9 Reasons Doctor Strange Is The Least Anticipated MCU Movie

The first teaser for Doctor Strange sold the movie in a very particular way. Most Marvel trailers have followed a rather rigid structure, and while this did to some degree, it was with one big distinction; instead of pushing the studio's trademark humour, the focus seemed to be on replicating the filmography of Christopher Nolan. The Tibetan set training beat had echoes of Batman Begins' first half, while the cities flipping over on themselves (the main show of magic) was a direct riff on Inception (right down to the music stylings).

Now there's nothing wrong with referencing Nolan (even if it might have played better earlier in the decade), but what it did for Doctor Strange was make it hard to pin down what the film was, instead turning conversation to the movies it was replicating (there's multiple Inception trailer mash-ups). Even now, after the second trailer, it's still a movie dominated by that comparison.

I'll get into the wider marketing problems in a minute, but in being a little un-Marvel-y (although I bet that WiFi password gag is likely a better representation of the tone) they've actually made it less unique.