Doctor Strange

Can you believe just how far the Marvel Cinematic Universe has come?

It appeared seemingly out of nowhere back in 2008 with Iron Man and blew everybody's minds.

Then Iron Man 2 came out and proved that Marvel Studios weren't just a one hit wonder.

Everything just got bigger and better from there, building up to The Avengers, which smashed cinematic opening records the world over.

Ever since then, Marvel have expanded which properties they're willing to adapt to the big screen. It's not just their biggest names who're getting the limelight anymore, but relative unknowns such as Ant-Man and The Guardians of the Galaxy.

Thus, Marvel have proven that they can turn almost any of their characters into cinematic gold.

So it was only a matter of time before they got around to the Sorcerer Supreme himself, Doctor Strange.

You will see the Doctor now.

I'm super excited about this movie, and not just because of how much I enjoyed it. But also because the Doctor will be dropping by near the end to finally get my soul out of Deadpool's head and into the LMD.

You're excited? Imagine how excited I am to finally be free of you. I've had enough people catching free rides in my brainpan for one lifetime.

Maybe you should have thought of that before you killed me back in the Deadpool review.

How was I supposed to know that you'd come back to haunt me in the Green Lantern review?

...

Do you think that's enough backstory for the readers to remember what's going on?

Yeah, so let's get into reviewing this movie already.

The movie begins with a man taking a book out of a library.

I'm guessing that they weren't fans of his late fees policy.

The crazy-looking cult people decapitate the poor librarian and their leader steals a page from a book.

I'm sure that symbol won't be important.

The cultists prepare to leave the library, but are stopped by a woman, who helpfully names the cultist leader.

He's called Kaecilius, which I'm probably already mispelling.

This guy.

Kaecilius and his cultists flee from the woman, running through a portal which teleports them to New York.

Because this is the Marvel universe, so everything has to happen in New York.

And, with this being New York, nobody questions it.

They get cut off by the woman, who gives us our first glimpse of magic within the Marvel universe.

It can't quite do anything you could possibly want, but it does come close.

The cultists realise that they can't run from her, so they try to stand and fight instead.

It doesn't go well.

The woman has the ability to alter the shape of the buildings around them, which she uses to crush most of them like pancakes.

Those are feet on the left.

Kaecilius realises that he can't fight her after all, so he opens a portal and escapes, along with only four of his cultists.

I have to say, the magic fighting in this is really cool.

After they escape, the woman calmly wanders off, leaving several dead bodies behind her.

And then, with that out of the way (And with a seriously confused but excited audience) we cut to our main character, Doctor Stephen Strange, as he performs brain surgery.

Whilst guessing the release dates of popular songs.

Because he's a show-off jerk.

That nurse at the computer? His entire job is to play music.

Stephen finishes whatever it was he was doing just in time to be interrupted by his love interest, who needs him to save a patient that's about to be declared dead.

The exact details don't matter, the whole scenario exists just to show how amazing Stephen is at his job.

And so that he can be a jerk to that bloke on the right.

After the operation Stephen and his love interest, Dr. Palmer, have a conversation about their past. Palmer asks him to be her neurosurgeon on call, but he refuses since his experimental work can save more lives.

At least, that's the reason he gives, but he very clearly just wants the glory that can come from such work.

That night Stephen is driving a supercar to a speaking engagement. He's speeding along the mountain road, overtaking the other cars with ease.

And to add incompetence to idiocy, it's raining as well.

He gets distracted by his phone as he asks about interesting cases he could work on.

And then the inevitable happens.

We get something for the fans to argue about for months.

One of the potential patients he turns down is a 45-year-old Air Force Colonel who was injured whilst piloting some kind of experimental armour.

A lot of people argued that this was Colonel Rhodes, aka War Machine, and that this was the injury he suffered during Civil War.

However, that was Jossed by the director.

Which instead means that other companies are still trying to build battle suits to rival Stark's. Whether this will play into anything later will remain to be seen.

Oh and yeah, Stephen totally loses control and crashes his car.

Ummmm, ouch?

He wakes up in hospital some time later, and whilst he's still alive and able to move, his fingers have been seriously messed up.

Well, you can remove 'Learn to play the ukelele' from your bucket list, because that ain't happening.
Oh, and your entire career's destroyed.
But seriously, that ukelele thing's a bummer.

