Doctor Strange
Each of the main characters in the movie (and I will stick to the movie, since I have read approximately no percent of the comics) can be understood vis-à-vis a, or their, philosophy of time. As such, perhaps the simplest (oh, man, I'm throwing that word around a lot without using its colloquial meaning) way to start is with the character of Baron Mordo. In the movie, he serves as one of Dr. Strange's masters in his training both his physical and psychic prowess. We see a man who, fortuitously (or is it?) very much resembles the character of The Operative in Serenity, in terms of the consequentialist view with which both (or is it?) see duty. Mordo, understanding time as linear and hence as the condition of possibility for future consequences of actions done in the present, i.e., as a natural law, followed the path of the Masters of the Mystic Arts in Kamar-taj until he could do so no longer. The actions of the Ancient One and then later of Dr. Strange, which go beyond linearity, beyond the natural law, disrespect cause and effect. And true to his philosophy of time, he sees these actions as having consequences in linear time, which the entire world, perhaps, will pay for. In the post-credits scene we see him translate this view into proactivity. In the entire movie, this is perhaps the most human, and hence the most inevitable, perspective of time. You do something now, bills will be due later.
In that context, opposite of this character is that of Dormammu, at least in the way he appears in the movie. Largely discounting his character in the comics, movie Dormammu is echoed by an entire boatload of OP characters that are "beyond" metaphysics, or embody the telos of metaphysical oneness itself. The whatever ancient nightmare it was that, in Barbara Hambly's "Each Damp Thing" in The Book of Dreams (edited by Neil Gaiman and Ed Kramer), was unleashed by Cain upon Dream's castle, comes closest to mind. Or if I got the wrong audience, think of Agent Smith in The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions (I'm not entirely certain if that's not also the wrong audience.) To have the ability to turn everything into uniformity requires that one be outside of spacetime, and furthermore, this ability can only be wreaked on those that are in spacetime. In other words, Dormammu is paradoxically requiring time, while not in time, to annihilate everything else that is not itself. As a good friend of mine succinctly put: Dormammu is a process that is not time-bound. His evil, as such, is not metaphysical. His evil is only there because there is Earth.
And on this Earth is Kaecilius, who, because he is human, translates what Dormammu is into eternal life, into being beyond time, viewed from eyes that are nonetheless within time. When explaining why he did what he did, Kaecilius delivers the second most powerful lines in the movie: Time is an insult. Death is an insult. But because he is human, he cannot but also feel that. We appreciate time exactly in the equal measure that we hate it. If we were to take the high road, we would end up like Baron Mordo: time is that which makes sense of our actions and justifies our duty. But Kaecilius's philosophy of time is not consequentialist, but rather a hatred of it, and by implication, hatred of everything that he is. He cries as he says those lines (goddamnit, Mads Mikkelsen!) which is relevant to my point, and Doctor Mister has to shake his head to dismiss what Kaecilius says (which is more relevant). For what is time to someone whose brilliance centers around apparent proof that you could control time, i.e., a lifetime? Doctor Mister saves lives. He messes with people's "due" time. That was his mastery. It's important to note, though, that Kaecilius explicitly appreciates what he thinks is eternal life only when real-time (Earth time) stops, i.e., freezes. Isn't it beautiful? he says. That is ultimately how time-bound creatures translate Dormammu beyond-time-ness: stillness. For human logic requires that, even in heaven, there is time. (How else could angels be hallelujiah-ing without time to hallelujiah in?) But if you were to long for true immortality, for true eternal life, as a human, you will desire that time itself stop. Which is so far beyond paradox, and aporia, that it lands on straight nonsensicality.
Which is why the Ancient One says, not all things have to make sense. The price she has to pay for being able to say that with a straight face (and with the face of Tilda Swinton, goddamnit) is to mess with time, and still be all too human. She is the Nietzschean embodiment of understanding amor fati, by breaking goddamn fati because of goddamn amor, all the while knowing that while staring into the abyss of inhuman time and having the abyss stare back at you, you also become that abyss. That is why she had to die. Not because of consequentialist, linear consequences. She says the most powerful line in the movie, powerful for its simplicity (used in the proper sense): This is not about you. Only if you understand that this - all this - life, the universe, and everything - is not about you, can you selflessly and only then justifiably make yourself ancient, and then die, for doing exactly that. Think of Pratchett's Auditors, in Thief of Time: when one of them required a human shape, the last thing she wanted, as a human, was to die. As the Ancient One understood, to be human is to be in time, and to be in time is to, as she says, wistfully, perfectly, humanly, stretch one moment into a thousand. For what is that stretch, if not life? I may add: what is a stretch, if not stretching towards another's hand, in the brink of your demise, which is always already? And how can you stretch a moment if you do not break it, if you do not break what is natural? That is why she says Dr. Strange and Mordo need each other. This is what Nietzsche, and/or Derrida, might have dreamed for us: to be monsters (because what are monsters, if not possibilities?), and then die, so that we show the rest of humanity how it could be. (It is by being monsters that we are nearest to being gods, having created gods that are so impossible.) It is by transcending all we think we know, but never forgetting that we are human, that we become more. And then we die. Because we are human. In our becoming more, we become what we are.
And so we have Dr. Strange. Who keeps his watch, and the tremors in what used to be surgeon's hands - because he can turn back time. Not despite the fact that he could have turned back time to when his hands were still whole. Because he can turn back time, he turned it into a loop that is the only thing that can enslave Dormammu, who is outside of time. In that moment, in creating that loop, he gave up everything that ties him to his old life, except one thing, the only thing, ontologically, that he is: time.
And hence his watch. Which is a representation of time. And his tremors. Which is the passing of time.
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