Cumberbatch a good choice

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Marvel confirmed rumors that Benedict Cumberbatch will play Doctor Strange in the November 2016 piece of the studio’s Phase Three plan.

Merry Christmas to all of us!

Obviously, I’m pretty excited and assume that other Sherlock fans are as well. As Diana Biller of io9 stated, “Put simply, no one does brilliant, selfish, and arrogant like Cumberbatch.”

The consensus online appears to be that Doctor Strange can check all of those boxes. Originally a brilliant neurosurgeon, Stephen Vincent Strange begins to practice magic and mysticism to continue his work after a car crash leaves him unable to perform surgery.

According to Google, he appears to accomplish this with a combination of eyebrow raises, cape-wearing and gestures.

Marvel seems to have found a recipe for success in rebooting comic book characters and making them a little bit jerkish.

Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man is the title character in Marvel’s most successful franchise, according to collider.com, and is the most prominent example, but new kid on the block Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord, a kind-of-reformed thief and smuggler, definitely fits as well.

Joshua Rivera, in analyzing Cumberbatch’s potential to portray the character, pointed out that Cumberbatch has a chance to add another layer of interest to the antiheroic hero trope.

“Doctor Strange is a very different sort of Marvel hero. He’s not funny, he’s not young and he deals with threats that can’t be dealt with by punching,” Rivera wrote. “He’s a guy who devotes his life to studying nightmares so the rest of the world won’t ever have them.”

Another point to consider: the absolute necessity of a well-known star for this movie. Browsing through the Marvel Universe Wiki for Doctor Strange information is a seriously strange experience. Relatively grounded backstory aside, the sharp left turn into mysticism and subsequent Earth-protecting has the potential to go wrong.

So very wrong.

The bad guys have names like “Mordo” and “Dormammu,” for Pete’s sake.

So bringing in a big name with enough serious acting ability to a.) suspend a reasonable amount of disbelief and b.) blend mysticism, aliens and alternate dimension travel is crucial to making this a watchable film.

A Captain America-esque image reboot might not hurt either.

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