MCU Retrospective: Spider-Man: Homecoming

Written by Anna Harrison

In these retrospectives, Anna will be looking back on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, providing context around the films, criticizing them, pointing out their groundwork for the future, and telling everyone her favorite scene, because her opinion is always correct and therefore her favorite scene should be everyone’s favorite scene. Are we sure this isn’t a John Hughes movie? (Yes, we are.)

80/100

Spider-Man: Homecoming is the sixth live-action Spider-Man movie to be produced since 2002. A decade after the original Sam Raimi Spider-Man, and only five years since Spider-Man 3, Marc Webb directed The Amazing Spider-Man, closely followed by The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which performed well below expectations and quickly tanked the burgeoning Sony Spider-Man universe. (For a refresher on Spider-Man rights and Sony, click here.) So, finally, we wind up here: Spider-Man: Homecoming, directed by Jon Watts and starring Tom Holland as the titular web-slinger, finally a member of the MCU. It really did feel like a homecoming, and to have Spidey folded into the MCU proper seemed a much better use of his character than Sony’s floundering attempts to make their own universe (though Marvel being forced to rely on their lesser-known characters such as Iron Man to kick things off certainly helped keep them on their toes as they started this endeavor). But how to differentiate this Peter Parker from Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield?

The first answer: ditch the origin story. Have Peter’s parents and his uncle Ben be long dead. There’s no “with great power comes great responsibility”—we got our version of that in Civil War, but from Peter himself: “When you can do the things that I can, but you don’t, and then the bad things happen, they happen because of you.” Everyone had been inundated with Spider-Man origin stories for a decade-and-a-half. Everyone knew Peter Parker’s parents died in a plane crash, and that Uncle Ben bit the bullet afterwards. By respecting the intelligence of his audience, Jon Watts trimmed any excess fat so we could jump right in with Peter (of course, Peter’s appearance in Captain America: Civil War helped, making doubly pre-established by both pop culture at large and the MCU).

Who is our Peter, though? His origin story might be cut, but is he just going to go through the same plot beats as his predecessors? And so we arrive at the second answer: have this Peter actually act like a 15-year-old. Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield were 26 and 27, respectively, when they first played their Spider-Man, and by their later entries they were 30 and older. Tom Holland was 19 when he was first cast in Civil War, and his small stature and bit of a baby face let him pass as a high schooler much more easily than Maguire or Garfield. But it’s not just his appearance that makes MCU Peter seem so much younger than his counterparts: it’s him getting excited over a LEGO Death Star, jumping on the bed, awkwardly trying to impress the girl he likes, struggling to look intimidating to criminals, walking down the halls and seeing excruciatingly awkward student news, making a jumprope out of web when he gets bored.

He even starts the film by making a vlog about his time in Germany during Civil War, and if his overeager, fast-talking nature doesn’t immediately win you over, then I don’t know what to tell you. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, Peter jumps at the chance to be an Avenger, and even after months of no contact from either Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) or Tony’s head of security, Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau), he still bolts to get into his suit after the last bell rings and leaves long voicemails for Happy detailing the bicycle thefts he stopped that day. The realization that he’s just a kid is almost overwhelming, especially when he’s silhouetted against the enormous backdrop of New York City.

His interactions with Tony and Happy provide the third answer on how the MCU sets their Peter apart: have him immediately connected to the universe at large. This is a solo movie, but it’s one that never lets you forget you’re watching an interconnected world, as Peter spends so much of his time trying to live up to Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.). Grappling with the expectations of the adults in his life not only gives Peter a good arc and characters to butt heads with, but also reminds everyone that there is a world outside. (Chris Evans also makes a cameo in his ridiculous, ear-less suit from The Avengers that perhaps eclipses even his Loki impersonation in Thor: The Dark World.)

