Post by balok on Aug 17, 2007 18:16:42 GMT -5
Generally, I liked it.
About the first two thirds of it (it runs to ninety minutes or so) covers Doc's origin, and for the most part this follows his canonical origin: arrogant surgeon, car accident, ruined hands, eventually finds his way to Tibet and the Ancient One. They admixed a few elements of the new origin from a few years ago: Wong knows more than he did in the early comics and is a sorcerer himself (but not in Strange's league). Also, there's a lot of swordplay and the Ancient One heads a group of guardians. It seems a long time ago, the Ancient One did something to forestall a doom, and he and these folks have been working mop-up ever since, from a location in Tibet and another in New York. But the Ancient One made a mistake, or perhaps it was simply an oversight, and on that turns what the fledgling Doctor Strange must do right out of the gate. I'm being deliberately opaque with details to avoid spoilers.
The animation was quite nice, but it was that mix of computer generated backgrounds with hand drawn characters; the backgrounds sometimes look sterile and the characters clunky. It's not a fault so much as the state of the art in mixed mode animation, I think, but it's still a little jarring to the eye. There's a lot of eye candy here.
The voice actors were fairly talented by rather bland - they sounded a lot alike. A little more diversity of pitch and style might have improved the performance.
The plot was generally good, given that most of what Doctor Strange has to do was fitted into the last third or so of the movie. Telling a character's origin is de rigueur for comic book movies, but I'd have liked to see it compressed into maybe forty minutes instead of the nearly an hour that it took. It left too little time for Doc to confront the major baddie of the piece, and given who it was, that's not enough time. The ending felt a little rushed.
I will probably add this one to my collection, but not right away. If you're a fan of Doc, it's definitely worth buying, if you're a fan of animated superhero action, you'll likely like it to. If you're blase about both, then give it a miss.
I'd rate it 7/10.
About the first two thirds of it (it runs to ninety minutes or so) covers Doc's origin, and for the most part this follows his canonical origin: arrogant surgeon, car accident, ruined hands, eventually finds his way to Tibet and the Ancient One. They admixed a few elements of the new origin from a few years ago: Wong knows more than he did in the early comics and is a sorcerer himself (but not in Strange's league). Also, there's a lot of swordplay and the Ancient One heads a group of guardians. It seems a long time ago, the Ancient One did something to forestall a doom, and he and these folks have been working mop-up ever since, from a location in Tibet and another in New York. But the Ancient One made a mistake, or perhaps it was simply an oversight, and on that turns what the fledgling Doctor Strange must do right out of the gate. I'm being deliberately opaque with details to avoid spoilers.
The animation was quite nice, but it was that mix of computer generated backgrounds with hand drawn characters; the backgrounds sometimes look sterile and the characters clunky. It's not a fault so much as the state of the art in mixed mode animation, I think, but it's still a little jarring to the eye. There's a lot of eye candy here.
The voice actors were fairly talented by rather bland - they sounded a lot alike. A little more diversity of pitch and style might have improved the performance.
The plot was generally good, given that most of what Doctor Strange has to do was fitted into the last third or so of the movie. Telling a character's origin is de rigueur for comic book movies, but I'd have liked to see it compressed into maybe forty minutes instead of the nearly an hour that it took. It left too little time for Doc to confront the major baddie of the piece, and given who it was, that's not enough time. The ending felt a little rushed.
I will probably add this one to my collection, but not right away. If you're a fan of Doc, it's definitely worth buying, if you're a fan of animated superhero action, you'll likely like it to. If you're blase about both, then give it a miss.
I'd rate it 7/10.
