Doctor Strange and Templates


The last time I saw an adaptation of Doctor Strange was in 1978 on CBS. It was HORRIBLE in ways you can't even begin to imagine. Horrible in shlock, low-budget, television from the '70s, Bill Bixby Hulk, Spider-Man string ways that younger generations would have a hard time even wrapping their heads around. It was so bad there aren't even any good screen caps from it on the internet.

But as luck would have it, we do have the trailer:



Yes boys and girls at one time that was as good as it got. And yes, in answer to your next question, we did know exactly how bad it was at the time. Well, some of us did. But it was all we had.

But this weekend I saw a Doctor Strange much closer to the movie version that has been playing in my own head for the past (cough) forty years. And this version had good actors in it AND music! I'm still unsure how this happened. Somehow the same world that has spawned Donald Trump for President has also spawned a truly good version of Doctor Strange! We certainly are living in the future!

I'm not writing a review. And I'm not going to write the essay I thought about writing in regards to the weird "template" complaints I've seen all over the Internet this weekend. I just thought I'd post that 1978 Doctor Strange trailer and gently remind everyone that you could still be living in that world. The world I grew up in, when Comic Books meant "comic as in HaHa" from the adults that ran our world. That's the world I grew up in.

And now, people my age, who grew up in that world are the ones making these movies. We still remember. My friends and I used to talk about what it would take to one day make a truly good comic book movie. Not that long ago we could count the good ones on one hand. And now Marvel, and sometimes Warner Bros - but rarely Fox - have made dozens and dozens of them.

So go ahead and make your wittle Teen angst comments on the Internets. Its very cute.