Doctor Strange (2016)
Benedict Cumberbatch: Dr. Stephen Strange
Photos
Quotes
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Kaecilius : How long have you been at Kamar-Taj, Mister...
Dr. Stephen Strange : Doctor!
Kaecilius : Mr. Doctor?
Dr. Stephen Strange : It's Strange.
Kaecilius : Maybe. Who am I to judge?
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The Ancient One : Arrogance and fear still keep you from learning the simplest and most significant lesson of all.
Dr. Stephen Strange : Which is?
The Ancient One : It's not about you.
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[repeated line]
Dr. Stephen Strange : Dormammu, I've come to bargain!
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Dr. Stephen Strange : I'm not ready.
The Ancient One : No one ever is. We don't get to choose our time.
[takes his hand]
The Ancient One : Death is what gives life meaning. To know your days are numbered. Your time is short. You'd think after all this time, I'd be ready. But look at me. Stretching one moment out into a thousand... just so that I can watch the snow.
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Wong : How's your Sanskrit?
Dr. Stephen Strange : I'm fluent in Google Translate.
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Dr. Stephen Strange : [after Mordo hands him a card] Well, what's this? My mantra?
Baron Mordo : The Wi-Fi password. We're not savages.
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Christine Palmer : Where have you been?
Dr. Stephen Strange : Well, after Western medicine failed me, I headed east, and I ended up in Kathmandu.
Christine Palmer : Kathmandu?
Dr. Stephen Strange : Yeah.
Christine Palmer : What? Like the Bob Seger Song?
Dr. Stephen Strange : 1975, Beautiful Loser, side A. Yeah. And I went to a place called Kamar-Taj and I... talked to someone called "The Ancient One." And I...
Christine Palmer : Oh. So you joined a cult.
Dr. Stephen Strange : No, I didn't. No, not exactly. No. I mean... They did teach me to tap into powers that I never even knew existed.
Christine Palmer : Yeah. That sounds like a cult.
Dr. Stephen Strange : It's not a cult.
Christine Palmer : Well, that's what a cultist would say.
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Dr. Stephen Strange : Dormammu, I've come to bargain!
Dormammu : You've come to die. Your world is now my world. Like all worlds.
[He disintegrates Strange easily]
Dr. Stephen Strange : Dormammu, I've come to bargain!
Dormammu : You've come to die. Your world is now my... What is this? Illusion?
Dr. Stephen Strange : No, this is real.
Dormammu : Good.
[he kills Strange again]
Dr. Stephen Strange : [bored] Dormammu, I've come to bargain.
Dormammu : What is happening?
Dr. Stephen Strange : Since you gave Kaecilius power from your dimension, I brought some power from mine. This is time. Endless, looped time!
Dormammu : You dare?
[he kills Strange again]
Dr. Stephen Strange : Dormammu, I've come to bargain!
Dormammu : You cannot do this for ever.
Dr. Stephen Strange : Actually, I can. This is how things are now! You and me. Trapped in this moment. Endlessly.
Dormammu : Then you will spend eternity dying!
Dr. Stephen Strange : Yes, but everyone on Earth will live.
Dormammu : But you will suffer!
Dr. Stephen Strange : Pain's an old friend.
[Dormammu kills Strange again. And again. And again...]
Dormammu : End this! You will never win.
Dr. Stephen Strange : No. But I can lose. Again. And again. And again. Forever. That makes you my prisoner.
Dormammu : No! Stop! Make this stop! Set me free!
Dr. Stephen Strange : No! I've come to bargain!
Dormammu : What do you want?
Dr. Stephen Strange : Take your zealots from the Earth. End your assault on my world. Never come back. Do it and I'll break the loop.
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[Strange is experimenting with time manipulation using the Eye of Agamotto]
Baron Mordo : [bursting in] Stop! Tampering with continuum probabilities is forbidden!
Dr. Stephen Strange : I-I-I was just doing exactly what it said in the book!
Wong : And what did the book say about the dangers of performing that ritual?
Dr. Stephen Strange : I don't know, I hadn't gotten to that part yet.
