3. Marvel's Fantasia
Kevin Fiege has gone on the record to say that Doctor Strange will be the weirdest thing weve ever done. Lets put that in perspective. This is coming from the president of a studio whose
least weird super team features a WWII veteran who is roided up on some extremely potent juice, an Aussie Norse god and Jeremy Renner. Ben Davis, the Director of Photography for Doctor Strange, likens the upcoming film to an abstract classic that used to terrify me as a child (the sentient broomsticks have kept me from cleaning to this very day); Disneys Fantasia.
Most of the work within it is about other dimensions. And I described it, I think, when I was talking to Marvel as Marvels Fantasia in a way, because its so sort of out there and different to everything else that theyve done Theres a lot of previsualisation, and theres a lot of work which is very hard you look at it and you see the imagery that theyve created for it and you think, well how the hell do we shoot that!? because its all sort of Escher stuff.
Many writers have expressed their inability to come up with a Superman story due to the fact that the character is technically a god. This is an area of concern for Doctor Strange, as the main character has a power set so varied that Insanely Rich is somehow the least valuable asset. This challenge is not lost on the studio, who were lucky enough to have had practice in the form of Scarlet Witch in Age of Ultron, a character whose power set is simply whatever the writer wants it to be. Christopher Townsend (the VFX supervisor for Doctor Strange) provided some insight into how magic will be translated to the big screen:
I think the challenges that we faced with are going to be challenges that they face on Doctor Strange, as well of trying to keep it not, you know, not wanting to necessarily go too comic-book graphic. If you want to try and give it a level of realism, you have to try and, you have to infuse that realism into that sort of graphic style.