Learning to Fail: Doctor Strange

Doctor Strange is one of my favorite movies in the MCU because it’s about failure.

There’s a real simplicity to the first appearance of Stephen Strange in this universe: he fucks up his relationships, he fucks up his own body, he fucks up his relationships (again), he goes to Nepal where he fucks up some more, and then, as a result of that fucking up, he comes face to face with mortality and understands that he’s been running away from the idea of losing for his whole adult life. And then he saves the day by failing, over and over and over again, until the opponent he’s fighting recognizes the stalemate and gives in.

It’s so beautiful.

All right, let’s step back.

I think it’s important, really important, that Strange fucks up his own life. He’s arrogant and difficult, he’s the kind of asshole who screws around on his phone because he’s too busy and important to actually focus on driving his hideously expensive sports car. He’s a dick! He gets the kind of comeuppance the bad guy gets in the third act of a horror movie or an old EC Comic. Oh, you like to play God, buddy? Let’s destroy what you prize the most! Try doing delicate surgery without hands, then! Mwah ha ha! (Maybe he should have called on Master Pandemonium.)

This arrogant-man-facing-just-deserts comes straight from the early comics, which is probably why it has those old EC vibes, and I’m glad it stayed in the MCU, which has always played fast and loose with origin stories. But even that comeuppance hasn’t changed who he is, just how he’s able to interact with the world. Strange’s hellbound determination to get his hands back, whatever it takes, is what leads him to the Himalayas and the training that will, eventually, change him for good.

He learns humility…well, some humility. He learns magic. And he learns to fail.

Something happened to me, and it almost took my self away, and it’s never going to be the same again. Injuries in superhero canons are, for want of a better way of putting it, weird. Bucky Barnes lost his arm, but thanks to the whole ‘Hydra hijacked my body for assassinations’ thing, his physical damage takes a back seat. Comics Thor originally used a cane in his human form, but Dr. Donald Blake was reduced to a throwaway joke in the first Thor movie. And I’ll be the first to say that this isn’t all bad. It’s fine to have superheroes that are peak physical specimens, that are indestructible, and it’s good to avoid the “disability superpower” cliche (think of Daredevil’s sonar or blind swordsman Zatoichi. This shows up a lot with blindness, actually).

Doctor Strange is willing to look at Stephen Strange’s broken hands and say, hey, actually, this sucks. And there is no magical upside. The “upside”, such as it is, is that the injury becomes a catalyst for change, that it spurs Strange into becoming the person he was always meant to be. His disability doesn’t make him a better person; in fact, he’s a worse person for quite a bit before Mordo sees something in him and brings him to Kamar-Taj. The car accident knocks Strange off course, but the next steps are still up to him. His injury is part of the plot, but it’s not the plot, nor is it shuffled off the stage and ignored in the last act (looking at you, Tony Stark).

(There is a much larger conversation to be had about the social and medical models of disability, and I’m not going to have it here; this explainer is a decent overview, and notes that there is value in both approaches, which is basically where I sit. Creating a society where accommodation is automatic and people don’t approach every difference as a deficit: good. Constant pain: not so much. Your mileage will vary, and probably should. I do think it’s notable that Jonathan Pangborn goes to Kamar-Taj to “fix” his disability, only to be attacked by Mordo in a post-credit scene. Doctor Strange is fond of experimentation, but doesn’t have much patience for denial or shortcuts. I wouldn’t bet that this is an intentional disability acceptance message, but it’s a fascinating contrast.)

Immediately after his accident (and to some extent before), Stephen Strange works to separate himself, alienating Christine and arguing with just about anyone willing to argue back. He steals from the library, in part to get to books that have been forbidden, but also to avoid having to talk to the librarian. Circumstance is what pulls him into alliances, both as he and Wong slowly warm to each other and as he and Mordo are forced to work together. The Ancient One basically humiliates him until he listens. Strange’s character development happens despite his best efforts. But it happens. Strange starts liking the people he works with. He recognizes that The Ancient One does, in fact, know a hell of a lot more than he does.

Those connections are what make him jump into the final fight against Dormammu. His arrogance is still there — he saves Wong’s life with forbidden time travel — but he’s no longer holding himself separate from his colleagues and community. When he takes on Dormammu, he decides to risk it all.

Doctor Strange plays this deathloop as horror-comedy. Strange dies over and over, painfully, quickly, humiliatingly, slowly. But he’s pulled the old you’re trapped in here with me gambit, meaning that as many times and as much pain as Dormammu inflicts, he’s forced to confront the sorcerer over and over and over again. Strange might be easily beaten, but he’s never vanquished. He’s trapped in one moment. Sartre said “Hell is other people,” but for Dormammu, it’s Stephen Strange.

Dormammu tries to get out of it, but he doesn’t have many cards to play. Kill the man and he comes back. Kill everyone, and he comes back. Dormammu’s levers are fear, power, and pain, and none of them work. Stephen Strange, who only chose cases he could “win,” has chosen victory through stalemate.

Strange: This is how things are now! You and me. Trapped in this moment. Endlessly.

Dormammu: Then you will spend eternity dying!

Strange: Yes, but everyone on Earth will live.

Dormammu: But you will suffer!

Strange: Pain’s an old friend.

This isn’t a disability superpower. This is what Strange knows, and how he can use it against his enemy.

This, to quote a very different movie that will come out just a few years later, is how he wins.

The movie could use a few tweaks, of course, the pacing can be a bit odd and a bit of the character development rushed. Mads Mikkelson is horribly underused and Rachel McAdams and Chiwetel Ejiofor don’t fare much better. The biggest elephant in the room, though, is Kamar-Taj and the problem of the Ancient One.

Unfortunately, Doctor Strange was also a victim of the MCU’s era of “let’s deal with the unfortunate racial choices of the earlier comics by pretending they didn’t exist,” so let’s address that head on. I love Tilda Swinton, I do, but the choice to retain the Orientalist mystique of Strange’s training and put a bald white woman at the center is…

Like, come the fuck on. Marvel wasn’t kidding anyone with this shit, but they did it anyway, and they should feel bad about it. Kamar-Taj has a vaguely “Oriental” name, Chinese furniture, robes out of a kung-fu film, and fuck, it’s like I’m watching Firefly again, and I didn’t like that shit the first time. I’m not going to belabor this point, because smarter people have done it better than I have, but watching Marvel throw up its metaphorical hands and claim there was nothing they could do but whitewash The Ancient One (and the Mandarin) was infuriating at the time and even stupider in retrospect. I’m not even sure Wong would have made it to the screen if it wasn’t for the “Wong as Wong” campaign that went viral. To Marvel’s credit, their flopsweat-ridden course corrections went right on that call, making Wong more of an ally than the literal manservant he began as in the comics and letting Benedict Wong show flashes of the comedic talents he’s shown throughout his career. Without that choice, we wouldn’t have had one of the MCU’s finest moments.

Marvel has retconned its way out of the Mandarin mess, but I think we’re stuck with White Girl Ancient One¹. Sigh.

At any rate, I’ll leave you with this contemporary review from friend of the Magpies Lisa Laman, who calls out some details (including the impressive visuals) I didn’t have time for here.

1. “But maybe the Ancient One has no gender…” No. Come on. ↩︎