'When a terrible accident befalls extraordinary surgeon Dr. Stephen Strange, he’ll do anything to regain mobility in his crippled hands. His journey will take him to unbelievable realms and bring him face-to-face with petrifying dangers. Explore the fantastic worlds of Doctor Strange with exclusive concept artwork and in-depth analysis from the filmmakers. Go behind the scenes in this deluxe keepsake volume as Marvel once again brings its strange history to the silver screen!
'Here is everything you need to know about the making of the movie from all the key players—including director Scott Derrickson, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige, along with the talented cast, special-effects gurus, concept illustrators, visual-effects designers, and storyboard artists who worked on the set and behind the scenes to create the art of Doctor Strange.'
There were a few big gambles that Marvel Studios made whilst creating the Marvel Cinematic Universe, introducing alien beings worshipped as gods in Thor, creating a fully sci-fi action adventure with no connection to the other heroes in Guardians of the Galaxy, and introducing the concept of magic in Doctor Strange. Most of the MCU is dealing in grounded ideas, even the most outlandish up to that point (they made gods into aliens to make Thor more realistic), as such Doctor Strange was a bold leap when it said 'no, actual magic and the supernatural do exist too'.
The comics that the film was to be based upon were some of the strangest (no pun intended) that Marvel had made, and some of the stories from the 60's and 70's are so psychedelic and different to the rest of the publishers output that you kind of question if perhaps the people working on it were exploring the ideas of the mystic and the transcendental with a little 'extra help'. So how would a universe that had tried to make things feel real, to ground its heroes, square this circle. Marvel Studios' The Infinity Saga - Doctor Strange gives us a great look at how they were able to do this, and just how much they embraced the source material's weirdness.
Much like with the previous entries in this collection, this latest volume takes things chronologically, and we work through the film as our hero travels through this new world. The opening sections deal with Stephen Strange's life before magic, of his accident, and how it sets him on a new path. It's decent enough, though doesn't give us anything super interesting. I tend to find the parts of these books that deal with the grounded, real life elements are the slowest; luckily, in this volume that's only the first few pages, as we're soon going through the creation of Kamar-Taj and it's students,
This is where the book really comes to life, and it's great to see how the creative team tried to marry the fantasy elements with the history of Nepal, and Kathmandu, where the filming took place. It seems that trying to find this balance of cultural accurate and the fantastical was a key concern for the team, who wanted to create something that paid respects to the inspiration behind the character without being insulting or cartoonish. And it does feel like the final result does this quite well, and you can see in the designs presented here that there were concepts that were a little too fantastical that just didn't quite work, despite looking great.
One of the characters who gets the most focus in this section if The Ancient One, a character that was on the receiving end of a little controversy at the time due to the casting of a white actor in the role. A few of the designs in the book seem like they may have made this situation a little worse, leaning into a more cliché marital arts master style look for Tilda Swinton's character. There are a number of designs that sway much further into the fantasy realm too, with one having her being an almost ethereal, angelic being in all white and her face hidden behind a veil, whilst another has her floating crossed legged in the air as she meditates.
The book also spends some decent time going into the background elements, such as props that might only appear on screen briefly, but go a long way into fleshing out the world of magic. There are pages of designs for various versions of the sling rings, Strange's cloak, ancient texts, the Wand of Watoomb, or the Lamp of Icthalon. These designs feature a host of different styles that showcase some of the more unusual elements of the movie that are seen so briefly on the big screen that it'd be easy to miss a lot of the details. Some of the weapons and magic artefacts have such cool designs that after getting to see them in so much detail here it reinforces just how much effort goes into things that you might not even notice when watching the film.
Most of the book is filled with full page images and double page spreads of various illustrations for spells and magic, as the design team tried different ideas out, refining and perfecting the look of magic for the MCU. Some of these pages are so unusual that you'd be hard pressed to imagine how it would work in a moving medium, but it gives a little indication of just how much refinement went into the finished product.
As with previous books there's also a number of story boards included, showing how certain scenes are planned out ahead of filming, with even the smallest details needing careful consideration to create some of these hugely intricate and effects heavy sequences. There's also a small section at the back of the book that deals with post production marketing and the creation of some of the MCU's most attention grabbing movie posters.
There are things that I really loved about this book, such as seeing the various costume designs, the various magic artefacts, and some designs that didn't make it into the film but would have looked amazing if they did. Compared to some other entries in the series that sometimes feel like they're padding the page count with details like 'how we designed the Avengers kitchen' or 'this is Tony Stark's bathroom' this volume really focuses on the interesting stuff, and so there are very few pages that aren't giving the reader something unique and interesting.
For those who are collecting this series this might be one of the more interesting and eye catching in the collection, and for those who haven't picked one of these books up before but are tempted by this one I think that there's certainly enough here to grab your attention and make you interested in reading more.
Marvel Studio's The Infinity Saga - Doctor Strange: The Art of the Movie is out now from Titan Books.