Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: Sam Raimi Addresses Cameos By Non-MCU Marvel Characters

The Super Bowl trailer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness made Marvel fans' jaws drop around the globe. Though it didn't outright show the character, the unmistakable voice of Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier was abundantly clear in the film's footage. Bringing back the classic X-Men actor to play the character is a major boon for Marvel Studios, who now own the X-Men film rights and Fox movies outright, but also marks the first time that a major player of the X-Men has appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. To that end it also presents a really unique challenge for the movie, a character with decades of familiarity to audiences appearing in front of a character that has no idea about that history.

Speaking in a long-ranging interview with Rolling Stone, the film's director Sam Raimi was asked about handling such a scene, one that perhaps brings in characters from other film franchises and how you handle that with tact in the context of the MCU. He replied: "I think if that situation appears, sometimes the best answer is to just let the character who's experiencing this new character react truthfully. Now, if there was a famous character from another universe that appeared in Multiverse of Madness, I'm not sure that our Doctor Strange would even know who he was; he might blow him off and not make it any big deal at all."

He continued, "I think a truthful response can sometimes be the funniest or the most engaging for an audience. You put them in a position like, 'Man, you don't know who that guy is? Oh, my God!' It's like if some schmo was meeting James Bond onscreen for the first time, and said, 'Buddy, you'll have the martini the way I serve it. Get me?' 'Don't you know that's James Bond?!' That's a different kind of fun for the audience to have."

Based on Raimi's comment it sounds like the film will see Doctor Strange approach the arrival of Patrick Stewart as Professor X in the MCU with some trademark humor, largely par for the course for Marvel movies. A recent TV spot for the film showed that not only will Stewart be present in the film as Professor X but that he'll be sporting an iconic look from the 1990s X-Men animated series. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness opens in theaters on May 6th.