For bonus points, Rhodes isn’t an Army colonel; he’s USAF.
Well, if you want to go and split hairs like that. 
So how many Infinity Stones have we accounted for now, and how many are left?
I’m no expert, but I think there are five, and they are:
Space Stone: Thor - Loki has control of the Tesseract
Mind Stone: Avengers - was Loki’s Staff, now in Vision’s forehead
Power Stone: Guardians of the Galaxy - the Orb, in possession of Nova Prime
Time Stone: Doctor Strange - Eye of Agamotto
Reality Stone: Thor - whereabouts uncertain, doesn’t seem to actually be made of stone
Well, if they stay true to the original Dr. Strange comic series, Baron Mordo was his main rival/villain from the very beginning, so I wasn’t surprised to see them follow it up in the film.
That wouldn’t be an unusual mistake for a civilian to make, though, such as Strange’s assistant, who’s probably more concerned with which vertebrae were broken then which branch of the military he worked in.
All this talk about whether or not the spinal injury patient was meant to be Rhodey.
I want to know about the final case mentioned, the case that he was actually interested in taking:
[QUOTE=Guy Who’s Job it is to Phone Dr. Strange and Tell Him About Crazy Surgeries That Are Needed]
…a teenage girl
with a chip in her head meant to suppress schizophrenia…
[/QUOTE]
Who is that???
As to Sitwell’s mention of Strange in Winter Soldier, I brought it up in a previous Thread. There had been discussion that Marvel wouldn’t do any more origin stories (perhaps misunderstood by fans in internet discussions). I thought that the mention of Strange in Winter Soldier was an indication that his origin had already happened in the MCU. When press releases made it clear that his origins would come in the Dr. Strange movie, I complained in some Thread here that it made no sense then for Sitwell to mention him or for him to be on SHIELD’s radar.
Some comics-savvy Doper explained to me that Dr. Strange was a well-known and accomplished surgeon and that, since the algorithm identified possible future threats, it made sense to identify someone of Stephen Strange’s esteem.
I thought at the time, that that was a pretty weak explanation.
Upon seeing the Dr. Strange movie, however, I can more readily accept it. In the movie, it’s clear that a common criticism of Stephen Strange is that his work is all about elevating his own notoriety. It’s clear that he has written books and enjoys regularly going through the talk show circuit. He is clearly a celebrity genius, someone with a very high profile.
I can definitely see SHIELD/HYDRA keeping an eye on him.
Last seen, entrusted to The Collector.
Despite the big Kaboom at his place in Guardians, no one seems to have taken any great interest in looting the rubble. If Cosmo the Spacedog and Howard the Duck survived the blast, I’m sure the Ether survived as well. Despite his eccentricities, as I understand it, The Collector is a powerful and ancient being (though, not immune to getting knocked on his ass by an Infinity Stone blast). I really don’t think anyone would risk trying to steal from his collection while he’s doing cleanup from the explosion.
As to it not being made of stone, in Age of Ultron when Thor explains the Infinity Stones, the images presented that correspond with his tale show the Tesseract shattering to reveal a small gem-sized stone inside, the Orb shattering to reveal a small gem-sized stone inside (which we saw in GoG), and the larger stone that had been in Loki’s staff shattering to reveal a small gem-sized stone inside (we saw Ultron extract it)…
…we also see the liquid Ether blasting away to reveal a small gem-sized stone inside.
[QUOTE=bienville]
Some comics-savvy Doper explained to me that Dr. Strange was a well-known and accomplished surgeon and that, since the algorithm identified possible future threats, it made sense to identify someone of Stephen Strange’s esteem.
I thought at the time, that that was a pretty weak explanation.
Upon seeing the Dr. Strange movie, however, I can more readily accept it. In the movie, it’s clear that a common criticism of Stephen Strange is that his work is all about elevating his own notoriety. It’s clear that he has written books and enjoys regularly going through the talk show circuit. He is clearly a celebrity genius, someone with a very high profile.
I can definitely see SHIELD/HYDRA keeping an eye on him.
[/QUOTE]
Big deal. I personally know a 3 pioneering surgeons with big egos, out here in Rawalpindi, the center of the medical research universe (snark).
Strange is an excellent surgeon. Extremely well respected. Yeah, big deal, probably 200 other like him on the US East Coast. Fact is they threw in references for fanboys sans any idea of how it would actually play out when they made the movie. I am certain the person mentioned was supposed to be Rhoadey when the wrote and shot it, but after release it became a tad inconvenient wrt to chronology.
Strange seems to have visibily aged and gone grey (or greyer) around the temples by the time of the end of the film.
Of course it was a reference for fanboys (and a hoped-for hook to keep the more casual fans interested in the growing franchise). The name-drop added nothing to Winter Soldier and was kept deliverately vague so as not to box them in when it came to plotting the future film.
The question is whether or not the shout-out was justifiable in-Universe.
At the time, I didn’t think it was justifiable if Strange hadn’t gotten powers yet. Upon having seen the Doctor Strange movie and the fuller characterization pre-powers, I think it’s actually a pretty easy fan-wank.
