When Marvel announced they were bringing a new superhero to the MCU called Doctor Strange I was like, “Who?” Like I always say, I don’t read the Marvel comics and I didn’t know the major characters in the Marvel universe except for Captain America and Iron Man and so this new superhero named Doctor Strange was, well, strange for me. I didn’t know who he was, I didn’t know why his superhero name was Doctor Strange, and I was just confused. Then they announced that the superhero was going to be played by Benedict Cumberbatch and I was even more shocked. Benedict Cumberbatch? The actor who played Khan in Star Trek: Into Darkness and Smaug in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug? He was going to be a superhero? I didn’t think Marvel could make it work. And then I watched the movie and I was an instant Doctor Strange fan.
He was charismatic and funny, thoughtful and heroic, and he had hands down the coolest superhero cape ever created! Doctor Strange was such an amazing character that I was counting down the days until Thor: Ragnarok so I could see him again. And now he’s finally returning in Avengers: Infinity War and I couldn’t be more excited. So today on this segment of The Evolution of it’s time to look at how he has evolved since the beginning of his story.
Doctor Strange (2016)
At the beginning of Doctor Strange Mr. Strange was one of the worst people you could meet. Yes he was a rich and very important doctor but he was also mean and incredibly narcissistic. In short; he was a pain in the butt. He thought he was too good for those lesser than him and he looked at life with no thankfulness whatsoever. He thought he was God’s gift to man and that ultimately backfired on him as he got himself into a near death accident and lost the use of his hands. The only sense of compassion in him appeared when he interacted with Christine, an old flame of his who dumped him because, well, he was a jerk. In those brief interactions with her you see that he could be a good person but his obnoxious, nasty attitude kept getting in the way.
When he went to Kathmandu to be healed he still acted like he was above everything and everyone and knew the secrets of the universe but that would soon change. After The Ancient One showed him things that he couldn’t possibly understand the beginning of his transformation as a person began. He learned to listen rather than speak, he discovered that the universe didn’t revolve around just him, and he learned that he needed to take that revolting attitude of his down a notch.