Doctor Strange promises to shake up the Marvel Cinematic Universe in some very unexpected ways, and in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Daily News, Scott Derrickson promised fans that he's turning to all the right places to make this the most unique Marvel movie to date. "If your love for the early Stan Lee-Steve Ditko comics was that visual, psychedelic ambition, I think you’ll be pretty satisfied. The primary resource for the visual design of the whole movie came from those comics."
Asked why he decided to cast Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch as the Sorcerer Supreme (Tom Hardy and Jake Gyllenhaal were among the other possible candidates), the filmmaker explained: "You feel that he can play the intelligence, the arrogance, the unlikability and yet intrigue of Stephen Strange and that the massive arc that the character goes through in those early comics is something that he would be able to portray." The news that the actor will play Strange was met with an overwhelmingly postive response from fans, but the decision to cast Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One has generated some controversy online. Derrickson however was quick to leap to her defence.
"Tilda was a way of adding diversity in terms of not just an ethereal, enigmatic, otherworldly actress playing an ethereal, enigmatic, otherworldly character, but we’re bringing a middle-aged woman who’s not 28 years old in leather pants into the Marvel Universe in a major role." That's a fair point, and it turns out that "erasing a significant potential Asian role" helped open the door for Wong.
"I was going to leave Wong out of the movie at first; he was an Asian sidekick manservant, what was I supposed to do with that? Unlike the Ancient One, he could be completely subverted as a character and reworked into something that didn’t fall into any of the stereotypes of the comics." Are you guys looking forward to seeing all of these characters in Doctor Strange this coming November?
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