MCU: 12 Things You Learn Rewatching Doctor Strange
The Doctor is in the house!
It often feels like Doctor Strange was the film Kevin Feige really wanted to get made in the MCU: the production story was defined by talk of how long fans had waited for a chance to see the character on screen, how hard Feige had fought to get it right, how willing he even was to wait to get Benedict Cumberbatch for the lead role.
It's not that surprising that he saw the charactet's value, really. Strange's relationship with the multiverse would offer huge new opportunities for the MCU's future direction - not to mention the introduction of magic into the otherwise fairly realistic world - and the possibilities could be endless. He could be the key to alternate dimensions that would allow recastings, revivals after death... Basically any narrative cheat you wanted.
It's handy, then, that Doctor Strange turned out so well, really. It was both a stand-alone origin story and one closely tied to the eventual Infinity Saga and it's an important stop on the road to Infinity War.
So what did we learn rewatching the good doctor's debut in the MCU?
12. The Opening Sequence Effects Are Still Astonishing
Given how much effects work goes into MCU movies, it's easy to forget how incredible a lot of it is - like the work that goes into rendering Iron Man's suit or Vision or all of the world-building. It's mostly because it's mostly organic effects work designed to be seamless.
But there's absolutely no escaping the stunning effects work that goes into the opening sequence of Doctor Strange. Like the Quantum Realm sequence of Ant-Man, this is supposed to be effects work that grabs you by your brain and shakes you, shouting how you've never seen anything like this before. It's meant to be showy and by God does it deliver.
Also, it's very VERY hard not to feel the Inception influences.