Peter has been spending a bit too much time thinking about the world outside, though, to the point where he even quits his last remaining extracurricular, the academic decathlon, much to the chagrin of his friend, Ned (Jacob Batalon), and the team captain, Liz (Laura Harrier), whom Peter has a raging crush on. Luckily, the MCU has never been one for secret identities and the long, drawn-out dramatics they entail, and so Ned finds out very quickly about Peter’s double life, though it’s still hidden from Peter’s aunt May (Marisa Tomei) and the rest of his classmates, including bully Flash Thompson (Tony Revolori) and loner Michelle Jones (Zendaya).

Despite Tony’s advice to be a “friendly neighborhood Spider-Man,” we can’t watch Peter eat churros on rooftops all day, and so Peter soon stumbles upon a weapons deal between Jackson Brice (Logan Marshall-Green), Herman Schultz (Bokeem Woodbine), and Aaron Davis (Donald Glover); however, these weapons are no ordinary guns. Peter confronts Brice and Schultz after they pull their weapons on Davis, and a merry chase ensues that lovingly rips off Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Soon, however, a Vulture sweeps down from the sky, and Peter gets introduced to the film’s villain, Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton, who loves playing his bird-inspired roles). Toomes, as with so many Marvel villains, owes his origin story to Tony Stark: he and his salvage company were hired to clean up New York after the events of The Avengers, but when Tony partnered with the U.S. government to assist the efforts, the Department of Damage Control came in and seized Toomes’ job, leaving him high and dry. Toomes managed to steal some Chitauri technology and create weapons with it, and soon found himself wealthy, with high-powered weapons and a big bone to pick.

Peter only makes it out of this confrontation alive because Tony sends one of his suits to help, but he insists on taking down Toomes himself to prove his worth as an Avenger; after various fun sequences, including a delightful montage of Peter discovering all the high-tech things the suit that Tony gave him can do, he follows Toomes to a weapon deal on the Staten Island Ferry. His overeagerness proves his undoing, however, and in his rush to stop Toomes, he foils an FBI raid (one called by Tony) and fails to stop a weapon from slicing the Staten Island Ferry in half, yet again needing to be saved by Iron Man.

The ensuing verbal beatdown between the two is a fantastic little scene, with Downey making the most of his very limited (and very expensive) screentime. When Tony calls Peter 14 and he weakly protests, “I’m fifteen,” he absolutely feels 15 in a way that no other onscreen Spider-Man has. He feels very, very small. “This is where you zip it, alright? The adult is talking,” Tony snaps.

Much of Homecoming’s strength lies in its willingness to not only be a superhero film, but a coming-of-age dramedy; Watts does a tremendous job integrating the life-or-death stakes of Spider-Man’s world with the high school drama of Peter’s world (after all, high school certainly feels life-or-death at the time), and the resulting balance is by and large superb. The MCU is at its best and most creative when it stretches the superhero genre and fits it into new shapes, such as Winter Soldier’s political thriller and here, where Homecoming takes a cue from John Hughes. While the other Spider-Man movies were set in high school, they seem only to acknowledge the fact obliquely; here, Watts neatly marries Peter’s coming to terms with his newfound power with his coming-of-age, making them one and the same. They don’t just happen to coincide, they’re entangled with each other, and it makes for a well-structured, more engaging story. (One that even gives Tony some more depth, too: Peter says, “I just wanted to be like you,” and Tony replies, “And I wanted you to be better.” Tony, go to therapy, buddy.)

And so Tony scolds Peter like the child he is and takes away Peter’s suit. Peter, with nothing else to do, begins to pay more attention to his high school life—he even works up the nerve to ask Liz to the homecoming dance, and she accepts. Things seem to be looking up, if not looking as exciting, for our hero. Until, that is, he goes to pick up Liz for the dance and discovers that her father is none other than one Adrian Toomes, a twist that blindsides both the viewers and Peter himself.

The resulting car ride to the dance, as Peter tries to keep his cool and figure out how much Toomes knows, and as Toomes slowly begins to realize that his daughter’s date isn’t just a nervous 15-year-old, is among one of the tensest scenes in the MCU. Keaton is fantastic, and cements himself among the best Marvel villains (the bar is middling, but still): he easily switches from loving father to merciless killer in seconds, and the flicker in his eyes as he realizes Peter’s true identity—and the stoplight changes from red to green—is eerie. He gives Peter one last chance, though, and offers to let him go if he promises to leave Toomes alone. But with great power comes great responsibility, and so Peter ditches the homecoming dance and goes after his date’s father. (We have pretty firmly left John Hughes territory at this point.)