Baron Mordo : Temporal manipulations can create branches in time. Unstable dimensional openings. Spatial paradoxes! Time loops! You wanna get stuck reliving the same moment over and over forever or never having existed at all?
Dr. Stephen Strange : They really should put the warnings before this spell.
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The Ancient One : [on magic] You cannot beat a river into submission; you have to surrender to its current, and use its power as your own.
Dr. Stephen Strange : I control it by surrendering control? That doesn't make any sense.
The Ancient One : Not everything does. Not everything has to. Your intellect has taken you far in life, but it will take you no further. Surrender, Stephen.
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The Ancient One : You're a man looking at the world through a keyhole. You've spent your whole life trying to widen that keyhole... to see more, to know more. And now, on hearing that it can be widened, in ways you can't imagine, you reject the possibility.
Dr. Stephen Strange : No, I reject it because I do not believe in fairy tales about chakras or energy or the power of belief. There is *no* such thing as spirit! We are made of matter and nothing more. You're just another tiny, momentary speck within an indifferent universe.
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Dr. Stephen Strange : Wong. Just Wong? Like Adele? Or Aristotle. Drake. Bono... Eminem.
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Dr. Stephen Strange : What did you just do to me?
The Ancient One : I pushed your astral form out of your physical form.
Dr. Stephen Strange : What's in that tea? Psilocybin? LSD?
The Ancient One : It's just tea... with a little honey.
Dr. Stephen Strange : What just happened?
The Ancient One : For a moment, you entered the astral dimension.
Dr. Stephen Strange : The what?
The Ancient One : A place where the soul exists apart from the body.
Dr. Stephen Strange : Why are you doing this to me?
The Ancient One : To show you just how much you don't know. Open your *eye*.
[She touches Strange's forehead and blasts him into an odyssey across dimensions]
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Dr. Stephen Strange : What are you doing? You're dying! You have to return to your body now. You don't have time.
The Ancient One : Time is relative. Your body hasn't even hit the floor yet. I've spent so many years peering through time, looking at this exact moment. But I can't see past it. I've prevented countless terrible futures. And after each one, there's always another. And they all lead here, but never further.
Dr. Stephen Strange : You think this is where you die.
The Ancient One : Do you wonder what I see in your future?
Dr. Stephen Strange : No. Yes.
The Ancient One : I never saw your future, only its possibilities. You have such a capacity for goodness. You always excelled, but not because you crave success, but because of your fear of failure.
Dr. Stephen Strange : It's what made me a great doctor.
The Ancient One : It's precisely what kept you from greatness. Arrogance and fear still keep you from learning the simplest and most significant lesson of all.
Dr. Stephen Strange : Which is?
Dr. Stephen Strange : It's not about you. When you first came to me, you asked me how I was able to heal Jonathan Pangborn. I didn't. He channels dimensional energy directly into his own body.
Dr. Stephen Strange : He uses magic to walk.
The Ancient One : Constantly. He had a choice: to return to to his own life, or to serve something greater than himself.
Dr. Stephen Strange : So, I could have my hands back again? My old life?
The Ancient One : You could. And the world would be all the lesser for it. I've hated drawing power from the Dark Dimension, but as you well know, sometimes one must break the rules in order to serve the greater good.
Dr. Stephen Strange : Mordo won't see it that way.
The Ancient One : Mordo's soul is rigid and unmovable, forged by the fires of his youth. He needs your flexibility, just as you need his strength. Only together do you stand a chance of stopping Dormammu.
Dr. Stephen Strange : I'm not ready.
The Ancient One : No one ever is. We don't get to choose our time. Death is what gives life meaning. To know your days are numbered, your time is short. You'd think after all this time I'd be ready. But look at me: stretching one moment out into a thousand, just so I can watch the snow.
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[Strange traps Kacilius in the Mirror Dimension]
Dr. Stephen Strange : Who's laughing now, asshole?
Kaecilius : I am.
[forms his own dimension]
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The Ancient One : [after forcing Strange to experiencing the alternate dimensions] Have you ever seen *that* before in a gift shop?
Dr. Stephen Strange : Teach me.
The Ancient One : No.
