Finally saw Doctor Strange in 3D yesterday and my quick reaction was that I liked it, but didn't love it. What I liked most about it was the creation of a bunch of new fun characters, including Doctor Strange, it was a truly ground-breaking fun film from a trippy visual effects standpoint, and I found the ending to be fairly innovative and different. On the downside, it was a fairly formulaic typical Marvel origin story, I found the ever-changing ground rules of the magic being hard to follow and very on and off as a plot device, there was a fair amount of plot holes, and lastly, I found the magic to be a little too extreme and out there for what I was personally looking for in the MCU. I'll be the first to admit that last point was a fairly big one for me and held back my excitement throughout the movie. While it was good and probably exactly what some people were looking for from a tripping out-there standpoint, maybe that stuff just isn't quite my cup of tea, and that is okay. Deadpool was kind of the same way. It also wasn't really up my alley, but at the same time, I can respect and still enjoy the new innovative filmmaking style. So, in the end, based on its Rotten Tomato rankings alone, I'd call this film to be a little overrated, but still a good film. In my mind, it is very squarely a middle-of-the-pack tier 2 MCU movie and NOT even close to jumping into the top tier.
Lastly, on another note, while I'm NOT a big 3D movie guy, I did end up seeing this movie in 3D and truthfully, I wouldn't recommend seeing it any other way. This movie alone could be the reason why 3D should still stay around as the visual 3D aspect of this is what made the movie so ground-breaking. In my mind, I can't even visualize what it would look like in 2D. I really can't. It almost can't even be possible to be the same movie. So word of advice, fork over that extra cash and go 3D. You'll thank me later.
Once everything settles in, I'll post my usual full review as well as updated rankings at a later time. Feel free to react to my initial thoughts above.
I can certainly understand thinking the magic is a bit too "out there." That's pretty much Doctor Strange in a nutshell and I think it's fitting. In a world where you have the Avengers taking care of bad things, something has to be ridiculously outside expectations for them not to be able to handle it. I think that has always been one the primary challenges with Doctor Strange in movie form: you have to explain so much for it to make sense and even then there will be exceptions as far as the multiverse stuff goes. I think they did about as good as can be expected on that front while still maintaining the integrity of the material. Due to these things, I don't think we've seen the best of Doctor Strange yet.