Vulture, like Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger in Black Panther, is one of those Marvel villains whom the movie has to go out of its way to establish as a murderous bad guy, because otherwise we would sympathize with them too much. When Peter points out that “selling weapons to criminals is wrong,” Toomes retorts, “How do you think your buddy Stark paid for that tower, or any of his little toys? Those people, Pete, the rich and the powerful, they do whatever they want. Guys like us, like you and me… they don’t care about us. We build their roads and we fight their wars and everything… We have to pick up after them. We have to eat their table scraps.”

Everything Vulture says is true. Were he not been attempting to kill a 15-year-old kid, he would be quite reasonable; in fact, he might even be likeable. Yet the validity of his points goes undiscussed—at least in Black Panther, Wakanda found a way to help execute Killmonger’s dream, just in a different way (though the effectiveness of that way—through United Nations bureaucracy—could certainly be questioned, and how exactly they plan to eliminate oppression remains vague and politically formless); here, neither Tony nor Peter acknowledge the root of Toomes’ grievances. They make him a compelling villain, but it would make for a more compelling film if Toomes’ motivations had any effect on Peter. As it happens, they glance off Peter even though they should force him to do some serious self-reflecting on his mentor, especially as Peter himself comes from a lower socioeconomic background, something which typically informs much of his character. But the MCU version of Peter Parker, helped by wealthy benefactors, largely skates around this issue and never disrectly addresses his financial state; in fact, Civil War does a better job at this than Spider-Man’s titular movie, so what could and should cause inner conflict for Peter only serves to make Toomes a more interesting antagonist, doing nothing for his heroic counterpart.

Even if this dynamic gets underexplored (a frustratingly common theme with Marvel films and their villains, but alas), the mano-a-mano beatdown between Spider-Man and Vulture is exhilarating and anxiety-inducing—perhaps even tear-inducing as Peter, having been buried under piles of rubble by Toomes, cries out for help, and we are once again reminded of just how young he is. If Tom Holland was superb at playing the comedy towards the beginning of the movie, he’s even better here: Peter hyping himself up to push away the rubble by yelling, “Come on, Spider-Man!” is not only a reference to this comic scene, it’s a beautiful encapsulation of his character arc in this movie. Even without his fancy suit, even in glorified pajamas and buried under a mountain of concrete with blood caked everywhere, Peter is a superhero. “If you’re nothing without the suit, then you shouldn’t have it,” Tony tells him earlier in this movie. Well, he certainly isn’t nothing, not anymore. (And yes, it’s very interesting that Tony, who relies so heavily on his suit, is pushing his protégé to be more than one. “And I wanted you to be better” indeed…)

Though charged with the unenviable task of reinventing Spider-Man for the third time within 15 years, Spider-Man: Homecoming rises to the occasion with aplomb, bolstered by a damn good performance from Tom Holland—though the franchise and character comes with a hell of a lot of baggage and expectations, Homecoming meets all of them beautifully, smoothly introducing Spider-Man to a new generation of moviegoers while simultaneously setting itself apart enough to appease older fans wary of another rehash. It’s a Marvel movie comfortable enough in its own Marvel-y skin (and free enough of behind-the-scenes drama) to tinker with the formula a bit, and the result is a joyous romp through adolescence with the added bonus of superpowers. What’s not to love?

