Doctor StrangeSave

We open in Kathmandu. A masked figure named Kaecilius and a small team of dark sorcerers raid the Kamar-Taj — a hidden mystical compound — and behead the chief librarian. They steal pages from an ancient book of forbidden spells called the Book of Cagliostro. A bald figure in robes, the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton), gives chase. The fight involves the architecture of Kathmandu folding around them like origami. The Ancient One ultimately drives Kaecilius's team away. The film's central conceit — that magic is bending reality, not just casting spells — is established in the opening five minutes.

Cut to: Dr. Stephen Strange. A brilliant, arrogant New York neurosurgeon. Brilliant in surgery. Insufferable in personal relationships. Specifically estranged from a fellow doctor and former lover named Christine Palmer. Strange drives his Lamborghini too fast one rainy evening, gets in an accident, and shatters every nerve in his hands. His career, his identity, his self-conception is destroyed. Months of physical therapy fail. He bankrupts himself searching for alternative cures.

He hears about a paraplegic named Jonathan Pangborn who, against all medical reason, has recently regained the ability to walk. Pangborn sends Strange to a Nepalese compound — the Kamar-Taj. Strange arrives skeptical. The Ancient One takes him into the Astral Plane (a Marvel-comics-canon dimension of consciousness) and shows him the multiverse: realities beyond his own scientific understanding. Strange asks to be trained.

Strange's training takes years (compressed via montage). He learns to wield mystical artifacts. He learns to manipulate astral projection, time, and dimensional folding. He befriends Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and the Cloak of Levitation chooses Strange itself — an artifact with consciousness that selects its wearer. Wong (Benedict Wong) runs the library. Strange becomes a master of the mystic arts faster than any prior student in centuries.

Strange discovers a missing page from the Book of Cagliostro — the page he had once seen Kaecilius reading. The page contains a spell for drawing power from the Dark Dimension, a realm outside time ruled by a cosmic entity named Dormammu. The Ancient One has been secretly drawing power from the Dark Dimension to extend her own life. Strange and Mordo confront her in the Astral Plane. She admits she has been hiding this from them.

Kaecilius launches a multi-pronged attack on the Sanctums of London, Hong Kong, and New York. The Ancient One is critically wounded in the New York fight. She dies before Strange can save her. He inherits her mantle. Strange travels to Hong Kong — where the city has already been destroyed by Kaecilius's Dark Dimension portal — and uses the Eye of Agamotto to reverse time, restoring the city. He flies through the portal to confront Dormammu directly.

The climax is the film's most-discussed scene. Strange uses the Eye of Agamotto to lock himself and Dormammu in an infinite time loop. Every time Dormammu kills him, the loop resets. Strange comes back. Strange dies again. Strange comes back. After hundreds of iterations (suggested visually by Strange's exhausted face and Dormammu's mounting rage), Dormammu finally agrees to leave Earth alone in exchange for being released from the loop. Strange has bargained a cosmic entity into peace using nothing but stubbornness.

The film closes with Strange installed as the new Sorcerer Supreme. Mordo, increasingly disillusioned by what he sees as the Ancient One's hypocrisy (and Strange's casual willingness to use forbidden time magic), walks away from the order. The mid-credits scene shows Strange meeting Thor and offering to help him find Odin (setting up Thor: Ragnarok (2017)). The post-credits scene shows Mordo stripping a former student named Pangborn of his magical powers — establishing Mordo as the eventual villain. Doctor Strange grossed $678 million globally on a $165 million budget — a strong solo film performance for an unfamiliar comic-book hero.