Hopefully with Stephen Strange using the Eye of Agamotto to give us an extra hour of sleep this weekend, you used your time wisely and saw Marvel‘s fourteenth feature film, Doctor Strange, on as large of a screen as humanly possible. The supernatural superhero flick opened big at the box office this weekend, racking up nearly $85 million domestically, and proved that audiences are thirsty for Benedict Cumberbatch aligning his chakras and the weirder side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Make no mistake — in spite of its tried-and-true structure which we’ve seen in past Marvel movies, Doctor Strange is the weirdest Marvel film to date thanks to its mind-bending visual effects, heady mysticism, and interdimensional insanity. And that’s saying something in a cinematic universe that’s given us Norse gods, murderous robots, alien invasions, mind control, and a talking monosyllabic tree-man.
At a recent press day in Los Angeles, I sat down with stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, Mads Mikkelsen, and director Scott Derrickson to talk about how they made Marvel weird again. We touched on the third-eye-opening visual effects in a previous interview, so this conversation was centered on the characters they brought to life on the big screen. In our wide-ranging discussion, we touched on Strange’s crisis of faith, the populist villainy of Kaecilius, and much more.
What did you think of Doctor Strange? Read our review, then let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Doctor Strange is in theaters now.
Dan Casey is the senior editor of Nerdist and the author of books about Star Wars and the Avengers. Follow him on Twitter (@Osteoferocious).
9 facts you didn’t know about Doctor Strange:
