Try saying that title five times fast! Marvel’s President of Production, Kevin Feige recently explained to Badass Digest how Marvel plans on introducing magic into the Marvel realm.
Feige was reported to describe the Dr. Strange Movie to be “a Ditko/Kubrick/Miyazaki/The Matrix mind-trip.” Strong words for a movie starring a superhero that the average non-dork has never heard of. But lets look at all aspects of this movie and really guess at how this movie will turn out.
There have already been rumors of Johnny Depp being in talks of playing Doctor Strange and though this very talented actor does have physical similarities to Strange, can we trust him to portray the Strange persona? Depp enjoys playing pretty eccentric roles and though the characters themselves changes with each film, we can admit that all the characters (and the movies themselves) always have a dark, mentally-unstable quirk about them (as we can see with the Mad-hatter, Willy Wonka, Edward Scissorhands, I can go on and on). In fact, we can see this pattern of darkness and eeriness in all the names mentioned – Miyazaki, Matrix, Kubrick, and Ditko. The question is ” is this the theme we want to see with Doctor Strange?”
While I will say whole-heartedly, “YES! Doctor Strange should be dark and gritty”, there is just the one drawback of Depp’s tendency to play the borderline-insane character. At first glance, I didn’t want the Sorcerer Supreme to be some twitchy, wide-eyed psycho. I wanted him to be the wise, confident, powerful archetypal hero I saw in the comics. But it makes sense for this man of science to be losing his sanity in this initial exposure to magic. It makes sense that he starts to lose a grip on what’s real when he’s playing with magic – something that seems to bend reality itself. Not to mention even the comic-book Doctor Strange is not immune to emotional crises and mental break downs. Overall I like the direction they’re taking with this movie, but I’m still wary. One of the main obstacles is to introduce magic in this highly scientific Marvel world.
So far, Marvel seems to be desperately dodging the “magic” bullet, despite having characters like Loki. Marvel has been quite vague on what resource is being used by Asgardians whether it’s science, magic, or both but know they won’t be able to get away with that with Avengers 2 with the Scarlett Witch. I don’t know how much they plan to reveal about magic in that film, but we can assume we will delve deeper into sorcery with Doctor Strange.
Feige: “Are you watching the ‘Cosmos’ series? That’s magic. It’s unbelievable. If somebody knew how to tap into that stuff, what’s the difference between that and magic? You don’t get into it in ‘Harry Potter,’ but if a scientist went to Hogwarts, he’d find out how some of that stuff is happening! And particularly for a character like Strange, who goes from a man of science to a man of faith and who traverses both worlds.”