What follows is a montage of Strange trying every medical procedure that exists (And some which only exist in theory), but none of them do much in the way of good. His hands don't get any better and he eventually explodes at Palmer, yelling at her that she's only helping him because she loves playing Nightingale.

And there's a thunderstorm during this scene because CLICHE!

However, there is a ray of hope. His physiotherapist tells him of a previous client who had been paralysed by a car crash, but all of a sudden made a complete recovery.
Whilst he doesn't know how this happened, he is able to retrieve the man's files and posts them to Strange.
So, with all other options closed to him, Strange goes to visit the wheelchair-bound cripple.
Who's playing basketball.

Does he not know that you can still play basketball even in a wheelchair?

The patient, named Pangborn, is reluctant to help Strange, since Strange originally refused to operate on him due to his low chances of success. Strange didn't want to ruin his perfect record.
Which is why you should always be wary of any Doctor or Lawyer with a near-perfect record. They may not be particularly interested in getting the best results for you.
But Strange manages to convince Pangborn to help him by showing his hands.

So now you're okay with someone pitying you?

Pangborn tells Strange to visit a place called Kamar-Taj, which was of course totally made up for the movie.
Strange travels to Kathmandu and starts to literally ask random people on the street if they've heard of Kamar-Taj.
World's Greatest Detective isn't one of Strange's titles for a very good reason.
As Strange stumbles about the city, he ends up in an alley where he is visited by three not-so-wise men, who decide to mug him. Strange attempts to fight back, but it doesn't exactly go well.

You're literally here to fix your non-functioning hands, why would you try to punch someone?

Luckily for Strange, someone overheard him asking for directions. That someone happens to be Mordo, played by one of my favourite actors, Chiwetel Ejiofor.

He travelled to Kamar-Taj to find Serenity.

Mordo leads Strange to Kamar-Taj to meet the Ancient One.
And yet more cliche scenes, where not only is Kamar-Taj just a boring-looking building, but the Ancient One isn't the wise old guy sitting down, but the attractive woman offering Strange tea.

I know Tilda Swinton's not exactly young, but she's not ancient either.

There was some furore over Tilda's casting, since in the comics the Ancient One genuinely was an old Nepalese guy. However, the official UN policy regarding Nepal is that it's part of China, and since China makes up a very large market for movies such as this (And helps fund their production), I can understand why Disney took this more diplomatic choice.
Also, Tilda absolutely aces it. This lady has perfect comedic timing.
For example, Strange doubts all of the stuff she tells him, since it's hokum about chakras and acupuncture.
So she decides that it might be better to show him, rather than tell.

See, now if people in the real world could do that, we might start getting somewhere.

The Ancient One sends Strange on a journey through multiple planes of reality (They say dimensions, but that starts getting confusing when we include other universes, so planes of reality would be better) and upon his return, Strange does what any self-respecting Atheist would do upon being presented with tangible evidence of the existence of the supernatural.
He asks for more.

I should iterate that no 'Psychic' has ever presented evidence as compelling as this.

Now that Strange has accepted the existence of the supernatural and is prostratetedly asking for her to teach him, how does the Ancient One respond?
"No."

Well that was a fun (If short) movie.

Mordo and the Ancient One chat about Strange and his similarities to Kaecilius, with Mordo convincing her that Strange may be just what they need.
So they let him back in again.

"Err, mind the step."

After being shown to his room, Strange embarks on yet another montage, though this is of the training variety. He's told how magic works.
At first I didn't pay too much attention since I assumed that it would just be a quick hand-wave and then we would move on. But no, the explanation is actually important to the plot.
The Ancient One explains that magic involves harnessing energy from other dimensions and using it to rewrite reality, which can be done since the energy abides by different physical laws, due to their extra-dimensional origin.
Strange asks how to get from where he is to where she is, and she explains that he just needs to study.
Which is how we get introduced to the last major character, Wong.

Un-ironically played by the actor Benedict Wong.
I'm sure that didn't get confusing on set.

Wong shows Strange the restricted section of the library, lending him a few books from it (Including a book about reading ancient Sanskrit, oddly). Strange becomes intrigued by the extra-restricted section and just so happens to have a look at the same book that Kaecilius tore a page out of.

There are no coincidences, only lazy writing.

Speaking of Kaecilius, he's worked out the writings from the pages he stole and leads his remaining cultists in casting the spell, which grants them increased power.

It also grants them a serious need to buy sunglasses.

