Chris At The Pictures

The best moment in Marvel’s latest cinematic universe building block comes when an egotistical white man gets punched. For a series that replicates this beat time and again (see any movie featuring Tony Stark, Scott Lang, Thor, or their respective villains), it’s no mean feat to make the act feel special again.

In the case of Doctor Strange, said wallop arrives when Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch, playing a neurosurgeon who loses the use of his hands in a car accident) haughtily discards the very idea of spiritual healing. Tired of Strange’s close-mindedness, The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) delivers a hefty thwack to his chest, whereupon his astral form is catapulted from its physical body, before being hurtled across the dimensions. It’s a brilliant juncture that rewards threefold: as deftly-executed punchline for the scene, an epiphany for the reluctant hero, and an eye-widening joyride for the audience, demonstrating the psychedelic visuals to come.

By this point in the movie, we’ve briefly dipped our toes into the special effects during a brawl between Swinton’s guru and Mads Mikkelsen as grimacing zealot Kaecilius, but Strange’s first encounter with the mirror dimension is a headfirst dive into kaleidoscopic abandon. Entire solar systems fold in on themselves, human faces contort and replicate infinitely, and when the sequence comes back to Earth with a bump, we’re left gasping for more just as much as the dumbfounded Strange.

The Ancient One informs us that these effects are confined strictly to the mirror dimension, with no effect on our reality. So when this maelstrom of magic returns for later action set pieces, the key question is “Why should we care?” The city-levelling CGI clouds witnessed in at least half a dozen other Marvel films may have become repetitive, but at least we understood there was a human cost. Here, the finale deliberately creates a similar setup – broiling clouds of digital distortion included – but subverts our expectations by immediately making the climax all about the characters – more specifically their brains, not brawn. Plus, it’s the closest a Hollywood production has ever come to resembling a YouTube Poop (parody content where videos are warped, repeated, reversed, or otherwise altered for comedic or entertainment effect), and I make this comparison as a massive compliment to the creative minds at play.

This isn’t to uphold the mind-bending visuals as the only, nor even the largest source of comedy. The script is witty enough that our suspension of disbelief can survive numerous silly names (Dormammu, Mordo, etc) and a whole heap of mystical jargon, while Cumberbatch, Swinton, Chiwetel Ejiofor and co all pick up the Marvel mix of serious and snarky very well. Cumberbatch in particular manages to avoid accusations of overexposure by playing a character that actually gets to emote for once. The cold disinterest of Sherlock or the calculated shyness of Alan Turing are involving facades, but not particularly sympathetic. Strange is a barking, whimpering misanthrope who learns to have a laugh every now and again at himself, rather than others. He also gets ten kinds of stuffing knocked out of him by the Cape of Levitation in his efforts to be worthy, which is endlessly amusing (putting in my early bid for it to win Best Supporting Actor).

Pitfalls appear every once in a while: Rachel McAdams does very well in a reverse-but-not-really love interest role, until the narrative sees fit to drop her from the final act. It’s also a shade too long (but then, what superhero film couldn’t do with losing a good ten minutes of exposition?), and it uses none of its time to give Scott Derrickson any chance to develop a signature directorial style. His previous horror works (Sinister, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Deliver Us From Evil to name a few) bear little idiosyncrasy, so perhaps this is Marvel taking a chance on a ‘clean slate’ as it were, removed from the pop-culture infusion of the Russo Brothers, or the vintage aesthetic of Joe Johnston.

For all the usual MCU potholes it sometimes stumbles into, Doctor Strange is smart, funny, inventive, and hugely enjoyable. It’s the first of the series since Iron Man to feel like a genuine standalone; a story that can be enjoyed by newcomers as much as die-hard fans. The latter will stay seated for end credits stings regardless, but the Michael Giacchino score makes waiting less of a chore and more of a toe-tapping cooldown for everyone else.

Third time’s the charm for director Ridley Scott as The Martian takes him back into the stratosphere. After messing up McCarthy with The Counsellor and making a mockery of Moses in Exodus, Scott’s latest adaptation (taken from the pages of Andy Weir’s hit novel) is a much-welcomed return to form.

Botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) sees red when his fellow astronauts are forced to abandon him on the surface of Mars. A freak storm jeopardises the mission and Watney is left alone to ‘science the shit’ out of his surroundings to survive until the next spacecraft arrives…in four years’ time.

Damon finally stops reminding me of a decade-old Team America gag and glows in the central role. Scott makes the best of massively promising source material by giving us a Mark Watney who is as witty, indefatigable and just plain fun to hang around with as we’d expect. Somehow this fusion of Gravity’s Ryan Stone and Mythbuster’s Adam Savage commands our full attention while still allowing the allure of beautiful landscapes and a shoe-tapping disco soundtrack to slip through.

When you’re armed with a supporting cast including no less than Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jessica Chastain, Sean Bean, Benedict Wong and Kristen Wiig, there’s not a lot that can harm you. Never does the film feel crowded or directionless, and everyone has just enough development to throw them clear of thumbnail sketches. It would be incredibly easy to make Jeff Daniel’s disapproving NASA executive a moustache-twirling villain, but the film is far above mistreating it’s characters in that way. Everyone’s clearly having the time of their life, and this is no more apparent than a sequence featuring David Bowie’s Starman playing over the cinematic equivalent of a high-five. 

The issue was always going to be how you make the journey of Watney and his would-be saviours entertaining once the initial hurdles of life on Mars have been conquered. One would imagine there’s not an awful lot to top a single man eking out a life on the fringe of existence, but whether it’s growing food on a dead planet, trying to get a single word to cross 140 million miles of void or facing the heart-stopping finale, the excitement (and the laughter) in this orange odyssey is green across the board.

The Martian bears the trappings of a young director in his creative prime. How much of this youthful energy emits purely from Weir’s novel or Goddard’s script is debatable, but for now I’m quite happy to put it down to the spirit of collaboration that permeates the whole piece. This is a joyous adventure against the odds, manned by a crew that fails to put a foot wrong.