Groundwork and stray observations: Marvel has no big master plan; rather, they plant seeds wherever they can in the hopes that some of them might one day germinate. None of these were planned from day one, lest the whole ship sink, but the seeds germinated nonetheless:

The “8 Years Later” title card at the beginning of the movie caused a lot of head-scratching when it first came out. Adrian Toomes was cleaning up after the events of The Avengers, which was in 2012, and so eight years later would mean Homecoming takes place in 2020, which makes zero sense as it’s supposed to pick up right after Civil War, which came out in and was set in 2016. It was only years later that this was rectified (sort of), and even then… why don’t you just retroactively change the title card to “4 Years Later”? Is it that hard? How did this happen when you have so much money? I could have fixed it, if only Kevin Feige would hire me! I am available, Kevin!
The principal of Peter’s high school, Principal Morita, is the grandson of Howling Commando Jim Morita from Captain America: The First Avenger, whose picture is on the wall in the principal’s office; both are played by Kenneth Choi.
A painting of Howard Stark (the John Slattery version, not Dominic Cooper) is seen in a mural at Peter’s high school, and a picture of Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner hangs in his science classroom.
The guy (Zach Cherry) who yells at Spider-Man to “do a flip” appears in Shang-Chi during the bus fight and busies himself with livestreaming the fight around him.
Aaron Davis is known as the villain Prowler in the comics and is the uncle of future Spider-Man, Miles Morales. (Donald Glover’s appearance is likely a nod to his campaign to become Spider-Man in The Amazing Spider-Man and his voice role as Morales in the animated Ultimate Spider-Man TV series. Here’s hoping the MCU Spider-Man movies bring him back and don’t let Donald Glover go to waste.)
Jennifer Connelly voices Karen, Peter’s “Suit Lady,” and is married to Paul Bettany, who of course got his MCU start by voicing J.A.R.V.I.S., Tony Stark’s “Suit Man.”
Martin Starr plays Peter’s teacher Mr. Harrington, who apparently went to Culver University in The Incredible Hulk. (This is definitely just one of those coincidences that the Marvel heads just kind of rolled with and said that Starr’s character in The Incredible Hulk was just a young Mr. Harrington, just like how Marvel said that of course that kid in Iron Man 2 was Peter Parker all along. Sure, why not?)
Michael Mando’s Mac Gargan, known as Scorpion in the comics, has a rather sinister (ha ha ha) post-credits scene, but nothing’s come of that (yet).
Angourie Rice plays Betty Brant, though I don’t believe Betty’s name is ever said in the movie, but she’s important in the comics.
My friend Hannah is clearly visible as an extra in the gym and homecoming scenes. She probably won’t ever read this and will never know I name-dropped her, but I did.

Anna’s Favorite Scene: I’m cheating and saying three: the Tony and Peter confrontation after the Staten Island Ferry incident (“Oh my god, it’s Robert Downey Jr.!”), Vulture driving Peter to Homecoming, and the “Come on, Spider-Man” scene.

MCU Ranking: 1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier, 2. Captain America: Civil War, 3. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, 4. Guardians of the Galaxy, 5. The Avengers, 6. Spider-Man: Homecoming, 7. Captain America: The First Avenger, 8. Iron Man 3, 9. Iron Man, 10. Doctor Strange, 11. Ant-Man, 12. Thor, 13. Avengers: Age of Ultron, 14. Thor: The Dark World, 15. Iron Man 2, 16. The Incredible Hulk

Spider-Man: Homecoming Trailer

Spider-Man: Homecoming is currently available to rent or purchase on most major VOD platforms.

You can follow more of Anna’s work on Letterboxd, Twitter, Instagram, and her website.

MCU Retrospective: Doctor Strange

Written by Anna Harrison

70/100

A tortured genius, a bit of an asshole, a lot socially inept—I could be describing any number of the characters Benedict Cumberbatch has played throughout his career, but in this particular case I am describing Stephen Strange, first name-dropped in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and now, two years later, making his big screen debut. Yet while Cumberbatch seems destined for the role, and indeed he was the first actor suggested, scheduling conflicts forced Marvel to look at a whole host of other performers, with everyone from Joaquin Phoenix to Matthew McConaughey apparently in the running, as well as future co-stars of Marvel’s upcoming Moon Knight, Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke. But, finally, Cumberbatch sealed the deal, cementing his typecast forever.