Strange studies for an indeterminate amount of time, but can't achieve more than a few sparks. He blames his hands, but Master Haamir deftly corrects him.

Been trying to think of a joke for 30 minutes, but this one's stumped me.

The Ancient One interrupts Strange's lesson about the sling ring, a magical artefact which can be used to create portals, to teach him an important lesson about how people are able to learn faster when their lives are in danger.
So she strands him on top of Everest.

I sure hope she has a cup of tea ready for him when he returns.

The trick works and Strange manages to focus long enough to create a portal back to Kamar-Taj.
After some more indeterminate time has passed, Strange gets an electric razor and trims his beard into his famous goatee, adding another Stark parallel to the list.

The obligatory shirtless scene is common to all Marvel superheroes.

Strange sneaks about in order to learn from books that Wong reckons he's not ready for. This gets the attention of the Ancient One, who decides that Strange just needs room to grow and learn. So she introduces him to the Mirror Dimension. An alternate plane of reality which can be easily manipulated, but doesn't affect the material plane.
Making it the perfect place for him to practice the more destructive spells.

I think she's cracking.

This is where the movie gets very Inception-y, but since I've never seen that movie I can't really comment. What is important is that the Ancient One mentions using the Mirror Dimension to contain threats.
Once again, this will be important later.
Now that Strange knows about the potential dangers that may assault his world, Mordo begins training him in combat techniques.
And, yet again, we get some more exposition about how magic functions. This time it's about magical artefacts.

This staff, for example, can also be a +1 whip.

While the exposition in this movie does come at you quite quickly, it doesn't feel too rushed (Except for when the Ancient One is explaining about the Mirror Dimension, that was clunky). It helps that it's all done via learning montage, so the audience is primed to receive it.
And it's broken up by occasional humour.
Anyhoo, after yet more indeterminate time has passed, Strange sneaks into the library and starts practising spells from the forbidden book he looked at before.

The Director said "Let's have you eating an apple in this scene, it'll make you seem like even more of an asshole."

The book contains information about a magical artefact called the Eye of Agammotto.
In the comics, the Eye of Agammotto is a very powerful artefact and is granted to the Sorceror Supreme. Its' powers are nebulous and barely explained.
Though Agammotto did ask for it back once, which was a very interesting comic (Which resulted in Iron Fist getting a cool new white and gold costume).
In the movie, however, it allows Strange to manipulate time itself.

So not only are they adding magic to the MCU, but time travel as well?

Strange starts to use this to read the missing pages from the book, but Mordo and Wong stop him, complaining about the kind of dangers that come with such magic. Stuff like getting stuck in a time loop for all eternity.
And, as Strange points out, it's very daft to put the warnings after the spells.
Which, with a little bit of thought, actually makes sense. If the mages of ancient times were as reckless as Strange, then they wouldn't know the dangers until after they'd first cast the spells.
After a little discussion about tampering with the natural law, Wong and Mordo start up with yet another exposition dump, this time about the duties of Sorcerers.

TL:DR, defend these 3 buildings or Earth dies.

They discuss a being named Dormammu, who dwells within the Dark Dimension, a realm described as 'Beyond time'.
Apparently, he wants to drag Earth into the Dark Dimension and torture everybody for all of eternity and has tricked Kaecilius into helping him achieve it.
Speaking of Kaecilius, he chooses now to attack the London Sanctum, which we only find out about due to the sudden appearance and death of the Sanctum's master.

Now that's what I call a faceplant.

Kaecilius destroys the London Sanctum, the blast travelling through the magic door and knocking Strange into the New York one.
Which is rather fortunate, since that's where Kaecilius is attacking next.

Such impeccable timing.

Strange attempts to intervene, but is too late to save the Master. After the inevitable jokes about his unusual name, Kaecilius and his cultists try to kill him.
At first it may seem unusual that Kaecilius killed the Master with ease, but continues to fail to kill Strange, but again it does make sense. The Master was intent on holding his ground, which allowed him to be outflanked easily. Kaecilius also knew him by name, meaning that he had prepared to fight him, whereas Strange is an unknown entity, and any experienced fighter will express caution against someone new, even if they are relatively untrained.
Plus, Strange keeps running away a lot.

It's like that dream where you keep running but can't reach your destination.

