Yelling at (Doctor) Strange(rs): An long unbridled reaction to Marvel’s Doctor Strange

The complaints about Doctor Strange are probably much more eloquently put somewhere else but after waiting so long to watch a Marvel movie, which admittedly I really wanted to see, all of my critiques come back to one thing: Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One. Overall, the movie had a strangely large amount of white women in the background, set things in Asia with only one speaking part for a person of Asian descent, and overall attempted to avoid orientalism and instead fell into a mire of first-world problems, colonialism, and whitewashing.

Having all the main plot moving characters (you could have cut Mordo and Wong no problem) be white (Doctor Strange, The Ancient One, and Mads Mikkelson’s character whose name honestly does not matter) came off as super “white people problems”-y. OH NO BUT I WANT TO LIVE FOREVER, why? BECAUSE THE WHITE LADY DID……mk. Therefore the who situation comes off as super paternalistic for the many sorcery students who are not involved with this. One white man wants to save them this way, a white lady wants to save them this way, and in the end the white man saves them. Mads had minimal motivation, the Ancient One came off as super paternalistic (I’M OLD I MADE A LOT OF TOUGH DECISIONS FOR ALL THE LITTLE PEOPLE), and Doctor Strange was honestly fine. He comes across as that guy in high school who you always want to punch in the face, but he has a great dog-cape and most of his annoyance could be overlooked if it wasn’t for the Bald-For-No-Reason-We-Say-We-Are-Celtic-Without-Using-Celtic-Imagery Ancient One.

The plot is the typical Doctor Strange origin story, which can be found in any number of various comics reboots, many are good, and Benedict is the best white-male fit for the character that exists. Enough Sherlock without it being Sherlock and with a sense of humor. Downside is the fact that Marvel could do with a couple fewer Arrogant-Smart-White-Dudes-Who-Love-Showing-They-Know-More-Than-Others, he’s sort of rogue-ish, you sort of like him, but you sort of also just want to punch his smug-ass face over and over until he shuts up. Lots of white-people problems happen (expensive car crash, followed by smug comments about expensive surgery, there are only white doctors, followed by entitled yelling), then he goes to Kathmandu which of course he can still afford to do. Though honestly, it could have been Chinatown in Kansas considering how much it as a setting and the people from there mattered.

This is the crux of many critiques of the character. It was first conceived of in the 1960s when generic “Eastern” mysticism was all the rage. They wanted to incorporate that into the Marvel Universe, so they create a mystical superhero. I get it, it was a product of its time. Now? Not so much. But at least then they claimed ignorance though they actually used some semblance of internal pseudo-Asian logic to move things along. That aside from that we get to Kathmandu, Strange acts like he has no idea how to Google places before he has to travel and wanders around like a stereotypical tourist asking random people where they mystical temple is. No Asian People Are Heard Speaking To Him Until Wong Shows Up Half Way Through The Training Montage.

Seriously, Marvel, what in the actual fuck. We meet the Ancient One, there is a non-speaking older Asian man in the room who then leaves. We get no explanation as to why she is bald (there are no hair length/style requirements at her temple), we are told outright by Baron Mordo that she is Celtic (HEY GUYS SHE’S CELTIC ITS FINE) which is just awful storytelling, and a good portion of the background “help” are white women even in Kathmandu (why?). Also the evil women with Mads are also white but with heavy make-up to show they are bad! We have some training scenes with Paternalistic white woman showing the Asian people how to do body movements that are derived from martial arts started in their own cultures, none of them speak and most of them are light-skinned Asians so no locals from Kathmandu train there. Though, for a good five minutes they are better than the white dude who just arrived. But you know after about a month he’s surpassed everyone who has lived and trained there for years because he’s just that kind of guy. Also you see him read more than you see him practice movement and for the amount of mind-body-united talk there is not much demonstration of that.

We’re introduced to Wong. When the director said they were going to make Wong a “master” this was like 99% talk, we never see him fight or show mastery of anything really. He’s either being outsmarted by the white-guy who’s already better at the thing Wong has trained for his whole life/his librarian job or dead. He is a one-dimensional sidekick but they call him a master and he likes Beyonce so it’s fine guys. He leads a group of students, many in this shot are Asian-descent, into an epic battle where apparently they are all useless and just die because we see none of their skills or anything more of them than a group shot. So is Tilda even that good of a teacher guys? I think not.