There’s a reason, though, that Cumberbatch is so well known for playing these rather callous individuals (a trend which started with Sherlock back in 2010)—he’s damn good at it. Stephen Strange, renowned neurosurgeon, is a huge ass. While he seems to have a decent relationship with his colleagues, he regularly touts how superior a surgeon he is (especially to Michael Stuhlbarg—woefully underused here—as Nicodemus West, a minor antagonist to Strange in the comics); he has an obnoxious collection of rotating watches; he turns down patients because he doesn’t want to mess up his perfect record and treats them as experiments rather than people in need of help. His fear of failure and desire to control everything drive him to extremes, so when he gets into a car crash, it’s not exactly heartbreaking.

It kickstarts an existential crisis for Strange, though, who loses the use of his hands—the hands which gave him his livelihood, which vaulted him to excellence—and, in his despair, pushes away the only person who truly cares about him (and his ex), Dr. Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams), another in the long line of neglected female love interests. Eventually, he sinks so low that he is willing to seek out solutions that come not from science, but magic. Dr. Strange quickly finds his way to the Kamar-Taj in Nepal, where he meets a group of sorcerers led by the Ancient One, played by Tilda Swinton.

Marvel, as in Iron Man 3, tried to sidestep controversy in casting Swinton, and instead wound up stirring it up as they cast a white woman in a role traditionally occupied by a Tibetan man. Doctor Strange’s director, horror veteran Scott Derrickson, avoided casting an Asian actor in an attempt to steer clear of stereotypes, saying, “In this case, the stereotype of [the Ancient One] had to be undone. I wanted it to be a woman, a middle-aged woman. Every iteration of that script played by an Asian woman felt like a Dragon Lady… Who’s the magical, mystical, woman with secrets that could work in this role? I thought Tilda Swinton.” Co-writer (with Derrickson and Jon Spaihts) C. Robert Cargill called the situation “Marvel’s Kobayashi Maru,” referencing the impossible training situation from Star Trek: have a mustachioed Asian man dispensing “Eastern wisdom” to the white man, or have accusations of appropriation thrown your way by casting a non-Asian.

Yet the choice shouldn’t be between stereotypical representation or no representation at all. As Kevin Feige would later admit, “We thought we were being so smart and so cutting-edge. We’re not going to do the cliché of the wizened, old, wise Asian man. But it was a wake up call to say, ‘Well, wait a minute, is there any other way to figure it out? Is there any other way to both not fall into the cliché and cast an Asian actor?’ And the answer to that, of course, is yes.” (That he declines to elaborate on how he would do this now is perhaps an indicator that he only said this to cover up bad PR from years ago, but…)

Casting Swinton also means that Doctor Strange lacks Asian representation aside from Benedict Wong’s character (named, uh, Wong), something that stings when much of the movie builds itself on Westernized Asian “mysticism,” with monks and magic and chakras and no specificity. The white man goes to Asia, ogles at some things, and finds his spirit healed, hooray! Marvel would have similar problems with Netflix’s critically panned Iron Fist, with Finn Jones’ (white) Danny Rand utilizing his Chi to take down (Asian) bad guys, and to a lesser extent in Daredevil, where season two villainous group The Hand consisted of ninjas that had no characteristics except “foreign/Asian” and “scary.” Daredevil actor Peter Shinkoda would even claim that former Marvel Television head Jeph Loeb said, “Nobody cares about Chinese people and Asian people. There were three previous Marvel movies, a trilogy called Blade that was made where Wesley Snipes killed 200 Asians each movie. Nobody gives a shit.”

(Loeb, it should be noted, reported to Ike Perlmutter rather than Kevin Feige until Marvel Television shut down in 2019, giving all television powers to Feige. It also should be noted that Marvel Television had Marvel’s first Asian superhero with Chloe Bennet’s Daisy Johnson, aka Quake, in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which also featured Ming-Na Wen’s Melinda May as a main character for all seven seasons, and had an Asian co-showrunner in Maurissa Tancharoen, whose brother Kevin helmed some of the series’ best episodes. S.H.I.E.L.D. is where it’s at, folks.)

