Channel, Disney XD, and Disney Junior, they also own the FX channels and Freeform.
Their movies currently eventually make it to those, and that is mostly where I've watched them. Sure, they take some time to get there. They are currently just up to 2016, with Moana, Finding Dory, Rogue One, and Doctor Strange being where they are up to in Disney animation, Pixar animation, Star Wars, and Marvel, respectively. But none of their franchises are ones that I need to keep current with anymore [1], so I don't mind.
[1] I did subscribe to Netflix for a month a few months ago specifically to get up to date on Marvel, so I could see Endgame in theaters. That was a special case because I decided it would be too hard to avoid major spoilers in the two or three years it would take to show up on cable.
I strongly disagree with this. Part of Captain America’s story was that he was only given physical strength because he deserved it as a moral individual. Iron Man spends a few movies feeling guilty for being a war profiteer and trying to make up for it by doing good, and then in the post-Avengers movies he struggles even more with the idea that his heroics have resulted in just as much death and destruction as his weapons sales. Doctor Strange gains his power by being willing to question his beliefs and then work really hard. And of course there’s Spider Man, who tries to use his powers for good but ends up bumbling around and screwing things up most of the time because he needs to learn that teenagers don’t actually know everything and the wisdom of age is important. Winter Soldier specifically railed against giving the government too much power because it’s impossoble to ensure it will be used for good.
I could go on, but hopefully I’ve made my point!
> Lastly, the economics of movie theaters have created a feedback loop that results in "big tent pole" films like Disney / Transformers / Star Wars dominating the screens. Adults want serious drama like "House of Cards" -- which is available at home.
To be fair, some movies are big screen movies, and dramas don't tend to be. House of Cards wouldn't work nearly as well as a 2 hour movie, nor would I be willing to go somewhere to watch it.
On the other hand, watching movies like Dunkirk, Doctor Strange, or anything in 3D doesn't feel right at home.
Maybe it's just me, but it feels like the movies that tend to do well in theaters are the same ones in which the home experience would be lacking, unless you have a theater room. Meanwhile, no matter how much I might personally love a given TV show, 90% of the time, it's just not movie appropriate. Of course, I'd definitely pay to have select episodes of Game of Thrones shown on the big screen... YMMV.
People forget that Disney owns a lot of must-see content:
For example, here is the list of top grossing movies of 2016 http://www.imdb.com/list/ls074920894/
Disney had the following films
1. Captain America: Civil War
2. Rogue One
3. Finding Dory
4. Zootopia
5. The Jungle Book
11. Doctor Strange
12. Moana
19. Alice Through the Looking Glass
For 2017 so far (http://www.the-numbers.com/box-office-records/domestic/all-movies/cumulative/released-in-2017)
Disney has
1. Beauty and the Beast
3. Guardians of the Galaxy V2
11. Pirates of the Caribbean
13. Cars 3
They own the Marvel franchise, the Star Wars, as well as some of the most loved children's movies in history. They also have a ton of children's TV programs.
If Disney really had a subscription service with all their movies and TV shows, I would choose them over Netflix.
1. There was ten times as much carrying on about Ghostbusters than Doctor Strange.
2. Doctor Strange took an actual Asian character and cast it with a non-Asian. Ghostbusters didn't recast male characters as women, it just decided that after two movies with male ghostbusters there would be a movie with female ghostbusters.
Not that I think scrutinizing these things is of any importance or that exposing this flaw means anything in the face of the white & male supremacy mindset that causes someone to be defensive about seeing criticism of a white casting or the existence of a female casting.
> I'd say you want an interesting but expect incredible production values
Smoke was an interesting movie, and cost $7M. (It didn't make much more but it wasn't a failure.)
Moon was a fantastic movie, and cost $5M. The little CGI it had was pretty obvious but didn't affect the viewing experience. (It also made near-zero returns.)
Requiem for a Dream was - and remains - an outstanding film. It flopped in box office but must have made pretty penny on home sales.
Dead Man is an interesting movie, and still one of my favourites. It works on the audience for the same reason Apocalypse Now does: episodic films in general are considered "artsy" and hard to chew, but turn them into thoughtful road movies and the audience enjoys the experience.
Pan's Labyrinth is just damn good. It cost €13.5 to make, and grossed $37M. Home sales must have added even more since then.
All the films above are both interesting and, in terms of bloated Hollywood budgets, were cheap to make. I would take any one of them over the perfumed sewage that floods the film theaters. And for reference, I did see Doctor Strange in a cinema so I do have a metric for calibration. My opinion stands.
Consider 8 had a $306,000,000 budget, 9 had a $200,000,000 budget. I have no problem saying it was profitable, but so was The Land Before Time 9. When a movie pulls in ~1/2 has much as the previous film it's a sign.
http://www.the-numbers.com/market/2016/top-grossing-movies
Just looking domestically we have Finding Dory (squeal), Rogue One (franchise), Captain America: Civil War (squeal), The Secret Life of Pets (kids movie), The Jungle Book (kids movie), Deadpool (franchise), Zootopia (kids movie), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (franchise), Suicide Squad (franchise), Doctor Strange (franchise), Moana (kids movie) etc. Down at #14 The Revenant was at least nominally an original movie, though very similar to several other films.
I don't think any of these where bad for what they where, but there was nothing new for the 14-40 group. 2015 had #6 American Sniper, #9 The Martian, but was again mostly rehashed movies until #17.
Doctor Strange is, but unfortunately at least in my town it's only showing in 2D at the cheap ($1) theaters now. I was blown away by the appropriate use of 3D and visuals in 3D IMAX for that movie. I saw Rogue One in 2D and then IMAX 3D and hated it in 3D.
Article about it: http://www.thisisinsider.com/doctor-strange-how-you-should-see-it-2016-10
When new movies come out, google "should I see it in 3D $moviename" type articles. Unfortunately it's January now; not many good movies coming out.
I saw Doctor Strange on IMAX 3D as well and I must say it was very impressive however there needs to be a good system for rating 3D movie experiences beforehand that way the consumer is not subject to wasting money on a horrible experience.
I've certainly seen movies where that was the case, but The Martian in 3D was amazing. I also thoroughly enjoyed Doctor Strange 3D, though that was on IMAX laser projectors, which are amazing by themselves.
For example, Disney/Marvel changed the location from Tibet in the Doctor Strange movie so as not to offend China.
It is a line from Doctor Strange, in which three Sanctums project a magical field that protects/hides the Earth, which would otherwise be assimilated by Dormammu into his Dark Dimension.
I find it humorous that we hear about cracks in the real Earth's magnetic field just as this movie comes out.
I am glad that this article brought up the elephant in the room. Eventually we have to get a re-boot of these characters, and I think that moment is fast approaching. These actors are getting older, and we already see someone of them stepping down, such as Hugh Jackman, and possibly RDJ. Furthermore we have two movies coming out which hint at major character deaths/reboots (Thor 3:Ragnakor and Cap 3:Civil War). I know Marvel has plans to add more characters with Black Panther, Inhumans, Ant-Man, Doctor Strange via movies and Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones via TV. However, that is what they are new characters. They are not going replace Cap, Wolverine, Iron-Man, or Thor. With the start of the DC Cinematic Universe coming out next year and continuing for the next 5+ years,I think we are going to see a saturation of new heroes and people are simply going to lose interest or get bored. You can only drag someone to see an origin story so many times.