Ranking Dr. Strange

Thinking about going to see the Logan movie tonight, and just realized I never got around to ranking the Dr. Strange movie.

I have previously ranked the Batman movies, the Superman movies, the other DC movies, the Avengers movies, the X-Men movies, the summer 2015 comic movies, the Spider-Man movies, the non-Marvel and non-DC comic movies, Captain America: Civil War, and the Man-Thing.

As ever, my ranking system is
Green=excellent  Blue=pretty good  Black=Okay  Red=avoid

Dr. Strange is one of my favorite comic characters; I have tons of his comics, and I was really looking forward to this movie. Well, the movie was cool, great special effects, fun story, but somehow it did not capture at all what I like about the comics. That's probably not fair, so I'll try to judge the movie on its own terms. But that overall impression definitely colors my opinion.

The movie follows gifted but arrogant surgeon Dr. Strange, whose hands are injured in a car crash. Even after healing he will never operate again (ironically, the one person who could have fixed them was him), and he descends into a downward spiral of despair and alcoholism. But then he hears about a mysterious healer in Tibet, the Ancient One, who can cure ills not treatable by Western medicine. Desperate, he sets out for Tibet and eventually finds the Ancient One, only to learn the Ancient One has different plans for him than resuming his medical work....

Dr. Strange gets lots of points for its mind-blowing special effects, a real advance in the sophistication of computer generated imagery, I think, very much like Inception. In fact, it reminds me a little of the early 1990s, how The Abyss blew everyone's mind with its effects but wasn't that popular, only for Terminator 2 to come along a year later and show everyone how CGI could be applied to more popular action films. I wonder if Dr. Strange will be the T2 in this situation.

So my overall ranking for Dr. Strange will be in the bottom half of the pretty good category. Others with less previous knowledge of the character might like it better.

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Here's the master list of all comics movies I've rated so far, in order from best to worst:

Crumb
American Splendor
Iron Man
Heavy Metal (1981)
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Avengers
Superman (1978)
Captain America
Batman Begins (2005)
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
Spider-Man (2002)
X-Men 2: X-Men United
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Superman II
Batman (1989)
Ant-Man
Dr. Strange
The Dark Knight (2008)
Iron Man 3
The Wolverine (2013)
Sin City (2005)
X-Men: First Class
X-Men (2000)
Avengers 2: Age of Ultron
Swamp Thing (1982)
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Iron Man 2
Watchmen (2009)
Batman Forever (1995)
Superman Returns (2006)
Thor 2: The Dark World
Incredible Hulk (2008)
Mystery Men
Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Man-Thing (2005)
Superman III
Supergirl (1984)
Thor
X-Men 3: Last Stand
Hulk (2003)
Fritz the Cat (1972)
Batman and Robin (1997)
Batman Returns (1992)
Superman IV

Amazing Spider-Man (2012) (Haven't seen)
Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) (Haven't seen)
Batman (1966) (Haven't seen)
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (Haven't seen)
Catwoman (Haven't seen)
Constantine (Haven't seen)
Deadpool (Haven't seen)
Green Lantern (Haven't seen)
Hellboy (Haven't seen)
Judge Dredd (Haven't seen)
Man of Steel (Haven't seen)
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) (Haven't seen)
V for Vendetta (Haven't seen)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Haven't seen)