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The Main Characters
--Stephen Strange (voiced by Bryce Johnson) was a prominent doctor until an accident crippled his hands. He went in search of cure and instead found the Ancient One, who trained him in magic.
The Setting
I don’t think it’s ever named specifically but the comic book Strange lives in New York City. Strange trains with the Ancient One in Tibet.
The Film
Doctor Strange is a very well-known yet standoffish doctor. He works only with the most bizarre cases and usually shuns everyone else. This all stems from his sister dying at his hands and Strange closing himself off to the world. He witnesses an odd occurrence at his hospital where many children are in comas after seeing a flaming head in their dreams. Strange ponders this on his drive home but tragedy strikes when he thinks he sees demons and children on the road and veers off course, careening off a ledge of a cliff and plummeting downwards. He awakes to find he no longer has proper use of his hands and his career is over. He spends all his money looking for a cure and finally hears about someone in Tibet who can help him. This person in Tibet turns out to be an ancient sorcerer named “The Ancient One.” He leads a group of fellow magicians, including Baron Mordo, a warrior, and Wong, his trusty servant. They train Strange in the ways of magic and Strange learns of another powerful, yet evil, sorcerer named Dormammu. He was long ago banished from Earth by the Ancient One but is starting to re-emerge by using the children who are currently in comas. Strange must use his newfound abilities to defeat Dormammu and the man who betrayed the Ancient One, and take on the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme.
Movie Review (1:16:22)
This was a very short film, though I think it was about the same length as the other Marvel animated films. This one surprised me a lot. I wasn’t expecting too much from it since I never was a huge fan of Strange to begin with. This animated feature takes a more modern view on his origins, to tying it into the Ancient One’s plans all along, to the death of his sister causing his disconnect from the world and even his evolution from crippled doctor to sorcerer supreme. The main characters and elements are there, from Wong (shown more powerful here than in the comics) Mordo, Dormammu and the Ancient One. The film is excellently written but the feature has some drawbacks. The animation is choppy in some parts and the CGI parts glaringly stand out. I think of the four Marvel DVD’s, this one was the most rushed, and it tells. That is a major drawback. The other things are minor quibbles. There were too many followers of Ancient One that you didn’t feel a connection to them and they dropped like flies and I really didn’t care. I don’t even know if they had names. They could’ve pulled it off with just Mordo, Wong, and maybe one or two named characters throughout instead of what seemed like a half-dozen or more. Finally, the voice of Dormammu was just annoying. I see this powerful flaming behemoth and he sound, I dunno, normal. This grievances aside, I think I would give Doctor Strange **1/2 stars. I liked it a lot better than Iron Man but it was not up to the level of the Ultimate Avenger DVD’s.
DVD Features
A) Extras
1) Marvel Video Game Cinematics
These are just scenes from the game. Its annoying that the last two don’t have a “play all” feature and you have to click on all 6 or 7 of them individually. These actually look better than the animated movies they are putting out. They should do a CGI movie and forget the animation.
---A) Best Of (3:03)
This is a montage of all the best scenes that play throughout the video game. It’s set to a song called, “Let’s Kick Some Ass.”
---B) Ultimate Alliance (10:50)
There are 6 different ones you can view. I assume that this one, and the X-Men Legends ones are actually what is played in the game and includes full sound and voice over work. The Nightcrawler scene kicked ass.
---C) X-Men Legends II (9:23)
There are 7 different ones you can view.
2) The Origin of Doctor Strange (14:02)
This starts from the early days of Strange. They talk about his creation at the hands of Steve Ditko (on art) and Stan Lee (for the story). It’s great listening to Stan talk about Strange, his incantations and his enemies. Roy Thomas was the second writer on Strange and he talks about his run on the title. Halfway through they say to hell with the origin, let’s talk about the animated feature. These are just my own musings but Strange is a funny character in the MU. He could never seem to sustain a solo title as he even shared duties in Strange Tales and he seemed to work best as a major supporting character instead of a headliner. Decent but short origin. They should’ve went into much more detail of Strange and his life in comics.
3) A First Look at Avengers Reborn (5:45)
This would be Avengers Reborn, the fifth Marvel Animated Feature. This appears to be a weird amalgam of Young Avengers and Teen Titans. They scare me right off the bat by saying these are brand new characters created just for the film. They say it’s about the children of the (Ultimate) Avengers and the main villain seems to be Ultron. I think this will be more kids based than anything else. You know what, if the writing is fine and if it can capture that electric animation of Teen Titans, this could be good.
4) Doctor Strange Concept Art (2:18)
This is basically penciled sketches for scenes from the movies. They have some painted pieces, which are nice but seems to consist mostly of animatics.
5) Trailer Gallery
I don’t really have anything to say about these, the first two I will never see and the other three I have reviewed and can be found elsewhere.
---A) Delta Farce (2:04)
---B) Dresden Files (0:35)
---C) Ultimate Avengers: The Movie (1:55)
---D) Ultimate Avengers 2 (1:39)
---E) The Invincible Iron Man (1:24)
B) Audio/Video
The audio is presented in Dolby Digital and the video is in standard fullscreen format. The colors of the video were beautiful and the audio served its purpose. No major flaws or imperfections here.
C) Packaging / Liner Notes
The DVD comes in a very nice shiny holofoil slipcase. Inside there is a single slip of paper promoting the four current Marvel Animated DVD’s and on the opposite side there’s a Heroclix ad.
D) Easter Eggs
None.
Overall Review
We got some trailers to start off the disc, a silly comedy called Delta Farce (2:04), Ultimate Avengers 2 (1:39) and Iron Man (1:24). Do you know the thought I had while watching this DVD (and the same goes for all the Marvel DVD’s)? They are missing commentaries. I think it would be awesome to have a creator commentary, like for this one you have Stan Lee, talking with the head director about the DVD. The Ultimate Avengers ones could have Finch and Millar, the Iron Man one could have Stan. The movies are only 80 minutes so it wouldn’t be too hard to record and have things to say and the DVD’s are empty enough that it would have no problem fitting on the disc. I mean, its nice to have these animated features but there’s maybe 20 minutes of extras here (sorry, trailers are not extras) with nothing else more. That means I’m paying about $20 for a little over 100 minutes of content. I think they could pack these a bit more, maybe a longer Strange documentary (like the ones they have on the theatrical movies they release). That’s not a knock on just this DVD, but all the Marvel DVD’s. For what it was worth, this wasn’t a bad DVD. The movie had its weaknesses and the extras were ok for what was there but these releases really could be so much more.
Overall Rating
5.5
10.0 Perfect
9.0-9.5 Near Perfect, Highly Recommended
8.0-8.5 Really good disc, Recommended
7.0-7.5 Good DVD, Mildly recommended
6.0-6.5 Above Average DVD. Mildest of mild recommendations
5.0-5.5 Decent all around disc, but catch it on TV
4.0-4.5 Great Movie but horrible DVD
3.0-3.5 Horrible movie but great DVD
2.0-2.5 There’s at least some merit to this DVD, but not much.
1.0-1.5 Horrible DVD, don’t even bother
0.0-0.5 Worst DVD ever
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