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Dr. Stephen Strange : [sitting on the doorstep of Kamar-Taj, on the verge of tears] Don't shut me out. I haven't got anywhere else to go...
[the door suddenly opens, causing him to fall backwards into the building]
Dr. Stephen Strange : Thank you.
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[the Cloak of Levitation clings to Strange and wipes away his tears]
Dr. Stephen Strange : Stop!
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Dr. Stephen Strange : How do I get from here to there?
The Ancient One : How did you get to reattach severed nerves and put a human spine back together bone by bone?
Dr. Stephen Strange : Study and practice. Years of it.
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Kaecilius : What have you done?
Dr. Stephen Strange : I made a bargain.
Kaecilius : What is this?
Dr. Stephen Strange : Well, it's everything you've ever wanted. Eternal life as part of the One. You're not gonna like it.
[Kaecilius and his Zealots are sucked into the Dark Dimension]
Dr. Stephen Strange : Yeah, you know, you really should have stolen the whole book because the warnings... The warnings come *after* the spells.
[Wong laughs]
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Christine Palmer : Hey. It's OK. It's gonna be OK.
Dr. Stephen Strange : [looking at his injured hands] Wha... What did they do?
Christine Palmer : They... rushed you in a chopper. But it took a little while to find you. The golden hours for nerve damage went by while you were in the car.
Dr. Stephen Strange : What... did they do?
Christine Palmer : Eleven stainless steel pins in the bones. Multiple torn ligaments... severe nerve damage in both hands. You were on the table for eleven hours.
Dr. Stephen Strange : [sobs] Look at these fixators.
Christine Palmer : No one could have done better.
Dr. Stephen Strange : I could have done better.
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Dr. Stephen Strange : [after having just manipulated time to resurrect Wong] I'm breaking the laws of nature. I know.
Wong : Well, don't stop now.
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Dr. Stephen Strange : Thank you for the books and for the horrifying story and... for the threat upon my life.
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Dr. Stephen Strange : I'm talking tonight at a Neurological Society dinner. Come with me.
Christine Palmer : Another speaking engagement? So romantic.
Dr. Stephen Strange : You used to love coming to those things with me. We had fun together.
Christine Palmer : No, you had fun. They weren't about us, they were about you.
Dr. Stephen Strange : Not only about me.
Christine Palmer : Stephen. Everything is about you.
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Dr. Stephen Strange : We did it.
Baron Mordo : Yes. Yes, we did it. By also violating the natural law.
Dr. Stephen Strange : Look around you. It's over.
Baron Mordo : You think there will be no consequences, Strange? No price to pay? We broke our rules, just like her. The bill comes due. Always!
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Christine Palmer : Stephen, you always spent money as fast as you can make it, but now you're spending money you don't even have. Maybe it's time to consider stopping.
Dr. Stephen Strange : No, now is exactly not the time to stop, because, you see, I'm not getting any better!
Christine Palmer : But this isn't medicine anymore, this is mania. Some things just can't be fixed.
Dr. Stephen Strange : A life without my work...
Christine Palmer : Is still a life. This isn't the end, there are other things that can give your life meaning.
Dr. Stephen Strange : [bitter] Like what? Like you?
Christine Palmer : [Hurt and angry] And this is the part where you apologize.
Dr. Stephen Strange : This is the part where you leave.
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Wong : What do you want, Strange?
Dr. Stephen Strange : Books on Astral Projection.
Wong : You're not ready for that.
Dr. Stephen Strange : Try me, Beyoncé.
[Wong remains silent]
Dr. Stephen Strange : Come on! You've heard of her, she's a huge star, right?
[pause]
Dr. Stephen Strange : Do you ever laugh? Come on, just give me the book.
Wong : No.
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[last lines]
Wong : Word of the Ancient One's death will spread through the Multiverse. Earth has no Sorcerer Supreme to defend it. We must be ready.
Dr. Stephen Strange : We'll be ready.
-
[Strange picks up a brazier to use against Kaecilius]
Dr. Stephen Strange : Hah!
[Kaecilius is alarmed and wary, then...]
Kaecilius : You don't know how to use that, do you?
Dr. Stephen Strange : Uh...
