We've had Iron Men, aliens, & Inhumans. Time to get really weird...
I can dig it.
Seriously though, this is a pretty good teaser. Doctor Strange is in a weird place compared to other Marvel heroes, where he's semi well-known as Marvel's key "magic guy" but the specifics are kind of obscure to the average joe. So it makes sense that this teaser acts like a kind of condensed first act of the movie to quickly get across what this dude's deal is. And I think it does a pretty good job, despite being a bit oddly put together, for the average audience to pick up on the story beats. Benedict Cumber-Bumble is a surgeon, gets into a car accident, it fucks up his hands, he ends up in Nepal, and decides to learn magic. Good hook. One problem is that the teaser doesn't really convey that he goes to Nepal to get his hands fixed and ends up learning magic as a substitute. Not a huge deal, and something that will probably be shown better in the next trailer, but a flaw nonetheless. Still, we the audience get the more important point of "This guy's gonna learn magic."
Which is a smart approach. I've said before, this movie's biggest challenge is going to be getting audiences, even those already invested in other Marvel characters, that real honest-to-Vishanti Harry Potter/Gandalf style magic exists in the same world as Iron Man & Captain America. Sure, there's Thor but he & his mythology have been rooted more in the "Ancient Aliens" science fiction genre than literal magic. So it's wise on Marvel's marketers & storytellers' part to make Strange himself as skeptical about magic as us, the audience. That's why I like how the voiceover in this teaser focuses on things like, "Forget everything you thought you knew" or Strange's, "I don't believe in fairy tales". A bit generic for this kind of movie to be sure, but help set up the tone and atmosphere. Though my favorite line is the Ancient One's, "You're a man looking through a keyhole". Not just because it's a nice metaphor but because it perfectly sums up both Strange and the audience. We've only being seeing a small part of the whole picture in regards to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Everything we know; The Avengers, the Netflix shows, The Guardians of the Galaxy, still matters but there was this whole other side of the things, the magic side, that we're now only seeing for the first time.
And it's already given us some very intriguing visuals. Like Mads Mikkelsen's still unnamed villain warping the walls of that temple to open up a hidden... something. Path, maybe? I don't know but it looks cool, very Monument Valley. Or the Inception-esque folding of New York. It all has a very M.C. Escher & infinity portrait feeling to it, and while I like that it feels a little safe. The Dr. Strange comics are famous for their trippy landscapes, so hopefully the filmmakers have some more psychedelic backgrounds waiting up their sleeves. But the iconic visual of this teaser has to be The Ancient One pushing Strange's astral spirit out of his body and him staring in disbelief. It immediately catches your attention and is unlike anything we've seen in a Marvel movie so far. But more importantly, it feels new. It's that moment that really cements that this movie is going to take us to a new side of the MCU, a more mystical side.
Doctor Strange is a movie that seems like I'm more excited for than other people, even other Marvel fans. Hopefully this teaser will help win over some skeptics, or at least get them interested in seeing where this weird thing is going. And maybe in the full trailer we'll get a better idea of the movie's full story and what some of the supporting cast is like.
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