Right off the bat, I must say “Thank you!” to Marvel Studios for giving me 115 minutes in which I didn’t have a single thought about elections or protests or Facebook rants. That was my main objective in going to the movie theater, and it was successfully accomplished. I gleefully escaped this earthly toil.
The Ancient One packs a wallop
But in addition to that, the movie had a lot going for it:
- Benedict Cumberbatch. Need I say more?
- Tilda Swinton knocks it out of the park with her normal brand of otherworldliness, but this time, her Ancient One is not only mysterious and a heck of a fighter, but seems to also have an inner core of joy that actually spills out in the form of a lovely smile or two.
- The folks at Industrial Light and Magic took Inception-like visuals and multiplied their complexity and speed by 10. This is a movie you really should see on a huge screen in 3D.
- Just the right dash of humor, always at the right moment.
Sure, Stan Lee’s obligatory cameo was pointless other than being another reason for him to stop doing it, and sometimes the astral-projection/spiritual-realm-you-know-nothing-about/power-of-the-mind stuff gets to sound a little bit like “blah, blah, blah”...but it’s a comic book movie, okay?
There’s even a short conversation in the movie that covers that base. As Doctor Stephen Strange (Cumberbatch) is first learning about all the mystical powers that he will soon be unleashing, he says “This doesn’t make any sense.”
The Ancient One’s response? “Not everything does. Not everything has to.”
