(The following is a drunken email sent by Tony to Dan–edited for clarity–after Tony saw Dr. Strange)
the movie SHOULD have been as crazy as THIS
I mean, magic (particularly the crazy, drugged-out shit Dr Strange is known for) is supposed to be mysterious and remote, an ineffable force as opposed to the cold, clinical science of Dr Strange’s pre-magic life as a surgeon
so when Dr Strange goes to Tibet and learns all his shit, does the movie reflect this weirdness? NO, they basically just make a magic school on some street in Kathmandu where Dr Strange takes classes and there’s a bunch of students and shit like that
and there’s a library, with a LIBRARIAN, who listens to Beyonce on his iPhone, and they give Dr Strange a scroll with the wifi password on it
and Dr Strange uses Google Translate to read thousand-year-old tomes written in ancient Sanskrit
and at one point, they explain to Dr Strange that they’ll teach him spells, “Or, if that word offends your sensibilities, we’ll teach you ‘programs’ whose ‘source code’ comes from other dimensions” etc etc
so basically, they took the idea of magic, sapped all the mystery out of it, and submitted it to an extremely rationalist approach, no doubt so that all the science nerds who love the Marvel movies can get off to it
now, Harry Potter did sorta the same thing, but Rowling played all that stuff for laughs–but in this movie, they just DO it…..utterly no imagination
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
the tone of the entire movie should have been like this music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4uoNAFfvKg
esp. that funky Hammond organ break at 2:26
also, this harpsichord work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5kpoHbHt5A