BEFORE: This is another of Marvel's direct-to-DVD animated films, part of the deal with LionsGate Films to highlight Marvel's underused comic-book characters. This deal produced "Punisher: War Zone", but also resulted in "Man-Thing" - so there have been ups and downs. I'm filling in today with 2 shorter animated films, killing time until a bigger movie on Sunday.
THE PLOT: Dr. Stephen Strange embarks on a wondrous journey to the heights of a Tibetan mountain, where he seeks healing at the feet of the mysterious Ancient One.
AFTER: A pretty basic re-telling of the origin of Dr. Strange, Marvel's main sorcery character. For a lot of people, Dr. Strange represents the psychedelic 60's and 70's era of comic-books, with cosmic silver guys surfing around the universe, and devils and demons constantly attacking our plane of reality. The great thing about these comic books was that it allowed the writers and artists unlimited creativity, they could write just about anything into the world of magic, or have Dr. Strange cast whatever spell he needed to save the day.
The story of Dr. Strange is one of redemption - an affluent surgeon who gets into a car crash and loses the use of his hands travels to Tibet to study magic with the Ancient One, and eventually becomes a sorcerer. This film makes the Ancient One into a hybrid of Yoda and Mr. Miyagi, making Dr. Strange's journey similar to that of Luke Skywalker and/or The Karate Kid.
This is for kids, so there's a lot left unexplained - what are the weird demonic creatures that are attacking the world? How come no one else seems to notice them, except for the Ancient One's students? Who exactly is Dormammu, and why is he attacking our dimension? I guess there's only room for one back-story, and that belongs to Dr. Strange. And can all magic really be summed up with the explanation of converting energy to matter, and vice versa?
So this was pretty bare-bones, but a live-action version is apparently being planned for release in 2012. Through Marvel Studios, not LionsGate.
RATING: 4 out of 10 concrete blocks
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