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Dr. Strange: Feeding the Genre Monster

By Jacob Krueger

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This week we're going to be looking at Doctor Strange. And one thing that is inarguable, whether you loved Doctor Strange or hated Doctor Strange, is that this film is succeeding in a huge way not just at the box office but also critically.

This is pretty amazing when you consider all the incredibly silly things about Doctor Strange!

After all, this is a movie in which the country of Nepal seems to be populated almost entirely with American action heroes, and as far as we can tell only one Tibetan of consequence.

This is a movie whose primary imagery is really just regurgitated Inception.

This is a movie whose main character is essentially just a recycled version of Tony Stark.

This is a movie whose antagonist’s spiritual fall was torn right out of the Obi-Wan Kenobe / Darth Vadar playbook, and whose Dark Dimension is just the dark side of the force all over again.

This is a movie with an extraordinary amount of exposition, which, despite the the sheer volume of the information, still often fails to play by its own rules, or to clearly establish the rules of its universe.

And, despite the film’s extensive very trippy sequences and spiritual components, this is a movie that seems to have very little actual spirituality woven into its structure.

And this is also a movie that’s a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

Which could make you wonder: What is making this movie so successful? What is making this movie so enjoyable for critics and audiences alike?

There’s a thing that happens to us as screenwriters; oftentimes we feel like we have to do everything right.

Whether we’re working on a big Hollywood action movie blockbuster like Doctor Strange, or the tiniest character driven film, we often feel like we have to do all these different things right. And every time we try to fix one thread of the very complex tapestry we’re working on, it’s like another thread changes. It feels like every time we make a choice, we screw up another choice. We make something more exciting and it becomes less believable. We make something more clear and it becomes less exciting.

These are the constant choices we’re making as screenwriters, and although we all strive for that perfect place, the truth is that very few of us ever reach it. And even when we do reach it, there are many brilliant versions that we end up losing along the way.

So the real question is: how you know when your movie is working?

As writers, when you get really deep into the development of your screenplay-- as these writers certainly did; Doctor Strange was was in development for decades-- when you get really deep into the development of your screenplay, you often reach a point where you're only seeing the things that don't work and you stop seeing the things that do.

 

So learning how to write a successful screenplay is not actually just about learning how to write a good screenplay, it's learning how to know what compromises you can make and what compromises you cannot. Which imperfections your audience will accept, which imperfections are going to pull them out of the story.

In many ways, the success or failure of your movie all boils down to one really simple concept: Feeding The Genre Monster.

There’s a little monster that exists in your audience. And that monster is hungry. It comes to the movies, to the television, or to digital media because it craves a certain feeling.

If you deliver that feeling, and deliver it consistently,