Strange manages to survive long enough to knock one of the cultists through a magical door (These Sorcerers really love their teleportation magic, don't they?) and change the dial, stranding her in the middle of the Sahara Desert.

The action in this movie is very frantic and fast-paced, but very imaginative, showing off Strange's ingenuity.

After some more struggling he strands the other cultist in the Amazon, leaving him to face Kaecilius alone.
The fight moves around the Sanctum until it reaches the room full of magic items and Kaecilius seems to delight in making Strange suffer.
Which actually works out in Strange's favour, since it smashes the glass case housing the Cloak of Levitation.
A.K.A. Marvel's version of the Magic Carpet from Aladdin.

Triumphant music time.

With the Cloak's help he manages to restrain Kaecilius with some other artefact, giving them some time to chat to each other.
Basically, Kaecilius is afraid of dying and of letting the Earth die too, even if that death is a very good and long way off. His solution is to help move the Earth into the Dark Dimension, which as I mentioned exists outside of time, meaning it would continue to exist forever.
Kaecilius continues to talk, saying that the Ancient One betrayed them and used forbidden magic to extend her lifespan.
The conversation gets derailed when Kaecilius notices that Strange has lost his sling ring, just in time for his cultist to come back.

Why didn't the Cloak protect him from that one like it did the others?

The cultist follows a bleeding Strange through the corridors, but is waylaid by the Cloak just as he's about to strike the finishing blow. With the Cloak wrapped around his head, he drops the sling ring, allowing Strange the opportunity to teleport away and get some medical help.
And three guesses where it is he goes.

I was wondering how they'd shoehorn the romantic interest back into the movie.

Palmer gets Strange into an operating room, but he very quickly loses consciousness.
Luckily for him, that's not actually a problem.

So his Astral Form can wear a copy of the Eye of Agammotto, but not his sling ring?

Just as Palmer is operating on him though, the cultist shifts to his own Astral Form and chases Strange. Thus begins another fight, this time on the Astral Plane. Whilst Strange is being operated on.
Just as Palmer uses a defibrillator to restart his heart when it stops (Defibrillators don't actually do this in real life and I'm sick of fiction constantly telling us that they do), the electrical pulse through his body seems to hurt the cultist.
So Strange asks Palmer to up the voltage.
This has the unexpected but useful effect of causing the cultist's soul to explode.

So massive bolts of electricity kills souls? I'll keep that in mind.
Wait, what?
Don't worry about it.

Strange explains to Palmer everything that's happened, which of course sounds absolutely crazy when spoken out loud.
Especially the part about the magical portal that he opened up in the mop closet.

This scene looked really cool in 3D.

When Strange returns to the Sanctum, he finds the cultist's corpse, which rather upsets him. Also upsetting is the absence of Kaecilius, who has taken the time to escape.
Before he can truly process what's happened, Mordo and the Ancient One enter and congratulate/thank him for protecting the New York Sanctum. The Ancient One offers him the role of Master, but Strange turns her down.
Angrily.
They argue abut the ethics of killing people to defend the universe. Mordo and the Ancient One lean very heavily towards a 'Whatever it takes' mentality, whereas Strange points out that he's a Doctor and took an oath.
Meaning this movie spends more time on the ethical and emotional ramifications of killing than any other superhero movie from the last decade.
Well, except for The Dark Knight, but where that was clunky and badly done (And outright contradicted by the actions of the people who did reflect on it), here it's given the full weight it deserves.

When this guy isn't being a dragon, he's a darn good actor.

Their argument gets rather heated and Strange calls out the Ancient One's hypocrisy, banning people from using certain practices which she herself uses. Namely, she draws upon the power of the Dark Dimension to prevent herself from ageing.

To be fair though, it's not like she could bottle it and sell it as a skin cream.

Mordo asks her if this is true, but instead of answering she leaves to gather reinforcements for when Kaecilius returns.
She apparently does a very bad job of it though, because he's there within moments to destroy the place.

And they've almost completed the spell before anybody even notices them. The heroes aren't very alert, are they?

Just as Kaecilius finishes the spell, Strange banishes everyone present to the Mirror Dimension, since from there Kaecilius cannot affect the real world, so the spell has no effect.
Which at first seems like a great idea, until Mordo reveals that the Mirror Dimension is closer to the Dark Dimension than ours is, and so the Zealots are more powerful than normal.
So they do the only strategy that makes any sense.
Run like cowards.

The problem is, when your opponent is as powerful as this, where do you run to?

