How The Concept Of Doctor Strange Will Be Updated For A Modern Audience

How do you adapt a character and concept drenched in cultural stereotypes from the 1960s into a successful film for a modern audience? That’s the challenge Marvel Studios faces with Doctor Strange.

Like other works of the era, Doctor Strange‘s earliest comic book stories appropriated some elements from Asian culture and applied them to the story of a white, American hero. That method was culturally acceptable at the time, but would certainly draw some criticism for being culturally insensitive today.

So how does Marvel Studios deal with that? According to Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige, they make the story undeniably their own.

“This is very much the Marvel version of this story,” Feige said in an on-set interview. “These sorcerers are not inspired by any actual sect or by any actual religion. They’re from the Marvel bullpen and we’re being respectful of that and using that fictional mythology to bring to life our fictional world.”

Feige went on to say that their needed be authenticity in all aspects of the production, from how they represented their filming locations in Nepal and Kathmandu, to the sets designed by Charles Wood, to the costumes designed by Alexandra Byrne. Perhaps most challenging is updating some of Doctor Strange’s supporting cast, such as the Ancient One, a Tibetan mystic in the comics, and Wong, Doctor Strange’s Chinese manservant. Both of these characters inhabit the mystic community of Kamar-Taj in Doctor Strange.

“When you get into individual characters, certainly, there’ve been things that have been updated,” Feige explained. “Most obviously, Tilda Swinton taking on the role of The Ancient One. We talked about The Ancient One being a title that has been held, probably, for hundreds and hundreds of years by individuals, but there’ve been various ones. The one we meet in this movie happens to be a female of Celtic descent who most people who even surround her have forgotten exactly where she came from because she’s been around. I think we stated hundreds and hundreds of years; they’re not sure exactly how long. That was one way of doing a new interpretation of that character.

“Benedict Wong [the actor who plays wong]…is a very different incarnation of that character, Wong. He’s an amazing actor who has done an amazing job bringing this role to life. He is not the assistant manservant. He was loyal in the books and certainly fulfilled a purpose, which I think could be one of the things to describe as very typical – going back to any number of white heroes – Asian driver-servant. That is not his role in this movie at all. Everyone in this movie knows more than Strange. Everyone in this movie is more talented when it comes to, for 90 percent of the movie, the magical abilities and the mastery of the mystic arts than Strange is. Wong is a fellow warrior who has been a master in his own right and who is, as we meet him in this movie, tasked with protecting some of the most valuable relics and books that Kamar-Taj has. He doesn’t have a lot of time to worry about Strange. Those are a few of the ways that we’ve updated those characters.”

From Marvel comes Doctor Strange, the story of world-famous neurosurgeon Dr. Stephen Strange whose life changes forever after a horrific car accident robs him of the use of his hands. When traditional medicine fails him, he is forced to look for healing, and hope, in an unlikely place – a mysterious enclave known as Kamar-Taj. He quickly learns that this is not just a center for healing but also the front line of a battle against unseen dark forces bent on destroying our reality. Before long Strange – armed with newly acquired magical powers – is forced to choose whether to return to his life of fortune and status or leave it all behind to defend the world as the most powerful sorcerer in existence.

Doctor Strange is directed by Scott Derrickson, from a screenplay he wrote with C. Robert Cargill. Doctor Strange stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, Michael Stuhlbarg, Benjamin Bratt, Scott Adkins, Mads Mikkelsen, and Tilda Swinton.

Doctor Strange opens in theaters in North America on Nov. 4, 2016.