If the 200 pioneering surgeons you know are regularly doing the talk show circuit, then I don’t watch enough talk shows.
He is on the talk show circuit? Thats never mentioned or I must have missed it. He is booked to be speaking at a dinner or a convention, specifically a medical convention when he has his accident.
One of the characters, criticizing his hubris, suggests that all of his great achievements are only for his own glory. He’s called out for caring less about people than he cares for his latest books, speaking engagements, and appearances on talk shows.
That was sufficient for me. Gave me the distinct impression of him as a “celebrity genius”.
I’ve appeared on a talk show. And been published in newspapers. I am far from a celebrity or even a leading practioner in my field. Don’t even have a Wikipedia page. (:(). Yet. (;)).
To appear in media as a professional one does not need to be prominent. Or successful. Just available. Strange loved to (pre accident) blow his own trumpet. I just don’t see him (as portrayed in film) as a Tony Starkesque genius clelebrity. Top of his profession? Yup. World changing genius? No.
If he was like Tony, he would have jumped at the “untreatable” cases. And proven the “untreatable” bit to be false.
It was a chip to treat seizures, not schizophrenia. Which is an actual thing, not comic booom science.
As to the Winter Soldier mention, I’m okay with the idea that Arnim Zola’s predictive algorithm could know that Strange had the potential to become the Sorcerer Supreme. Nazis loved that occult shit, it doesn’t take a huge stretch to imagine they knew about magic and the Ancient One and all that.
Alternately, at some point a fully trained Dr. Strange travels back in time to beat up some pseudo-Nazis in WWII, and Zola’s bearing a grudge.
I also thought they said schizophrenia.
Thanks. I wonder how and when Thanos is going to get his hands on them.
Pretty sure it was a female with an electronic implant to control schizophrenia, struck by lightning. Anyone from the comics fit that description?
And it was an Air Force Col, not Army.
This article speculates that it’s Captain Marvel.
I thought it was very good, but not great.
The kaleidoscopic visuals were fantastic. Tilda Swinton was fantastic. (I understand the “whitewashing” criticism, but in this case, they made the right choice)
However…
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Benedict Cumberbatch as an American just did not work for me on any level, from the bad accent to the fact that that he is so quintessentially British that articles about him have titles like Benedict Cumberbatch Could Be the Most British Man Alive. I have no quibble with casting him as Doctor Strange, but only that they made him pretend to be American. They didn’t say anything about his childhood, so if he was supposed to be living/working in New York City, why not just make him a British guy who lives and works in NYC? It’s not like foreign-born doctors in the U.S. are uncommon or anything. I was really distracted from the movie thinking about these things.
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Some aspects were formulaic enough to be really annoying, particularly many of the humorous bits. The set-up and execution was really trite. When Dr. Strange put up the collar of his cloak, feeling and looking like a total badass, of course the cloak was going to take him down a peg right there. Ha ha. Strange accused Wong of not knowing who Beyonce was, so of course he was then shown privately listening to Single Ladies. Ha ha. I laughed every time, and every time I felt vaguely manipulated. I’ve never noticed this or felt this way about any other movie, by the way, so it’s not like I have some axe to grind about this issue.
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The magical stuff was just a mess. Based on this and the Thor movies, I think MCU would do better to stick to more science/technology-based superheroes (like all of the rest of them) and avoid the sorcery stuff.
Whitewashing is a bad thing, but so is the stereotypical mystical asian, that one was pretty much lose/lose.
I agree with basically everything you said. I loved the visuals, including the kaleidoscopic ones and the running backwards ones. I rarely go see movies in 3D but I’m glad I did for this one.
Tilda Swinton was amazing like she always is, I agree that she was well cast. But I can understand the whitewashing complaints, and Marvel would have had less of an issue if they had more Asian actors in their other movies and shows.
I agree that they should have let Strange be British, there was nothing in the movie that required him to be American. I don’t think his accent was terrible, but it definitely wasn’t great.
I thought the jokes were fine, but not as great as in some of the other Marvel movies. But I was telling friends how it was formulaic, in that the plot is so similar to other superhero origin stories, just with magic instead of superpowers.
The magic stuff was a little underwritten, I didn’t really get much of a sense about how hard it was to do or learn, or what exactly they were doing other than waving their hands around, but I thought it was fine. But I wouldn’t say that Marvel should stick with just science and tech considering how the science and technology stuff in the other Marvel movies might as well be magic for some of the stuff it does.
One thing I wish that Marvel was better at doing was having good villains. Mads Mikkelsen is a fantastic actor, but his character was kinda flat, and the big bad floating cloud god was silly looking. And this is yet another Marvel movie where the villain basically wants to bring the end of existence, after Thor 2 and Guardians of the Galaxy. Although I did like Strange’s strategy of defeating Mads by getting into a time loop fight with the cloud god.
As for timeline - Don’t forget the very visilbe Avengers building in downtown new york - not Stark tower - but the A building - that puts the beginning of the film in the early Ultron timeline - since @ the end of Utlron - they move away from the New York building to the more remote locations seen in Ant Man.