The film follows the story of Doctor Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), a talented neurosurgeon who, after a horrible car accident, badly damages his hands, robbing him of the ability to carry out surgery. With his career ruined he searches for ways to heal the nerve damage and in desperation heads to Nepal, where under the tutelage of The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton), he learns the mystic arts and subsequently becomes embroiled in a conflict between warring factions in a bid to save the world.
Classification Issues
- Violence
- There are frequent fight scenes containing kicks and punches. The violence is fantastical and many of the blows are covered by showers of sparks. Several characters are stabbed with magical weapons, and a character is kicked from a high building and seen hitting the ground below.
- Injury detail
- There is sight of blood and bruising on a character's face in the aftermath of an accident. Another scene contains sight of multiple surgical pins protruding from a character's hands. There are also brief close-up shots of a small, bloody wound and of some blood dripping onto the floor in the aftermath of a stabbing.
- Additional issues
- Other issues include a moderately intense car crash scene, mild fantasy threat, and mild bad language including 'shit', 'ass' and 'asshole'.
Classification history
Doctor Strange is the fourteenth instalment within the ‘Marvel Cinematic Universe’ (MCU) franchise of superhero films. The film's release date in the UK was 25 October 2016.
The distributor submitted Doctor Strange to the BBFC without a category request. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) had already passed the film PG-13 (a rating meaning people of any age can watch it but parents are warned it may be unsuitable for children under 13). They cited 'sci-fi violence and action throughout and an intense crash sequence' as the issues underpinning the rating.
For the BBFC, Doctor Strange sits very comfortably at 12A, for moderate fantasy violence and injury detail.
At the time of the film’s classification, our Classification Guidelines at 12A stated that 'there may be moderate violence but it should not dwell on detail. There should be no emphasis on injuries or blood'.
Like many films within the MCU series, Doctor Strange features numerous fight sequences; however, the fantasy/sci-fi genre lends significant mitigation to these sequences and therefore lessens the effect of the violence. For example, many of the skirmishes feature magical weapons, showers of sparks often veil the impact from punches and kicks, and they are often rapidly edited creating fast-paced sequences that do not dwell on detail. There are some stabbings but they lack blood and injury detail. There is also brief bloody detail in a surgery scene.
The strongest image of violence comes towards the end of the film when the villain Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen) stabs and then kicks The Ancient One off a tall building. We see her fall before her body smashes through a glass awning and thumps to the ground. There is no strong focus on the blood or injury detail although we do later see blood on her face.
Injury detail also occurs in the aftermath of an intense car crash sequence. We see the car spin before it rolls and smashes down a hill. When it comes to a stop, there is a shot of Strange's blackened eye and bloodied face. The blood and injury seen here is containable at 12A as it is quite brief, there is no dwelling on detail, it occurs within an accident context rather than a violent context, and the focus swiftly switches to the character’s recovery.
The film has been widely studied since release and the BBFC education team has spoken to many young people about it – including British and Irish students at a combined event with Irish Ratings body IFCO. IFCO also rated Doctor Strange 12A in Ireland, noting 'Moderate action violence in fantasy context' in its review for consumers.
The BBFC Classification Guidelines public consultation research, published in 2019, showed that by and large, parents and teenagers agreed that violence within the action fantasy genre, with no links to real life, were of less concern than violence in a more realistic context.
