OT: Doctor Strange

i am going to be in the minority and put this in the lower tier of the marvel movies.

visually, it's stunning. but for me, the whitewashing is a real deal breaker.

i didn't even mind the casting of tilda swinton. i can see what they were trying for there. she projects a luminous androgynous otherworldliness that transcends age, gender, and ethnicity.

rather oddly, they killed that by outright calling her celtic. then there's the use of magic.

i was fully anticipating magic would be portrayed with incantations and spells. but magic is channeled through the martial arts, with which they conjure energy weapons, and then duke it out with more martial arts! fights in the astral plane are hand to hand combat with... martial arts! totally unnecessary, and i have to say, i'm baffled that critics were calling this a fresh take. i was anticipating a spell/counter-spell/cerebral angle. what the MCU already has plenty of is, great hand to hand fight sequences.

this exacerbates the casting choice, because no asian in the movie is depicted as being any good at this! not even any of the goons! wong is elevated to "master" status, but this is utterly meaningless because nothing is done with it.

i know it won't happen here, but to dispel accusations about "wanting PC,"--is it PC for me to point out that, as an asian, i can guarantee that asians are not more enlightened than anyone else, and that trope is really tiresome?