CAPSULE: Doctor Strange (2016, Dir. Scott Derrickson)

Dr. Stephen Strange is an arsehole. He's the "I'm a brilliant doctor and I am better than god" sort. He's flippant with his female friends and colleagues because they are clearly infatuated with him. He's a straight down the line know-it-all. And he drives fast cars, badly... so it all goes tits up.

Thankfully, the mystical East is only a flight away and, with fairly minimal effort on his part, Strange falls in with a crowd of magic-rich Earth defenders who begrudgingly teach him how to surpass them all at their magicking and become a super powerful Earth defending wizard.

Doctor Strange is visually elaborate (think Inception meets 3D magic eye book) but otherwise drags under Marvel's culturally tone-deaf formula. Benedict Cumberbatch is excruciatingly Cumberbatch as Strange. He's a mouthpiece for the kind of self-satisfied superiority Marvel struggles to suppress. His litany of lame pop culture references fall flat (not only because they are used to "other" those around him - namely devout librarian, Benedict Wong) and his general arseholery is barely rectified by the film's close - he kind of comes around to Rachel McAdams' love interest (who turns out was desperately infatuated with him after all) and kind of accepts the corrupted lessons of Tilda Swinton's white-as-white Ancient One, but he's still an arsehole about it.

For Strange to learn his lesson, or any true cultural humility, Marvel would have to have learnt the same and that doesn't look like it is going to be happening any time soon. All this was foretold by the ancient formula. Doctor Strange really does feel that pre-determined. Plot beats are apparent well before they hit the screen. It is almost embarrassing now.

Arseholes.

★★☆

Trailer: