“You know, every time I dig a little bit deeper into science with my pea-sized brain, I hit a wall,” says Benedict Cumberbatch, musing on life’s big questions. He is sporting a manicured goatee and has an amulet strapped to his chest. “I have a sense of wonder at what is beyond our understanding,” he goes on. “There is wonder in logic, and, whether on the macro or micro scale, it just gets bizarre, extraordinary and unfathomable. And we have only five senses to understand and appreciate it, whether it’s theoretical physics or microbiology or circadian rhythms. It’s incredible.”
Cumberbatch’s thoughts on the intersection between science and faith are being delivered in a draughty sound studio just off the A308. A scar on his cheek and salt-and-pepper flanks in his hair, he is in character as Doctor Strange, the next superhero protagonist from Marvel Studios. Eerily enough, Strange’s story, the latest to emerge from the Marvel’s multi-dimensional cinematic universe – those dimensions being film, T-shirt, lunchbox – is about space and time and religion and mysticism. It also features Tilda Swinton as an ageless kung fu monk.
It’s fair to say that this new hero is not the most famous name in Marvel’s roster of characters. Then again, he’s a bit out there. “I wasn’t familiar with Doctor Strange as a child, not at all,” says Cumberbatch. “So it’s been a fast catch-up. But like all comics in their origination, they’re very much tied into the era that they were born in, and so, you know, this one came about in an era of psychedelics and experimental drugs.”
Billed as a “master of black magic”, Doctor Strange was created in 1963 by Steve Ditko, one of Marvel Comics’ defining artists. Stephen Strange was a selfish young neuroscientist whose life was shattered when he suffered a car accident and lost the use of his hands. Seeking meaning in his life, Strange went on a pilgrimage to the east and found a source of magic in a Tibetan sanctuary.
Taught by a guru named the Ancient One and coming into possession of not only his amulet – the Eye of Agamotto – but a sentient cloak, Strange returned to the west as a Sorcerer Supreme. From that point it got weirder as, not content with depicting magic, Ditko took Doctor Strange on adventures into other dimensions, creating surreal spacescapes with structures that looked like they’d fallen out of a Kandinsky painting. Ditko’s panels were vibrant, a bit bonkers, and also prescient. By the second half of the 1960s, Doctor Strange had his own title, and anyone with a keen interest in psychedelics had a new favourite superhero.
Just like the hippies themselves, Strange has been in and out of fashion ever since. But now, in 2016, his big moment has arrived. Alongside Cumberbatch, a premier-league cast has been assembled including Swinton (as the Ancient One), Chiwetel Ejiofor, Mads Mikkelsen and Rachel McAdams. A production crew of more than 500 have created everything from functional operating theatres to opulent Greenwich Village interiors. They have even built an entire Hong Kong street – incorporating 35 shops stocked with goods – purely for the purposes of destroying it in a fight. And, of course, there are the special effects. The film’s signature scene throws Strange into a Manhattan that has folded in on itself. And not metaphorically. Viewers might reasonably expect Marvel’s take on Inception or The Matrix; the phrase commonly used on set is “mind-bending”.
In a movie business that is increasingly plagued by nightmares of multi-million pound blockbusters crashing round its ears, and after a year of critical maulings for superhero films such as Suicide Squad, Marvel still has a palpable swagger. To be on the set is to feel the heft of both its money and its ambition. That scale appeals to audiences, but it also appeals to the talent who get to work in an environment where everything is possible. With all the resources at their disposal, it’s the professional equivalent of a supermarket sweep round Hamleys.
When we meet Cumberbatch, he is on a break from a fight scene in which Strange has to defeat an opponent while conducting interdimensional traffic through a portal. A late arrival on the spandex scene, had he ever worried that he might become the only British actor without his own superhero franchise?
