All of the visual razzle-dazzle needs a great score to keep pace but, sadly, Michael Giacchino’s efforts aren’t up to snuff. The music sounds like a slightly reworked version of what he turned in for 2009’s Star Trek. The similarities are so striking that I half-expected someone to start intoning “Space, the final frontier…” It’s jarring to be watching one movie and hear music that’s familiar from another one.
I have no idea, barely even noticed the score. And honestly I was focusing throughout.
Also can we talk about how they changed Strange's character? Spidey won't have a single joke to tell, he's got all the punchlines. It's like they realized mid-production he's basically Tony without the sense of humor so we'd hate him? Better crank up the humor meter. So now he's exactly like Tony only with magic cape and more likeable?
Honestly I'm conflicted. Strange is supposed to be stoic, calculative, devoid of comedy unless it's absolute sarcasm. Compared to Spidey, Strange is Wong. Not here though.
But I mean that is just how MCU rolls. Was Thor the comic relief in comics? If you can't crack a joke you're not an avenger. That's why Black Panther felt so refreshing. Even Winter Soldier is starting to be funny.£
I'd give it an 8ish or higher just since it was so dang enjoyable + the visuals/performances/ideas behind a lot of it. In terms of getting my money's worth, Dr. Strange in IMAX 3D was one of the best spent 15 bucks this year at the movies. But the script was just so fucking bland. Like, off-white bland. Like hotel wallpaper bland. The characters barely have arcs, no interiority, no stakes, everything has this passivity to it that really hurts the extraordinary grandeur of the visuals. Casting Mads in your movie and not using him has to be a crime punishable by the geneva convention. To say it's conventional is a disservice to conventional things. Those can at least have inspired execution. So much of this is...not..inspired. And that's the main probelm. Not that the movie doesn't work, or it's not a great time at the movies (since it IS) but because it takes a precious, filmmaking of the gods accomplishment that is the core premise and these insane instantly iconic visuals that people have been wishing to see in a movie since '99 with The Matrix and a few years ago in Inception....and it's all almost wasted in a movie where the quality otherwise is so so so lacking that creativity. It creates a really aggervating dissonance, quite frankly. Still. Probably gunna see it again in IMAX this week lol.
