I have a terrible tendency of falling asleep during movies I do not enjoy. However, I can truthfully say that it has been a while since I’ve fallen asleep during a movie and regretted it.

About 20 minutes into Dr. Strange I started to feel my eyelids get heavy. As hard as I tried to fight it, I just wasn’t that into it. The beginning of the movie was alright. The main character, famous surgeon Dr. Stephen Strange, suffered career ending injuries in his hands after a car accident and searched tirelessly to have them fixed, but I was losing interest. Strange then arrived in Nepal after hearing about a mystic who healed someone from a similar predicament who could not use his legs. The movie quickly picked up pace as Strange struggled to learn the arts of magic and eventually defend them. My droopy eyes no longer yearned to close.

When I initially saw the trailer, my first thought was that Marvel must be making an Inception knock-off. The visual effects shown off were strikingly similar, especially the cityscapes folding across themselves. In actuality, the movie seemed to borrow a lot of elements from both Inception and Batman Begins. The storyline was original overall, but much of the beginning of the movie was reminiscent of the first movie in the Dark Knight trilogy. The movie began with renowned surgeon Dr. Stephen Strange and his seemingly out of touch and life in New York City, much like Bruce Wayne in Gotham. The two both suffer a pathetic, self-centered love life, and even drive matching cars: Wayne a Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 and Strange a Lamborghini Húracan. They both go through trauma and then train with a mystic in the Himalayas.

The film did not follow the same superhero movie formula that Marvel tends to use, which in my opinion is a good thing. Though Strange still had an epiphany, there was a training sequence, and he used his wit to defeat the more powerful enemy, there was more to the plot. The movie focuses on Strange’s self reevaluation, both when he finds his powers and then again once he must choose how to use his power. There was also a pleasant lack of cameos and allusions to any other Marvel movies, aside from one subtly placed, and one of the famed post-credit scenes.

I fail to see how Strange will fit into the Marvel universe, as he seems to be much more powerful than many of the other superheroes previously introduced. The movie also introduced a new world of possibility to the line of Marvel superhero movies. Magic and other dimensions, in my opinion, will push the line past the relevance of some of the original heroes, like Iron Man and The Hulk. However, this does not directly affect this movie, which I was pleased with, and will be a problem for Disney executives to address.

Benedict Cumberbatch played a good Dr. Strange, his apathy and narcissism in the beginning evolving into heroism. Tilda Swinton and Chiwetel Ejiofor also played their characters very well, selling mysticism and nobility, and disdain and tradition, respectively.

Overall the movie was satisfactory. By no means would I award this an Oscar, but I would call the $7 I paid for the ticket well spent. The movie was exciting and thought provoking. It also proved to be memorable, as for the past week, I’ve had to listen to my friends constantly bombard me with the catchphrase line,

“Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain!”