“I know what you mean, but no,” he laughs. “I don’t really have a bucket list. I have, though, in the past, undergone one of the most life-changing moments in my personal life [he became a father in June last year], and also Hamlet, and now I’m here. The joy of it is in the contrast. I literally flew off to Kathmandu [where Doctor Strange was partly filmed] two days after we finished Hamlet. It was a massive gear change, but I love what it is to be part of this huge body of work and people. It’s great fun.”
Most interviewees connected with Marvel films will profess a deep love of the comic books. Cumberbatch can’t quite muster that up and also declares himself a touch too squeamish to have consumed much of the earlier work of his director, horror aficionado Scott Derrickson (Sinister, Deliver Us From Evil). But he is interested in all this metaphysical malarkey.
“Spiritualism keeps on cropping up in culture from way, way back, and the 60s were a moment where people started to look for something beyond the material,” he says. “But how do you marry that with the modern world? And, of course, part of the answer in cinema is to take people on a journey that is almost beyond imagining but is now possible through state-of-the-art effects, digital manipulations and landscapes and environments which are, I think, going to be utterly mind-blowing in this film. And very funny, which is the other thing I thought was very important. You know, this character could be very hokey.”
Another element of the original comics that looks out of keeping in 2016 was their portrayal of Asian people as colourfully robed masters of kung fu. The film has an ethnically varied cast but has otherwise courted controversy by giving a white woman – Swinton – a role portrayed in the comics as an Asian man. Says executive producer Stephen Broussard: “We approached [the ethnicity in the film] from an honourable place. We want to show things that are fresh. I’m proud of the cast and its diversity, and I hope that it’s going to inspire people.”
Playing opposite Cumberbatch is Mikkelsen, TV’s Hannibal Lecter, who may or may not have been typecast in his role as sorcerer Kaecilius.
“Yes, you have already guessed, I am the baddie,” says the Dane, who has no problem passing the comic-book test. “I have a big collection back at home, in little plastic covers. Every boy who’s grown up with Marvel would wish one day to be able to fly around, do kung fu and have magic powers. So to make this film was a very easy choice for me. I think that Marvel is a magnet for big names because they love [the experience]. And there’s a lot of things to love.”
For Derrickson, who persuaded the studios to hire him over the course of eight separate interviews, the scale of the ambition attracted him, too. “I’ll be shooting one scene and then doing some script revisions, and at the same time I’ll be looking at VFX tests,” he says. “There’s never much down time, but I rather like that. Doctor Strange has long been my favourite Marvel comic book. I grew up reading them, and I do think it’s the only comic that I’m personally suited for because of the nature of the material. It’s an aberration, and we’re making a film that I think is a real left turn in the Marvel Comics Universe.”
Whether that turn will be a successful one remains to be seen, and a man with a cloak casting spells could sound a bit hokey (pocusey) for audiences. But then Chris Pratt as a modern-day Han Solo seemed a weird call until Guardians Of The Galaxy became a hit. Trailers have shown off Cumberbatch’s wit as well as his kung fu skills, and you wouldn’t bet against Marvel continuing the successful expansion of its “universe”.
Ever since Iron Man rocketed on to the screen eight years ago (feels longer, right?), Marvel’s ambitions have grown in sync with its success. The Universe was born, grew and became ever more complex. Now into what it calls “Phase 3”, Marvel has scheduled movies up until the summer of 2019 as the storyline that began in Captain America: Civil War earlier this year, about an intergalactic war, builds to a climax. Doctor Strange, it is widely held, will play a key role in helping weave disparate strands of narrative together, unless people feel they haven’t had enough of superheroes by then.
“Evolve or die,” says Derrickson of the challenge ahead for Marvel. “It’s very difficult for any major studio to fearlessly evolve. But I think Marvel don’t operate out of fear at all. Marvel now has the greatest library of intellectual property there is. I think that Marvel will continue to evolve and surprise audiences in the way they want to be surprised.”
Is he right? Only time will tell. Unless someone can open up a portal to the future, that is.
Doctor Strange is in cinemas nationwide from Tuesday 25 October
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