Doctor Strange And The Shifting Marvel Movie Paradigm?

I think that (inadvertently) this article says more about the Marvel Comics formula back in the day, than it might say about the Marvel movies formula. This is actually something that I thought about while watching Doctor Strange, was how these characters had a similar arc from "asshole" to hero as a part of their journeys. Iron Man. Spider-Man. Dr. Strange. They all started as sort of jerks who had a life changing moment that put them onto the path of being heroes. Partially it is that Stan Lee Doctrine: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.

So, yes, there is a bit of sameness to the characters of Tony Stark and Stephen Strange. That's not a coincidence with the characters that Stan Lee was crafting with Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.

Does that need to change in the Marvel movies? Absolutely. I think that we saw Strange's transition from egotistical jerk to hero happen pretty quickly, in the course of this movie, while with Tony Stark, the journey is still going on. I don't think that the plot of Civil War would have happened if the heroes had stopped thinking about themselves for a minute and thought more about what was happening around them. Is Dr. Strange the start of a trend within the MCU to make heroes who are able to overcome their egos? The ego of heroes has been an integral part of the MCU so far (and you could probably argue that it is the same for Marvel Comics), so are we seeing a transition from that?

Dr. Strange has been one of my favorites of the MCU so far. I rank it up there with Ant Man, Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America: Winter Soldier as the Marvel movies that I have most enjoyed.

I'm a fan of heroes being heroes (which some may wonder about in regards to my enjoying the recent Superman movies), and I would like to see the heroes of the Marvel movies transcend the cynicism that we get in comic movies a lot of the time. It is this heroism that appeals to people in the native form of super-heroes in comics.

Go see Doctor Strange, it is a well-made super-hero movie that has some pretty mind-bending special effects.

No Maps For These Territories

Recently +Philip Reed of Steve Jackson Games posted a link on Facebook to the Wikipedia page for a William Gibson extended interview/documentary called No Map For These Territories. Which, thankfully, is available on YouTube.

I had never seen this documentary before, but it is such an artifact of the late 80s/early 90s (despite being made in 1999) Cyberpunk scene that brought us such awesome things as Mondo 2000 and Boing Boing! that I had to share it. I don't think that it gives much in the way of new insight in Gibson, or his early work, but it is good to also hear Bruce Sterling and Jack Womack (personally one of my favorite 2nd wave Cyberpunk authors...if you haven't read him you need to fix that) talking about how Gibson impacted the Science Fiction genre.

If you weren't around when Neuromancer exploded onto Science Fiction in the mid-80s, you might want to watch this just to get an idea of why it was important for its time. This documentary is very much an artifact of its time period, just like Gibson's early writing can be, and while it does get a bit pretentious for its own sake at time I still think that it is worth seeing. I am surprised that I hadn't seen it before now.