Strange keeps trying to use his Sling Ring to get them out of there and strand Kaecilius, but Kaecilius proves to be too powerful, constantly bending and warping reality around them.

It's like Labyrinth and Inception had a baby.

Just as he catches up to them though, they get interrupted again.
And, just like in the opening, it's the Ancient One who's doing the interrupting. She didn't bring the reinforcements that she promised, but she did have time to change her clothes.

Though I'm not so fond of her new tattoo.

The Ancient One uses power from the Dark Dimension to make the fight laughably easy for herself, though Mordo is rather dismayed by what she's done.
The fight goes in her favour, even including a nice bit where she turns one of Kaecilius's spell back on him.
However, nobody can stave off 'Death By Origin Story' forever, and Kaecilius finds a way to defeat her.

To quote a certain Lich Sorceror, "Sacrificing minions, is there any problem it can't solve?"

Kaecilius stabs through his minion's crotch in order to kill the Ancient One, which rather shocks everybody present.

Especially the minion.

Kaecilius opens a portal and kicks her through it. Strange and Mordo both charge through to try and save her, but the portal exited at the top of a skyscraper and they get there a little too late.

"She ain't gonna be in Rush Hour 3."

Strange, of course, takes her to the one place he can think of that might be able to help.
Th exact same hospital he left less than 20 minutes ago.

Dr. Palmer's not exactly thrilled to hear Strange yelling her name again so soon.

They get the Ancient One into the operating room, but Strange is still unable to help due to his hands, so he passes over to the less-competent guy from earlier.
Meaning that Strange has nothing to do other than stand aside and notice that the Ancient One has shifted to the Astral Plane.

"Oh yeah, that's a thing we can do."

Apparently when you're on the Astral Plane you can slow down time, or at least stretch it out, which allows them to have an important discussion about fate, destiny and all of that jazz. The Ancient One reveals that one of the uses of the Dark Dimension's power is the ability to see the future, due to it existing outside of time, but she could not see past the moment of her own death. She explains that while she hated using the Dark Dimension's power to extend her lifespan, she found it necessary to help protect the world until Strange came along.
In other words, it's ok to use forbidden magic to break the natural order, as long as you're using it to defend that selfsame natural order, overall.

Also, this scene is just plain beautiful.

After a short heart-to-heart with Palmer, Strange steels himself for the battle ahead.
He's not the only one getting prepared though as, in Hong Kong, Wong and a whole load of sorcerers are selecting magical relics to fight with.

That's the Wand of Watoomb. In the comics it was one of eight artefacts which transformed the bearer into an Exemplar, chosen to battle each other to determine whose master was the most powerful. However, since the Juggernaught's film rights currently belong to Fox, I don't think that storyline will be happening in the MCU.
...
I am such a nerd.

Meanwhile, back in Kamar-Taj, Strange chats with Mordo, who has been left emotionally borken by the revelation that the Ancient One used forbidden powers to extend her lifespan.

I know that the MCU is filled with amazing actors, but I genuinely think Chiwetel Ejiofor is the very best of them.

Mordo talks about the price they will have to pay for the powers they use, but Strange snaps him out of it by pointing out that if the entire world gets dragged into the Dark Dimension, the karmic bills will be the least of their worries. So, they rush as fast as possible to Hong Kong to prevent Kaecilius from destroying the world.
And, once again, they arrive too late to actually do anything about it.

Well, that doesn't look so bad.

Ah...

Mordo once again begins to fall into despair, but Strange realises that time is on his side.
Especially since he's still wearing a magical Relic that can literally reverse time.

That green glow effect is pretty.

Strange reverses time all around him and uses some spell to allow Mordo to walk alongside him. And if you thought the reality-shifting effects from before were over the top, then wait until you see this effect....
Which I can't really show you, because this is a text-and-picture review, so it won't really work.
Just be assured that watching people un-crash and un-die is really, really neat.

I may even go so far as to use the word Neato.

Unfortunately, Kaecilius and his Zealots are also able to move through backwards-time, and they begin fighting each other. In the middle of the street. Whilst cars un-crash and buildings un-collapse all around them.
Things aren't going great, but luckily for the good guys Wong un-dies and Strange casts a spell to enable him to help, evening the match up to a three-on-three battle.

Seeing him lying dead still felt weird though.

