Doctor Strange: How Magic Fights Will Work In The Film

Marvel’s Doctor Strange movie is attempting to translate some pretty far out there concepts of magic and metaphysics to the big screen. From what we’ve seen so far, the film treats its visual style of the mystic arts like a combination of Harry Potter and Inception, with characters manifesting brightly-colored totems and charms, or altering the physical world around the in kaleidoscope effect. What we haven’t seen much of, however, is what happens when the mystical powers of the Marvel Cinematic Universe collide in battle.

We know Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his cohorts Karl Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Wong (Benedict Wong) will be batlling The Ancient One’s (Tilda Swinton) former student Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen) – but again, how those battles play onscreen is something we have yet to see in full.

According to Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige during our Doctor Strange set visit, figuring out how to make magic powers clash onscreen was tough: “I would say the use of magic for action sequences was something that it took a long time to figure out what road to take… Scott [Derrickson] was very smart in not wanting it to simply be somebody shoots a bolt of lightning and somebody blocks a bolt of lightning and somebody throws another bolt of lightning and someone blocks another bolt of lightning… we wanted to do something different.“

It all comes back to the central issue of doing a character like Doctor Strange in live-action: namely, what is your concept of magic? For Doctor Strange and the filmmakers, this concept is really crucial, as it will define what magic is for the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, going forward. Director Scott Derrickson told us on set that, “Preserving the idea of magic was really important to me, that we didn’t try to explain it away or root it all in something scientific. That, by definition, is not magic to me….The comics had a few ideas in them that were, to this day, still very original. Those ideas we’re using. The rest of it was very traditional, in the use of spells and even some of the imagery.“

“For me, the starting point was what kind of things have we not seen in cinema … I started from that place and looked for a way to tie that in to magic,” Derrickson added. “Some of those ideas didn’t tie in well, and some of those ideas tied in surprisingly well. The ones that tied in really well, those became the major set pieces for the movie.“

“We also wanted to tap into this notion of the multiverse, of dimensions right next to our own. If you’re able to tap into those dimensions, into those other powers, what could you do?” Kevin Feige explained. “What could you do if you pull aspects of those other dimensions into our realm? All in the interest of creating a visual tapestry that is totally different in terms of an action scene than we’ve seen in any other movies… Really, this is about and the four main action scenes have been structured around sort of which power from which dimension are they going to use to screw with our world now? In doing so, give a canvas for an action scene totally different than anything we’ve done before.”

MORE: Reveals from the Doctor Strange Set!

Doctor Strange opens November 4, 2016; Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 – May 5, 2017; Spider-Man: Homecoming– July 7, 2017; Thor: Ragnarok – November 3, 2017; Black Panther – February 16, 2018; Avengers: Infinity War – May 4, 2018; Ant-Man and the Wasp – July 6, 2018; and Captain Marvel on March 8, 2019