The first “Doctor Strange” reviews are in

…And they’re AWESOME. 97% out of 33 reviews, baby.

No, I’m not particularly concerned about Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One. I’ve had a post about this on the back burner for awhile now (along with a billion other things), but the short answer is that nothing has actually changed here in regards to Marvel’s standard casting formula. The leads and more iconic characters get more or less the same look that they have in the comics in order to keep the fans happy, and the secondary characters are either black, female, or both, even if their comic book status needs to be upgraded or their race needs to be bent, in order to keep the SJW’s happy.

The Ancient One just continues in this fine tradition; the only difference in this case is that Marvel made a slight miscalculation by picking an Asian person to race bend instead of a white person (nobody, even the “Doctor Strange” fans, made nearly as much of  a fuss about Eastern European aristocrat Baron Mordo being played by the black Chiwetel Eijofor). But the mistake has been minor if the reviews are a good predictor of sales.

So I’m not too bothered. As long as they try to make their leads look more or less as imagined, or at least the same skin color, that tells me that they’re still thinking of the fan response, at least on some level. And that’s good news.