In the case of Doctor Strange, there is also the small issue that China does not recognize Tibet as a sovereign state, and Marvel didn’t want to lose out on that sweet, sweet Chinese box office. Cargill explained, “[The Ancient One] originates from Tibet, so 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 and risk the Chinese government going, ‘Hey, you know one of the biggest film-watching countries in the world? We’re not going to show your movie because you decided to get political.’ If we decide to go the other way and cater to China in particular and have him be in Tibet… if you think it’s a good idea to cast a Chinese actress as a Tibetan character, you are out of your damn fool mind and have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.” This was not the first time Marvel catered to China and the CCP, nor will it be the last.

The circumstances around Swinton’s casting (and Marvel’s historically abysmal handling of Asian representation) are unfortunate, as she does a stellar job as the Ancient One, conveying all the wisdom of eternity while still maintaining a sense of playfulness that prevents the character from slipping into caricature or tropes. And, of course, she really looks like she could be an ageless, ancient sorcerer with immense power at her fingertips. “You’re a man looking at the world through a keyhole,” she tells Strange, and then opens the door.

What follows is a very trippy sequence involving Strange travelling through outer space, tumbling through different dimensions, and getting dragged to hell by a horde of hands. Up until this point, the MCU has largely tried to ground itself in some kind of implausible plausibility. Even Asgard’s magic was cloaked as science and handwaved away with Arthur C. Clarke quotes, but in Doctor Strange, we dive headfirst into something that cannot be explained with pure science, as much as its titular character would like to think so, and open up innumerable doors within the MCU sandbox. Strange, the ultimate logician, gets pushed so far that he seeks answers outside of the scientific realm he built his life on. It’s an interesting conundrum for a character to find himself in, though he seems to change course quickly enough, which leaves us wanting a bit more emotional turmoil. The revelation that magic exists should entirely upend Strange’s world, but we have a plot to get through, after all, and so after the initial shock of the Ancient One punching Strange’s astral form out of his body, he gets down to work.

Like Ant-Man before it, Doctor Strange has all the elements required for some very kooky shenanigans, yet plays it disappointingly safe. To Doctor Strange’s credit, none of its predecessors have tiny hands swarming around the main character as he tumbles through a strange LSD trip, but it never truly breaks free of the largely uninspiring Marvel visual palette. There’s always the sense that things could and should go even further, even though it certainly breaks new ground for Marvel. But not everything in this universe should just be good for Marvel (though that has certainly satisfied me plenty of times, don’t get me wrong), it should be bold in its own right, and Doctor Strange never quite goes far enough, leaving us only with weak comparisons to Inception and The Matrix.

As Strange throws himself into his sorcerer training, and his old arrogance begins to return, though it’s tempered with a bit more humility this time around. Still, he sees fit to pocket the Eye of Agamotto, a powerful magical object with the ability to reverse the flow of time, for himself. Control freak to the last, it would seem.

Trouble comes in the form of Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen), a former student bearing striking resemblance in personality to Strange. Kaecilius wants to fold Earth into the Dark Dimension (whatever that is) and Dormammu (whoever that is, though he is also played by Benedict Cumberbatch) to give everyone eternal life (through locking everyone in a place without time), which is not the most exciting motivation for Marvel villain—world annihilation is so overdone these days—but it’s Mads Mikkelsen, and that gives a measure of gravitas to the proceedings. But it’s not just a desire to avoid the ravages of time that drives Kaecilius: in a reveal that bears less weight than it should, given that the Dark Dimension means virtually nothing to the audience, it turns out that the Ancient One can be so ancient because she draws on force from the Dark Dimension to extend her life, and Kaecilius wishes to drag her hypocrisy out into the light.

That he does, disillusioning fellow sorcerer Karl Mordo, played superbly by Chiwetel Ejiofor; though Mordo does not have a whole lot to do here, Ejiofor is magnetic, and poised to become one of the more interesting characters in future entries. Mordo is rigid, unyielding, and has no tolerance for the bending or breaking of rules, especially as the Ancient One made herself the only exception.

