Doctor Not Too Terribly Strange

On the wall of my office is a framed, tiny sketch of the Marvel comic book superhero Doctor Strange, drawn by Gene Colan the year before he died. My brother bought it for me at Comic-Con; we had been fans of Colan's work on the character in the '70s. Strange was an oddball superhero; whereas most of them punched people or fired energy beams or whatnot, he cast spells. He talked in high-flown language about the All-Seeing Eye of Agamotto, or the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak. His enemies were odd, too: other-dimensional beings who posed existential threats to humanity. He was kind of like a priest going up against devils: most of the world would never even perceive, let alone appreciate, his struggles.

There's some trace of that character in Scott Derrickson's Doctor Strange, certainly the priestly part. But the high-flown language is gone: Benedict Cumberbatch plays Strange much the way Robert Downey, Dr. plays Tony Stark: quippy, arrogant, irreverent, and sporting carefully groomed facial hair.

While he still casts spells, they're mostly in the service of hand-to-hand combat. Sigh. It's a little dispiriting to watch the Marvel Machine grind the curious (read: interesting) edges off its characters, but it's not like they're about to risk DC-style charges of humorlessness.

Moving on (the '70s were a long time ago) ... Mel Gibson is back in the director's chair for the WWII film Hacksaw Ridge, still doing what Mel Gibson does: carnage and uplift. At least he's good at it.

I didn't watch a lot of '80s thrillers — you know, the ones with salacious titles like Forbidden Desires and sexy VHS covers at your local video store. But watching the gay-porn murder-thriller King Cobra, I felt like the best of them must have been like this. Liked it much better than I anticipated.

My colleague, Scott Marks, had a rougher time of it this week. The Stooges doc Gimme Danger reminded him of the good old days of blistering punk, but he wound up as one of only three critics to post a negative review for Moonlight. The poor guy just can't let issues trump aesthetics. And while he managed to dodge the documentary relating to the on-air suicide of Christine Chubbock, he couldn't dodge the drama of Christine. He liked it about as much as he thought he would.

Neither of us made the screening of the toy-based animated film Trolls, which is getting much better reviews than I anticipated. Who knew?

Me, I'm holding out for the Micronauts film. Baron Karza!