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Blu-ray Review: Fully Loaded 'Doctor Strange' Disc May Still Leave You Wanting More

This article is more than 7 years old.

We can probably guess that Doctor Strange was timed to hit Blu-ray this week specifically on the off-chance it might win the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and get a bump, a notion that feels plausible to me because as a teen, I used to go out of my way to see the Best Visual Effects winner. (It's the only reason I ever watched Death Becomes Her.) Alas for the Doctor, while there did appear to be some sort of strange sorcery at work this past Sunday, it didn't work in Marvel's favor, though the award did go to another Disney film (The Jungle Book) directed by Jon Favreau, a member in good standing of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So it all works out. Besides, with a worldwide gross of $675 million, it's safe to say this movie has a built-in fanbase...not to mention those who'll be curious to see any Blu-ray extras that might hint at future Marvel films.

The superhero movie that did win an Oscar, of course, was Suicide Squad, which had a worldwide gross of $745 million. And so the DC versus Marvel debate will rage on, but that's another subject for another time. You're allowed to like both, and I do.

One thing Marvel definitely does better, however, is allowing their directors to do commentary tracks. DC/WB may well be worried their directors will say the wrong thing, especially if any of the rumors of Suicide Squad being forcibly recut are true; however, Marvel/Disney proves that you can let the director speak and still do damage control. While the "whitewashing" controversy over Tilda Swinton's casting as a character who used to be an Asian man is addressed, one factor that never comes up anywhere on the disc is the idea that making the Ancient One character non-Tibetan had anything to do with appeasing the Chinese market; this despite cowriter C. Robert Cargill flat-out saying it did. Director Scott Derrickson says upfront on the track that he's recording it the day before the premiere (last fall), which suggests that the studio wanted to take the time to hear and approve it.

Also on the commentary, Derrickson allows that in his mind, casting Swinton rather than an Asian in what could be a stereotypical martial-arts guru role felt like the lesser of two evils, but that in some ways it's still "evil," and he urges Asian-Americans to keep fighting for representation. Swinton herself offers an interesting wrinkle in one of the behind-the-scenes featurettes, saying that just as the spirituality and martial arts in the film are kept non-specific, she sees the Ancient One's gender as similarly non-specific, and essentially played the character nonbinary. Marvel didn't promote this as a factor at the time, but it's an extraordinarily trans-positive step if that was really the thinking.

Letting Derrickson do the commentary solo may have been a diplomatic move, but it's hard not to feel that Swinton, or Cargill, or anyone else could have made things more interesting - the director's points are mostly obvious, and he pats himself on the back a lot for scenes that portray the characters as real people with real relationships, as if he's the first superhero movie director to ever think of that. He does enlighten the material when he points out how much of the movie is thematically tied to the notion of time, from Strange's broken watch to the powers of the Infinity Stone, and he'll for sure make you appreciate the contributions of Scott Adkins more. Adkins, a cult star of many low-budget, direct-to-video action movies (several of which feature his movie mentor Jean-Claude Van Damme) plays a nameless henchmen of Strange villain Kaecilius, and Derrickson takes every opportunity to point out how much his unique martial-arts skills added to the action scenes.

It also turns out that any parallels between that climactic time loop (a phrase Derrickson swears he never heard before) and Doctor Who are arguably related - Derrickson sees the "Doctor" moniker in his hero's name as being an important signifier of "first, do no harm"...just as the Time Lord who selected his own moniker might also say.

As for the behind-the-scenes featurettes, in addition to the Swinton interviews and star Benedict Cumberbatch evincing a considerable amount of comics knowledge, their most significant revelation is in how much of the movie was practically done. More sets than you may realize were built on a large scale, some of those light-circle spells were created using practical light-up shields the actors were holding, and even for the utterly fantastical scenes, Cumberbatch was often being spun upside down or forced to run on a treadmill more often than you'd think...that is, when the entire set wasn't rotating upside-down. It's fun, as he himself notes, to see how many times he was dragged on wires and slammed through things. It's tempting to imagine he's an actual Toon made flesh. Oh, and the behind-the-scenes bit about the mid-credits scenes gives you a much better look at the fact that Strange is wearing his comic-accurate yellow gloves while speaking with Thor.

A selection of deleted and extended scenes are mostly filler that needed to be cut, although one scene of Strange making a splint for an injured dog provides an early example of why Mordo took a chance on him, and a bit where Kaecilius insults the Bible and murders a priest might have been an issue for the MPAA, and religious families.

But what of the future of Marvel movies? We get a second installment of Taika Waititi's "Team Thor" comedy, with Thor and mortal Australian roommate Darryl uncomfortably co-existing. It's not as funny as the first one, because the shock humor of the concept has worn off, but now that we hear Darryl may appear in Thor: Ragnarok, it's more bound to continuity, and thus the idea that Thor wants his roomie to have a cape and a servant might actually be canon now. Then again, Waititi's ambiguous comments may have just referred to these shorts continuing as bonus features.

A short that promises an exclusive look at "Phase 3" of the Marvel Studios movies initially seems to rely on stuff we've heard before - honestly, if I had a dollar for every time someone on the Blu-ray extras says "Doctor Strange is now opening up the supernatural part of the Marvel universe!" I could buy another Blu-ray - but then it adds new things. Early peeks at Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, and Avengers: Infinity War offer some sweet new glimpses. Guardians 2 is far enough along that there are actually some behind-the-scenes glimpses; Thor 2 has some animatics, and Black Panther reveals some amazing concept art of what Wakanda looks like. As for Infinity War, we get mostly vagueness about how it's all been building to this, but there's at least one drawing of Thanos without his helmet.

The movie itself still captivates - watching it with commentary on lets you appreciate just the visuals from an emotional remove, then turning production audio back on helps you remember how much the performances actually matter to enhance the spectacle. The extras are solid back-up, but it's still hard not to wish others could have been roped in to providing additional commentary, especially when you see how funny Cumberbatch is on the gag reel.