On a Mountain Range

I saw "Doctor Strange".

The opening to the first "Iron Man" prominently featured  prosperity and humour. "Ant-Man", a structurally similar film, focused on the latter and skewed far from the former. The path of its protagonist matched that of Tony Stark, but the actual character lacked that wealth. The surgeon Strange had a fair bit of that in the beginning of his new movie, but the trade for that seemed to be the levity of the other two films. Like . . . "Iron Man" was the father, and it only gave one of those two attributes to each son. But then Stephen lost his success. He turned into a bigger loser than Scott Lang. Then he finally got to be funny. But man, that prelude had to be the darkest of Marvel's whole screen saga.

Then it goes into the classic mystical journey of self-actualisation. The tempering of Stephen's arrogance amidst a monastic setting called to mind Anakin Skywalker. Remember that other movie he was in? "Awake"? This had a scene like that too. It was less equivocal about the astral communication, though. And then that guy was in another film around the same time. "Jumper"? It wasn't too much like that. Aside from all the teleportation. And Mordo's probably going to start hunting down all the special people like Samuel L. Jackson in that movie. Nick Fury probably won't be too happy about that.

Oh! And they kept the classic Dormammu face stripes! Yay! Face stripes!

Bonus Question!

Stephen Vincent Strange versus Karl Amadeus Mordo in a battle of most applicable middle names!

The good doctor proudly ostentates the style of his namesake Price. In the comics at least, Karl's trajectory  hews closer to that of the narrator 

of the movie "Amadeus". Spoiler! It's not Amadeus.

"But it wasn't Strange laughing at me. It was god!"

"Uh . . . Which one?"

"Ehh. Dormammu?"