Mk. Where are we…Ah Yes Tilda as metaphor. So, they tried to avoid 1960s orientalism and came off as colonialist. Basic rule of drama: you put a gun on the wall, it’s fired by the last act. You set a story in Asia and it kind of has to matter. Instead, at one, point you LITERALLY FREEZE ALL THE ASIAN PEOPLE AND THEY ARE LITERAL SET PIECES. Antarctica would have also been an OK place for this movie. Also would have looked cool, mirrored glaciers, penguins, the whole shebang. Plus their design team, for the costumes primarily and some of the sets, did lots of looking cool and very little thinking about where styles come from. Have you ever played a JRPG and they use European Armor and you’re like, no guys, that’s not how that armor works. That’s what the design in this came off as. Shape, form, and zero substance. Each martial art has it’s own uniform for a specific purpose that comes from somewhere. At Ms. Tilda’s school for the mystical arts, nah brah, that don’t mean a thing. If even in the design they didn’t draw more than aesthetics for their Asian influences (or heaven forbid hire an Asian designer to think about this shit) why even keep the setting in Asia. Marvel if you are so worried about the Chinese market, higher some Chinese actors and designers to design your shit and at least have it make sense. They basically cafeteria’d it up with generic mystical Asian symbolism and styles and didn’t even do a great job at that. Mine the continent for its mystical substance then distill it into emptiness.

OH best part. The Ancient One telling Doctor Strange the secret is that that he’s not important, demonstrating that he can’t be that smart if he didn’t figure out that blatantly obvious point that most meditation arts cover on day one

THEN

PROCEEDS TO TELL HIM THAT WITH OUT HIM THE WORLD IS ALL DYING

Ok Tilda, think about it, if it’s not all about him why does the fate of the ENTIRE UNIVERSE REST ON HIM? Please think about this Tilda, think long and hard about the mix-signals you are telling the arrogant white man. Honestly, he also doesn’t do that much to curb his arrogance and his saving the world came off as sort of “I’ma do this because I’m THE hero guys, mk”. Ok he hands Nick a scalpel but there was no progression toward that symbol of sacrifice. Also rather than concerned, Tilda comes off about as sincerely caring as when she played Gabriel in Constantine. Ethereal and unattached and basically “Oh but you can’t argue with me, I’m being polite, and I did what was right, and it’s hard to be a white woman”.

Other minor gripes:

- Why are all the sanctuaries in the Northern Hemisphere?

     o If Agamotto built them thousands of years ago why would he have picked the areas that are now New York or London? Why not put them in places that had large populations back in the day?

    o Also if the Ancient one is Celtic why is it in London and not Dublin, Glasgow, Bilbao, or another ACTUALLY CELTIC CITY? Did you pick these at random for the architecture Marvel? BECAUSE IT FEELS LIKE YOU DID

    o Also lots of African-descent students at the Temple (cool diversity!) but no sanctuary in Africa…that’s super ummm…colonialist of you….thanks guys because only whites/Asians have large cities as symbols for spiritual knowledge, A+

    o Also Mexico City wasn’t an option for you? Just checking that there are zero latino Mystics…because that’s you know….cool too, except maybe the “selfish” guy

- There should have been more Rachel McAdams, Christine was great and I want more of her awesome ACTUAL GOOD DOCTOR SKILLS to come through

- Fuck photographic memory, people sometimes just WORK HARD AND READ ALL THE THINGS TO GAIN INTELLIGENCE

- They could have milked the time-loop thing for some better landed jokes but not bad

Things I loved:

- The mystical world dimensions where just as crazy amaze balls absurd as in the comics. I love them, I would live in a weird perpendicular clock cathedral thing 100%

- The CGI was amazing, all green screen but felt like a real expanding world for the most part

- Dog-cape

- There was a good amount of snark

- Rachel McAdams

- Wong’s dead pan reaction to Strange’s humor was greatly appreciate, because honestly in a movie filled with extraneous white people how else would you respond

Honestly, I liked good chunks and there were parts that I could forgive if they hadn’t so blatantly whitewashed everything about the core of the story. Part of Stephen’s development is the conflict between scientific methods and mysticism. He truly doesn’t believe but we don’t get that development. We get no real feeling that Strange is actually trying an Eastern/Generic mystical approach because we get no evidence that what he is doing is different from what he did in New York. He basically just quips, reads, and tries hard. There’s less yelling and one trip to Everest but one incident does not change behavior. Also a big part of many mystic approaches is meditation, which we see absolutely none of, and should be at the core of why an embodied mystical approach works.

On top of that, Tilda was just distracting and a reminder of how poorly they dealt with Asian culture. Their design felt like the “Asian” section at a Pier 1. She looked a step up from Marlon Brando as a Japanese guy. They did not do anything to demonstrate her “Celticness” or give her motivations for her being there. Why is she bald? Why Kathmandu? Why is she Celtic? How did she become a sorcerer? How the hell did she get to Kathmandu in the first place without dying HUNDREDS of years ago? Why does she speak like a modern English woman? Why are her mannerisms detached from the culture she’s spent hundreds of years surrounded by? Why is there only one generic sorcerer type that uniformly exoticizes Asian culture? Why are all your “masters” white dudes? Why do you have no imagery of the founder of your cult? WHY IS THERE NO MEDITATION?

Doctor Strange should have just dealt with its orientalist foundations and improved them instead of pretending that it didn’t exist. Own your source material and then do better.