Kaecilius manages to stun Strange for a moment, which breaks his focus on his time spell. Instead of switching time to forwards again, it instead pauses it, leaving them all standing in the middle of the road as the Sanctum stands frozen in a half-destroyed, half-un-destroyed state.
Kaecilius starts waxing lyrical about how beautiful the Dark Dimension is to him, since it's beyond time and death.
This gives Strange an idea, so he flies straight into the Dark Dimension to have a chat with Dormammu.
Yes, seriously, he just flies straight in and decides to chat with the eldritch abomination.

For reference, here's Dr. Strange...

And here's the all-powerful being he's trying to bargain with.

And it ends exactly as you'd expect it to, with Dormammu obliterating Strange with one blast of energy.

Ah well, there goes Earth. At least you've still got Guardians of the Galaxy Vol II to look forward to. Not much else though.

Of course, the entire MCU doesn't get erased that easily. Remember that green glow around Strange's arm as he went to speak with Dormammu? Yeah, turns out, he'd cast a spell on himself.
Also, remember what Mordo said when he caught Strange using the Eye? About getting caught in a time loop forever?
Also also, remember what the Ancient One said about magic? It's drawing energy from other dimensions in order to alter the physical laws of this dimension?
Also also also, remember what she said about the Dark Dimension existing outside of time?
In other words, Strange can trap Dormammu in a time loop and Dormammu will have no defence against it, since time is an alien concept to him.

Also also also also, remember when I said I flt like I should really have seen this coming?

The true genius is of course that all of the clues were spelled out for you during the movie. The various training montages and expositional chats were actually laying the groundwork in a direct, easy to comprehend but subtle manner.
Pay attention, aspiring writers, THIS is how you do a twist ending.
Dormammu attempts to break Strange's will by killing him painfully and repeatedly, but Strange just comes back every time. Eventually, and after nobody knows how many deaths, Dormammu concedes defeat and allows Strange to make some demands.
Namely, Strange demands that Dormammu leave Earth and its' inhabitants alone for all of eternity.
With three very specific exceptions.

Guess who those exceptions are.

Strange's time spell restores the Sanctum and the world gets to spin on for a few more days. Everybody starts cracking jokes and laughing about how close they came, but Mordo is not in the mood. He claims that Strange's actions will result in a reckoning and he leaves to think about everything that's happened.

And since Mordo was one of Strange's worst enemies in the comics, I'm sure we won't like the conclusions he draws.

Now that the danger's passed, Strange returns the Eye of Agamotto to its' pedestal. He and Wong both agree that it's unsafe fr him to wander around with it around his neck. Something Wong emthasizes by casually mentioning that it is, in fact, an Infinity Stone.

If you've been following the Marvel movies, then you'll know that this is a big deal.

So, to recap current Infinity Stones;
The Cosmic Cube, the Space Stone, last seen being taken to Asgard.
The Aether, the Reality Stone, given to the Collector, whose house got blown up.
The Orb, the Power Stone, which blew up the Collector's house, is being protected by the Nova Corps.
Loki's Sceptre, the Mind Stone, attached to Vision's forehead.
And now the Eye of Agamotto, the Time Stone.
Notably, with one exception, all of these have had contact with Earth, with two currently residing there.

However, even without that tie-in to the ongoing story at the end, this movie was really fun to watch.
The visual effects were the main draw of course, but it's the story that really sticks with you. That twist ending with Dormammu will probably be remembered as one of the best endings in cinematic history.
As a downside, Kaecilius himself was rather forgettable. He was wonderfully acted of course and his motivations were clear, but nothing about him really stood out, especially when lined up against other MCU villains such as the Red Skull, Zemo and of course Loki, who overshadows everybody in terms of coolness.

Next time, I'm going to be reviewing a movie which is effectively a Dungeons and Dragons knock-off, but which surpasses those movies in every way.

So, now that that's over, are you finally ready to get out of my head?
Yes Wade, although I'll have to admit, I'm almost going to miss having you around to comment on the movies with me.
Don't get all mushy with me. You're crazy enough without the damage my mind will do to you.
Awww, it almost sounds like you care about my well-being.
No, I care that I spent a lot of money on this LMD for you and I don't want it to go to waste, now get in there.
Wait, before we do this, will it hurt?
You or me?
Me?
Eh probably. Have fun with that.
*Gulp*
Well, see you next time readers. Hopefully my brain will still be more-or-less intact.