Doctor Stephen Strange, a neurosurgeon,
who, after a terrible accident, lost the use of his hands.
You might even say, his hands betrayed him.
And I can relate. If you catch my drift.
Anyway, this Strange guy couldn't cut it in the operating room anymore,
so what did he do?
Run home and cry to mama? No-siree-bob.
He picked himself up and trained to be some kind of fancy-pants wizard,
complete with a kooky cape, and a groovy goatee.
And yet, they still call him a doctor. Know why?
Because now, he's a doctor of kicking butt and taking names.
Strange has mopped the floor with cosmic conquerors, mad Titans,
and guys with really bad complexions.
But enough with the CliffsNotes recap already.
These days, Strange is up to his medallion-wearing neck
in psychedelic scary sauce,
and that is what we're here to talk about.
I'm Bruce Campbell, and I'll be your host
as we journey beyond the confines of our own humdrum reality,
and see what's really cookin' in the Multiverse of Madness.
KEVIN FEIGE: After we finished the Infinity Saga,
we were looking at how to evolve post Endgame
and into phase four.
We wanted to explore entirely new characters
and entirely new sides of the Marvel comics.
One of the things we're exploring in phase four is the Multiverse.
And in the Multiverse, we get to see different realities and different outcomes
of characters that we all know and love in an infinite number of ways.
Some of them are tragic, some of them are horrific,
all of them are unexpected.
And that was always where we were headed with this sequel to Doctor Strange,
knowing that we wanted to explore the mind-bending,
frightening side of the Multiverse.
And this could only have been done under the direction of Sam Raimi.
RAIMI: I got a call from my agent saying that Kevin Feige and the Marvel team
were looking for a new director for the new Doctor Strange movie.
I was a big fan of the first one.
I thought that the director, Scott Derrickson, did a great job
and Benedict Cumberbatch delivered an incredible performance.
So when that offer came and I thought, "Okay, it's been a long time since I had
"made a superhero movie, I wonder if I can still do it?"
And that alone was reason enough.
RICHIE PALMER: Sam Raimi is one of the godfathers of the MCU,
if you think about it, with the Spider-Man trilogy.
To get to work with Sam is a dream come true,
not just for me, but for most of the people on this set.
That guy's movies are part of the reason I became a writer,
so, to have Sam Raimi come in a room and sit across from you and be like,
"All right, kid, what's the movie?"
Man, it's really a case of meet your heroes.
So, I was a very junior part of the creative team
on his original Spider-Man films, and now working so closely with him,
who would have guessed, certainly not me,
that nearly 20 years later, Sam Raimi would be working
on a Doctor Strange movie for us.
We are in the Sanctum Sanctorum, Doctor Strange's home,
his weird, haunted house that he lives in, and today's day one.
RAIMI: I think it was always in Marvel's mind
that this film would really open the door wide to the Multiverse.
The scale is epic. It's almost unfathomable.
FEIGE: That's part of the madness.
Madness of handling this many characters and this many storylines.
CAMPBELL: So, this Multiverse that everybody and their uncle
keeps yackin' about,
what is it anyway?
Well, I looked up Multiverse in the dictionary.
Yes, I cracked open an actual book, and this is what it said.
"An infinite realm of being or potential being
"of which the universe is regarded as a part or instance."
(LAUGHS) I don't know what any of that means, but I'll wager,
it has something to do with endless possibilities.
So, if you're aiming to tell a story
set in a world where literally anything goes,
how do you even begin to begin?
Yes, it's a maddening job, that can make you go insane
trying to figure all the stuff out, but it's a lot of fun.
RAIMI: Telling the story of the Multiverse was such a gigantic endeavor.
To not only paint an accurate picture of our universe,
but of another, and another, and another.
It took teams of really great artists and Michael Waldron's great script,
which I just thought was brilliant.
WALDRON: It was February 2020,
and Kevin Feige called me
and said "We'll go in a different direction
"on Doctor Strange Two,
"and we want you to come over and write it."
There were already sets being built and everything
so we really had to hit the ground running.
But I think I had, like, three weeks to try and write that first draft,
and that last week is when the NBA shut down, COVID hit,
and the world stopped spinning.
And so, it was an interesting month, to say the least.
The silver lining was production pushed from May of 2020 to November of 2020,
so it allowed us the time.
We said, "All right, let's blow this thing up entirely,
"let's start from scratch."
And that's exactly what we did.
And we threw that draft of mine out entirely
and said, "If we were in on day one of this movie with Sam Raimi,
"what is the movie we would make?"
And we came up with something better and much more exciting.
DOUG LEFLER: Michael did a Herculean job with this project, in my humble opinion.
He had all the history of Marvel that he had to work into this.
Ready.
How he managed to balance all of that, I think, was extraordinary.
RAIMI: And, action!
Nailed that, that was sharp.
WALDRON: What's interesting in a story about the Multiverse
is exploring the other ways that things could have played out.
It's especially interesting with a character that we saw at one point
sit with his head going in a million different directions,
watching 14 million different outcomes in his particular universe.
Getting to work on a Doctor Strange sequel is really exciting
because the first movie really blew open the doors of the MCU
in ways that we couldn't even imagine, because you can't tell the same stories
with Captain America that you could with Doctor Strange.
RAIMI: Marvel comic books have always been excellent at painting complex characters.
It's how in the '60s and '70s they blew DC out of the water.
They're able to build upon these relationships with great depth,
and we're able to build upon them movie after movie.
He's been through a lot, he's lost the use of his hands,
become a sorcerer, assumed this mantle as master of the New York Sanctum,
fought in a war against Thanos,
gave up the Time Stone in this incredible gambit
that resulted in saving the universe,
and he's kind of been dropped back into normal life.
