Doctor Strange: 22 Secrets Revealed By The Director's Commentary

8. The Astral Fight Scene Inspiration

Derrickson says that the scene that sees Strange fighting with zealot Lucian on the astral plane as Christine tries to revive him was based on a similar scene from seminal Strange graphic novel The Oath...

Derrickson also reveals that it was this sequence that got him the directing job: he prepared a twelve page treatment for it, which was part of his ninety minute presentation to Kevin Feige. No wonder he was impressed.

7. The Inception Inspiration

As anyone with eyes will have been able to see, there are sequences in Doctor Strange that are very reminiscent of Inception. It wasn't an accident: Derrickson confirms they were drawing on the film as a visual inspiration point, but only as a starting point that they wanted to build on in Strange, rather than just ripping it off.

“I thought Inception was one of the most visually interesting movies of the last six or seven years, but it was seven years ago now that it came out and I felt like it was the tip of an interesting visual effects iceberg and I wanted to go crazy with the idea of spacial manipulation.”

And it's not like Christopher Nolan can complain either, as Derrickson points out all he was doing was the same as Nolan building on the famous snow scenes in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service for his snowy climax to Inception..

"That’s what we film-makers do, we borrow from other sources.”