Heroes and the Creation of Myth: Doctor Strange

Superheroes occupy a nearly-unique position in the history of human character creation. They are creatures of myth, but at the same time people with the concerns of human beings, even when they are themselves alien. This puts them in a position to not only be the subjects of myth, but to interact with and in some cases control the creation of the mythology which surrounds them.

In this series I set out to analyze the different ways heroes participate in the creation of their own mythology. I've decided to begin with the largest single continuity ever attempted in film, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I was going to watch or rewatch the eighteen existing MCU films in order to look at them specifically from this perspective in the time leading up to the release of The Avengers: Infinity War. I totally didn't get there in time, but I'm going to finish anyway. Today we're looking at the last origin story before Infinity War, Doctor Strange.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is full of terrible drivers, but Dr. Steven Strange is the first one to experience the potentially disastrous consequences. In an instant he goes from a skilled neurosurgeon with incredible ego problems to a man with crippled hands who doesn't value his medical knowledge but still has incredible ego problems. Is anyone else tired of this archetype? Raise your hand. I was willing to deal with one Tony Stark but with Hank Pym coming along and now this guy, really, why can't we get more versions of Banner? Hawkeye? Black Widow? I'd even take additional Thor.

But anyway, Strange exhausts modern medicine's ability to fix his hands and goes on a mystical quest to find some other way, but he's a total jerk about it. And he stumbles into custody of the Time Stone and being a superhero, and solves the problems that the plot thrusts in front of him without ever really thinking about them or what his new powers mean to him personally. That's basically all we have here. I guess in a way he's another Thor after all: a hero whose costume is more interesting than he is.

We know almost nothing about the Cloak of Levitation, which puts it several points ahead of its owner from the beginning. The comics can't help us, either; the sentience of the cloak is an MCU invention. How does it feel about its myth? We'll have to wait to find out. I just hope someone else gets to wear it. Maybe Groot. I feel like the Cloak and Groot would get along well.

I didn't set out to hate-watch any of these movies, but some of them are bound to end up weaker than others, and this is one of them. It's kind of a weird amalgam of myths that worked in Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and the Christopher Nolan Batman, but none of them really work here and they certainly don't combine well. Maybe you see something in Doctor Strange that I don't, and you'll leave a comment enlightening me.

Previous entries in this series:
Part 1: Iron Man (2008)
Part 2: The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Part 3: Iron Man 2 (2010)
Part 4: Thor (2011)
Part 5: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
Part 6: The Avengers (2012)
Part 7: Iron Man 3 (2013)
Part 8: Thor: The Dark World (2013)
Part 9: Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Part 10: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Part 11: The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Part 12: Ant-Man (2015)
Part 13: Captain America: Civil War (2016)

_{All images in this post are from Doctor Strange, copyright 2016 Marvel, used in this post under Fair Use: Criticism. Provided courtesy of Movie-Screencaps.com}