Kaecilius succeeds in fatally wounding the Ancient One, but before she dies, she and Strange astral project to have one final conversation on a hospital balcony, watching the snow fall. “We don’t get to choose our time. Death is what gives life meaning: to know your days are numbered, your time is short,” the Ancient One tells Strange. It’s a beautiful moment frozen in time, and Tilda Swinton is phenomenal; unfortunately, the Ancient One’s excuse for utilizing the Dark Dimension—“Sometimes one must break the rules in order to serve the greater good”—rings a bit hollow. Perhaps “hollow” isn’t the right word, but I wish her hypocrisy had been explored more, rather than by and large glossed over, as it adds an interesting dimension to the world Strange now inhabits, the Ancient One, and Kaecilius.

With their leader dead, Strange, Wong, and Mordo set out to stop Kaecilius and Dormammu once and for all. The finale to Doctor Strange serves as one of Marvel’s more unique ones: set in Hong Kong, our sorcerer trio have a relatively small-time fight against Kaecilius and a couple of his lackeys, but what sets it apart is Strange’s use of the Eye of Agamotto, which means that the final showdown happens while everyone around the combatants goes backwards in time. It’s a neat trick that allows for more engagement than, say, Avengers: Age of Ultron’s mind-numbing onslaught of robots. The real kicker comes when Strange enters the Dark Dimension to go toe-to-toe with Dormammu—not with his magical prowess, but with his mind.

The actual logistics of this sequence don’t entirely hold up to scrutiny (mostly because it’s never really established what the Dark Dimension actually is), but Strange annoying Dormammu to defeat via a time loop and endless repetitions of, “Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain” is certainly a first for the MCU, and maybe cinema as a whole. (It even became a meme!) If the rest of Doctor Strange had shown the originality it does in its finale, the film would be among the best. As it is, there are brief flashes of brilliance amidst an otherwise rote Marvel story that pretends to be breaking new ground.

To be fair, origin stories are hard. Marvel is at its best when playing in an already-established sandbox, playing its characters off each other and letting them marinate in their interwoven world, but it’s much harder to come out of the gate swinging when so much of your success relies on crossovers and cameos (if that’s a good thing on a storytelling level, well…); if the MCU is a glorified television show, origin stories are a bit like bottle episodes, and like bottle episodes, they don’t always work. Doctor Strange is far from bad, and indeed has some stellar moments, but it’s not exactly memorable, either, though it should have had every right to be.

Groundwork and stray observations: Marvel has no big master plan; rather, they plant seeds wherever they can in the hopes that some of them might one day germinate. None of these were planned from day one, lest the whole ship sink, but the seeds germinated nonetheless:

Well, uh, that’s another Infinity Stone. Cool.
Christine Palmer goes by the Night Nurse in the comics, a moniker which goes to the Netflix character Claire Temple in the MCU, portrayed by Rosario Dawson (if we’re still counting the Netflix shows as canon, that is, but with the rumored appearances of Charlie Cox in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Vincent D’Onofrio in Disney+’s Hawkeye, it seems we are).
There were rumors flying that one of the potential patients Strange turns down was Captain Marvel, though this turned out not to be the case.
“This universe is only one of an infinite number,” the Ancient One says. You could even say that there’s a multiverse of madness out there!

Anna’s Favorite Scene: Strange and the Ancient One conversing on the astral plane while the latter lays dying on an operating table, but runner up is Strange and Kaecilius’ minion duking it out on the astral plane while Christine operates on Strange in reality.

MCU Ranking: 1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier, 2. Captain America: Civil War, 3. Guardians of the Galaxy, 4. The Avengers, 5. Captain America: The First Avenger, 6. Iron Man 3, 7. Iron Man, 8. Doctor Strange, 9. Ant-Man, 10. Thor, 11. Avengers: Age of Ultron, 12. Thor: The Dark World, 13. Iron Man 2, 14. The Incredible Hulk

Doctor Strange Trailer

Doctor Strange is currently available to rent and purchase on most digital storefronts, and is streaming on Disney +.

You can follow more of Anna’s work on Letterboxd, Twitter, Instagram, and her website.