10 Movie Facts You Probably Already Knew Deep Down

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness' Illuminati sequence is unquestionably the most talked-about set-piece in the entire movie, where Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is brought before the superhero council on Earth-838, consisting of Baron Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Captain Carter (Hayley Atwell), Black Bolt (Anson Mount), Captain Marvel (Lashana Lynch), Reed Richards (John Krasinski), and Professor X (Patrick Stewart).

Though the scene offers up fun fan service in isolation, if your Spidey-Sense told you that something was a little off about how the scene was shot and staged, you'd be right.

As it turns out, the majority of the scene's cast members weren't actually together when it was being filmed: due to scheduling conflicts among them, they were brought in individually to shoot their parts opposite body doubles.

Anson Mount confirmed this in an interview with Esquire, saying:

"[Patrick Stewart] was actually not there! [Laughs] He was shooting Picard. That was a very interesting shoot because my role came up in the reshoots. As you can imagine, several of the actors were quite busy. Patrick was not there. Chiwetel [Ejiofor] was not there. [John] Krasinski's contract wasn't even done. He wasn't there. We had actors playing those roles, knowing that they were going to either be substituting their shots or transplanting faces. I've never done anything quite like that, and I was in disbelief of how well it cut together."

It's certainly an impressive technical achievement on the whole, but considering the scope of the sequence it's not remotely surprising that it required the movie's VFX team to composite the disparate performances together.