Wednesday
Apr132016
Doctor Strange is a Tease
Wednesday, April 13, 2016 at 10:00AM Here's your Doctor Strange poster. He's looking very transparent with a hint of Asgardian rainbow bridge psychedelica. We'll wait for a full trailer to do the Yes No Maybe So but this teaser suggests a mishmash of two Chris Nolan pictures (Inception and Batman Begins) with The Matrix mentor-student head trip ("I know kung fu!") filtered through Marvel's clean and/or sterile (depending on how you like it) design aesthetic. We hoped to not be reminded of other movies for something with "Strange" in the title but alas...
Also: Why is Benedict Cumberbatch so suprised that Tilda Swinton gives him an out of body experience? That's just what happens to the audience every time she shows up onscreen.
Reader Comments (13)
That's the first time I've looked at a Marvel Studios trailer and actually gone "eh". It could still be good (mediocre or bad trailers CAN hide better movies and good trailers have hidden bad movies), but I'm finally starting to be a bit scared of Marvel's growing monopoly over the genre.
I may see this for Tilda but my prejudice against anything with Cumberbatch in stops me.
I swore off any and all comic book films about 18 months ago, and have been happier for it. But this is tempting me enough that I may break my own rule. Of course I am a big Cumberbatch fan, and that accounts for most of the temptation, and he looks very tempting indeed.
Mind you the supporting cast of Tilda Swinton, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Rachel McAdams is looking pretty good as well. (I grieve for such a cast to be stuck in comic book films but that's the world we're stuck with these days).
On looks alone I am strongly tempted. But will the characters be truly interesting and the plot be better than the usual "save the entire universe" standard issue??
Is this a thinking person's Marvel film?
I've never read a Dr. Strange comic, is he really interesting or is it as simplistic as the usual stuff?
Cumberbatch kneeling before Tilda at the end of this trailer begging her to teach him? yup, I can relate to that.
Re: Tilda - "I don't know why you're gagging so, she bring it to you every week."
Somehow, now I want to see a version of Dr. Strangelove with Tilda doing all the Peter Sellers' characters, damn! even the George C. Scott's character. ♥
Okay, maybe I'm prejudiced, but Doctor Strange has always been a VERY different animal from the other Marvel characters.
He operates in occult, extra-dimensional realms, often in conflict with abstract entities like Nightmare and Eternity. His strength is knowledge... which he gained through arduous study, not from a super-soldier project, a radioactive spider-bite, atomic mutation, or some other accident or experiment. His adversaries are typically much too powerful to be dealt with via the brawling battling of most Marvel heroes, and his most frequent use in the comics over the decades has been to show up when those heroes are overmatched, and save the universe when something really special is required.
A mature, intellectual, and unusual character quite different from the others right from his introduction in 1963, he predicted much of interest to the hippie ethos soon to come - Asian mysticism, psychedelic visions, interest in what lays beyond the visible. A little too off the beaten path even for adventurous Marvel readers, he's had his own comic - and had it canceled due to low readership - more than once. But he's an important lynchpin to one corner of the Marvel universe...
And when the Avengers, Guardians, et.al. battle Thanos over the Infinity Stones in a couple of years, you can bet that his very different abilities will be a big part of what allows them to ultimately win after the brute-force guys are all smashed and bleeding.
Anyway, I am very excited for this film, which will take the Marvel saga in a whole new direction!
Interesting tease...but someone must really like "Inception"
LadyEdith: I finally finished the first script of that fusion adaptation. 283 Pages (Ow!), so I'm hoping the average screentime-per-page is 40-45 seconds. I'm already sort of itching to move forward.
Volvagia: I'm excited for you, have a sip of something and savor the satisfaction of a job well done. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you when it comes to this next stage. Just keep plugging away. :-)
What's with the Inception visuals/music? And what's with Tilda Swinton playing... an Asian person? Is that character meant to be Asian? I feel like that character is meant to be Asian.
I hated watching this trailer. It feels like The Matrix 4: Absurditions
but think about it, the Cinderella trailer was crap yet the movie delivered.
Thanks Doctor Strange for that bit of background. This trailer and your post have me hooked.