Upon welcoming eager viewers into the special, 15-minute IMAX screening of Doctor Strange earlier this week, the Sorcerer Supreme himself joked, “If any of you have eaten a bunch of mushrooms, I feel really sorry for you.”
Since his inception in the comics, Stephen Strange’s mystifying alter-ego has been synonymous with bending minds, be that in the form of arresting visuals or stories that span multiple dimensions. It’s part and parcel of Strange’s DNA, and something that director Scott Derrickson and Kevin Feige are keen to harness and subsequently guide onto the silver screen.
[zergpaid]Based on what we’ve seen from the marketing – today’s trippy blacklight poster included – they’ve succeeded, crafting a superhero experience unlike any other. Can the actual story stand shoulder to shoulder with those striking visuals? We’ll see. But for now, EW carried out an interview with Derrickson regarding that psychedelic imagery, and how it has its roots in Steve Ditko’s illustrations from the original comics.
“It is the section of the movie that is most directly inspired by the ‘60s and ‘70s Doctor Strange comic book, specifically the Steve Ditko panels that were very psychedelic, and also a blacklight poster from 1971 that I have hanging above my desk at home. It’s also the banner on my Twitter feed. So those are the visual inspirations for that space and it is all taken directly from the Marvel comic universe.”
Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sorcerer Supreme will be ushered into the Marvel Cinematic Universe when Doctor Strange opens on November 4 – a tenure that is all but certain to include Avengers: Infinity War and, if a faux pas is to be believed, Thor: Ragnarok.
