“You wonder what I see in your future? Possibility.”
Those are the prophetic words Tilda Swinton’s Ancient One utters to Stephen Strange, after he arrives at Kamar-Taj, a broken man.
The Ancient One opens Strange's eyes to new possibilities.
She might as well be talking about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Doctor Strange has something bigger on its mind: the future. Forget about those neat ‘Phases’ Marvel sometimes talks in – it’s already started ushering in new characters (Guardians, Black Panther) who will provide the foundation of the next 10 years.
We do not want to repeat ourselves or do what’s been done before necessarily.
Kevin Feige, the President of Marvel Studios, spoke to press on the set of the movie about how Marvel is always changing, despite what some people might say.
“We do not want to repeat ourselves or do what’s been done before necessarily,” Feige asserts. “When you have a track record you can either keep doing that – ‘this seems to work, let’s keep doing this’ – which some people accuse us of no matter what, because I don’t think they pay attention, but really what we do is say, ‘Okay, we have a studio that trusts us and let’s us do what we want for the most part with the creative. We have audiences that seems to be embracing whether they’ve heard of the characters or not. Let’s use that to make as interesting and different and unique a story as possible, and not just stay with the same thing.’ And this movie is certainly the embodiment of that.”
Marvel has proven track record of transforming its lesser known characters into huge blockbusters. Guardians of the Galaxy is the example that immediately comes to mind – a ragtag bunch of cosmic waifs – but in truth, they’ve been doing this since the beginning. From the very start Marvel Studios never possessed the rights to its most iconic and recognisable characters – Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four – so it had to focus and build upon its second-tier characters, like Iron Man, who is now probably just as associated with Marvel as Spider-Man. A lot can change in eight years.
Marvel succeeded because it understood its characters in a way that external studios didn’t. It went back to the work generated in the Marvel bullpen, and figured out what sustained these characters across generations. They didn’t rigidly adapt stories and weren’t afraid to make bold changes. But when it was suggested that the Marvel Cinematic Universe was leaving its source material behind, Tilda Swinton, who plays the Ancient One, quickly extinguished any such talk.
“No! The comics are – I mean, that’s the root, that’s the source,” she said. “It’s just another interpretation. One of the wonderful things that I’ve always loved as an art student, what I always loved about the comics, was that they are interpreted differently by different graphic artists all the time, so now film is doing that thanks to Marvel Studios.
“I’m a huge Marvel fan, and the fact that they take the liberties that they do in filmmaking I think, if anything, that it dignifies the comics and it says, ‘Yeah. This is a strong enough, robust enough source. We can bend it. It’s elastic. It’s bouncy.’”
The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) and Baron Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor).
Take a minute.
Tilda Swinton – arguably one of the most enigmatic and gifted actors of her generation, with strong ties to independent and arthouse cinema – is a Marvel fan. She wants to be in a Marvel movie, because they’re doing something interesting as filmmakers with rich and bizarre source material.
Marvel Studios is doing something unprecedented: it’s using the blockbuster as a medium for serialised storytelling. The closest equivalent I can think of is James Bond, but with one film every four to five years and, at best, a casual approach to continuity it’s never been able to achieve anything comparable to Civil War.
Right now Strange has to be accessible, introducing several new characters and concepts. But Feige knows that soon enough Strange will benefit from everything Marvel has done so far.
“I don’t know that a movie like Doctor Strange couldn’t have been the second or third film we made,” he tells us. “I don’t think we’re doing anything that requires past viewing, as opposed to Civil War which we wouldn’t have done as the first or second movie because so much of that film is based on the pre-existing relationships between the characters. So the more films we make the more we get to deal with those pre-existing relationships. But when it comes to a movie like Ant-Man or Guardians or certainly Doctor Strange, it’s just bringing to life stuff that’s already been there in the comics and we finally get a chance to do it on the big screen.”
I think the more movies we make, the deeper we go into the comic books.
Again, it’s all about creating possibilities. New villains arriving to threaten the Marvel universe once Thanos has been defeated. (We know that a darker force is working through Mads Mikkelsen’s Kaecilius.) The prospect of new groups of superheroes existing instead of or alongside The Avengers. (When we spoke to Cumberbatch, he mentioned The Illuminati – a secret organisation of the world’s most powerful superheroes. Is Marvel building towards another team-up movie?) And finally, the inevitability of new characters expanding the universe. On set, we saw a piece of concept art that carried the names Drumm and Minoru. The first, most likely Daniel Drumm, sets up Brother Voodoo, while the second paves the way for Runaways, a popular and successful Marvel series about a generation of gifted kids who battle the villainous parents.
All of the above may or may not come to pass. Doctor Strange is the 14th Marvel movie, but like the Ancient One, Feige only sees possibility: “I think the more movies we make, the deeper we go into the comic books,” Feige explains. “The more we’re able to bring to life aspects of the comics that haven’t been brought to life before. The benefit of that is we get to make movies that feel different to movies we’ve made before.”
Marvel's Doctor Strange is scheduled for release in the UK on October 25 and in the US on November 4. If you want to know more about the movie, here's a list of the 15 most interesting things we found out on the set of Doctor Strange.
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