[swings the brazier at Kaecilius]
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Dr. Stephen Strange : Yeah, you know, you really should have stolen the whole book because the warnings... the warnings come after the spells.
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Dr. Stephen Strange : You lack imagination!
Baron Mordo : No, Stephen. You lack a spine.
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Dr. Stephen Strange : [to Pangborn] You came back from a place there's no way back from. I... I-I-I'm trying to find my own way back.
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Wong : I am now the guardian of these books. So if a volume from this collection should be stolen again, I'd know it, and you'd be dead before you ever left the compound.
Dr. Stephen Strange : What if it's just overdue? You know. Any late fees I should know about? Maiming, perhaps?
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Baron Mordo : This is a relic. Some magic is too powerful to sustain so we imbue objects with it... allowing them to take the strain we cannot. This is the staff... of the Living Tribunal. There are many relics. The Wand of Watoomb. The Vaulting Boots of Valtorr.
Dr. Stephen Strange : Really just roll off the tongue, don't they?
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Christine Palmer : [during emergancy surgery] You can't do this free-hand.
Dr. Stephen Strange : I can and I will.
Dr. Nicodemus West : This is no time for showing off, Strange.
Dr. Stephen Strange : How about ten minutes ago when you called the wrong time of death?
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Dr. Stephen Strange : [answers phone in car] Billy. What have you got for me?
Nurse Billy : [on speaker] I've got a 35-year-old Air Force Colonel, crushed his lower spine in some kind of experimental armor. Mid-thoracic burst fracture.
Dr. Stephen Strange : Yeah, well, I could help... but so could 50 other people. Find me something worth my time.
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Dr. Stephen Strange : [to Kaecilius] Look at your face. Dormammu made you a murderer. Just how good can his kingdom be?
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Dr. Stephen Strange : [to Doctor West] The patient's not dead, but he is dying. Still want to harvest his organs?
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Dr. Stephen Strange : This one's got pages missing.
Wong : That's the Book of Cagliostro. A study of time. One of the rituals was stolen by a former master, the Zealot, Kaecilius. Just after he strung up the former librarian and relieved him of his head. I am now the guardian of these books. So if a volume from this collection should be stolen again I'd know it and you'd be dead before you ever left the compound.
Dr. Stephen Strange : What if it's just overdue? Any late fees I should know about? Maiming, perhaps?
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[from trailer]
Dr. Stephen Strange : I don't believe in fairytales about chakras or energy or the power of belief.
The Ancient One : You wonder what I see in your future? Possibility.
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[Lucian's astral form approaches while Christine operates on Doctor Strange]
Dr. Stephen Strange : I'm gonna have to vanish now.
Christine Palmer : What?
Dr. Stephen Strange : Keep me alive, will you?
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Dr. Nicodemus West : Give your body time to heal.
Dr. Stephen Strange : You've ruined me.
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Baron Mordo : How did you do that?
Dr. Stephen Strange : Hm?
Baron Mordo : Where did you learn the litany of spells to even understand it?
Dr. Stephen Strange : I've got a photographic memory. It's how I got my M.D and P.H.D at the same time.
Baron Mordo : What you just did... takes more than a good memory. You were born for the mystic arts.
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Dr. Stephen Strange : Even if there's another way?
Baron Mordo : There is no *other* way.
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Dr. Stephen Strange : Pain is an old friend.
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Dr. Stephen Strange : You really should have stolen the whole book because the warnings come after the spells.
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Dr. Stephen Strange : People used to think I was funny.
Wong : Did they work for you?
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Christine Palmer : [after fixing up Stephen] This is insane.
Dr. Stephen Strange : Yeah.
Christine Palmer : Where are you going?
Dr. Stephen Strange : Umm... ..
Christine Palmer : Can you tell me the truth?
Dr. Stephen Strange : Well, a powerful sorcerer who gave himself over to an ancient entity can bend the very laws of physics tried very hard to kill me. But I left him chained up in Greenwich Village and the quickest way back there is through a dimensional gateway that I opened up in the mop closet.
Christine Palmer : Okay. Don't tell me. Fine.
[Stephen opens up the mop closet and Christine is surprised to see a portal whirring]