RAIMI: The first film did a great job of describing the journey of Doctor Strange.
This film, it's about what he's become, the price he's had to pay
to become this great sorcerer and savior of the universe.
I felt, I guess as much as the audience and the fans did, that, you know,
this extraordinary character seemed to be sort of
all-powerful and perfect, I wanted to know what it was about him,
how he'd got there as much as anything else.
I wondered what it was costing him or what it would cost him
to continue developing in that way, accruing power and ability.
Really, the film's an examination of that,
how far as a maverick and an outsider, and a chancer, and an ego
can he go before stuff really becomes undone?
It's always great in these solo flights, to kind of shake the snow globe up
and disturb the character
and throw stuff at him that really makes him question his purpose
and who he is and how to best be.
I never stopped caring about us.
But I had to make sacrifices.
I'm sorry.
It's quite an emotional place that he's in at the beginning.
Then he's sort of slungshot into this adventure.
WALDRON: We're in New York City.
A giant monstrous octopus has attacked New York, it's bad news.
RAIMI: Three, two, one, action.
This is where Doctor Strange meets America Chavez.
Look out!
Do I know you?
WALDRON: Through this adventure, he forms the unlikely partnership
with the young America Chavez,
the last person you'd expect Doctor Strange to work with.
America Chavez has been on a list for a long time of characters
that we wanted to bring into the MCU.
America Chavez was created in 2011, so she is a relatively new character.
Casting America Chavez was great,
it was such a highlight of this experience,
we did such a wide search.
We found Xochitl Gomez and thought unanimously
she was the best person for this role.
I did my first audition in March, 2020,
and I didn't hear anything for six months.
And then I got a call to do a screen test in London.
That's when I got told what character it was for and I was like, "Oh, my gosh."
GRAHAM CHURCHYARD: We started with the comics,
the denim jackets in many of the comics,
and I designed these combat jackets which had red, white, and blue,
like, stars and stripes flag that was all kind of blended together
in this camouflage, so it was a camouflage jacket.
America dresses a lot like I do. I do wear black ripped jeans
and a T-shirt and a nice jacket over it, and a pony, I wear that all the time.
And so, when I first went in, I was just amazed with all these jackets.
There's so much detail.
I don't think you'll ever see it, but there's a bunch of poetry
and just the way the star is designed on the back of the jacket.
I had, like, 100 other versions of Mexican sort of folkloric art
and Day of the Dead references that could be part of the kind of emblem
on the back of the jacket.
But I'm really happy that we went with the star.
In the street scenes that we've shot with her running,
you see this white star going down the street,
and it's a really good focus point.
It was fantastic working with Xochitl.
I think she's probably gotta be one of the youngest actors in the MCU
and it can be quite scary, you know. I mean, it was scary for me to enter into,
and then someone so young with so much on her shoulders.
It's a huge responsibility to originate a character, a superhero.
It's crazy, it's really like, "Oh, my goodness."
It's good to kind of lift off the pressure with that.
We always have a bit of music on set, and she's big into, what is it, TikTok?
She tried to teach me some moves, but I think I pulled a muscle.
(LAUGHS)
Benedict Wong, I mean, he is amazing.
He carries this mega-huge, like, boom speaker
and he just carries it around and just, like, bumps up and down.
He's like a walking rave party, it's amazing.
He's got some snazzy moves, but I think my moves are a bit snazzier.
He's catching on.
America Chavez, it was such a pleasure for me to get to work on this character.
She's just a badass. It's something that we've established is that
it's impossible, near impossible to travel from one universe to another.
In Loki, you can kind of hop from one timeline branch to another,
but you've gotta be anchored to some original timeline.
What America can do is, she can jump
from one universe to another one. She can literally do the impossible.
She doesn't know how to control her power, but every time she's triggered by fear,
a portal opens into another universe.
LEFLER: Working with America Chavez,
we had many different introductions to her as a character,
but I think I storyboarded all of them so I got to work with her character a lot.
What was so fascinating about America Chavez to me
was just her sense of loneliness that she didn't have a family,
she didn't have friends, she didn't even have a reality.
So, she finds herself bouncing between worlds,
really being lost amongst the Multiverse, and learning how to survive herself
until an entity starts hunting her.
And that's when Doctor Strange and Wong realize the stakes of this movie.
It's an incredible power but represents a grave danger for the world of the MCU.
DOCTOR STRANGE: The power is dangerous enough in the hands of a kid...
imagine if a real threat acquired it?
RAIMI: Ready,
and action.
ELIZABETH OLSEN: When we were about to go back to finishing WandaVision,
I was pitched the actual story of Doctor Strange,
and I was shocked.
No one told me that their plan for me was to be the villain. (LAUGHS)
We knew that we wanted Wanda to be in it.
I think, originally, there's a version where Wanda was maybe gonna turn bad
at the end.
That was a big change that I made
and I had a strong perspective on making her a villain from the get-go.
It was always like, "Well, that'll happen in an Avengers movie or something."
My perspective was,
"Why are we letting some other movie get the best villain ever?"
It was an exciting opportunity because it's really fun
playing people with moral ambiguity.
WANDA: Her sacrifice...
would be for the greater good.
OLSEN: She is one of the most powerful beings that's ever existed.
I was meant to rule everything.
Why does that mean that she now has to settle for just being good,
when all she wants is something that seems so simple and small
which is to be with her kids?
We've seen the tragedy of her life.
She killed Vision, only to have Thanos rewind those events with the Time Stone,
the Time Stone he got from Doctor Strange, so that Wanda's sacrifice was for nothing.
She's given up a lot and from her perspective,
all she wants is one life, she wants America Chavez,
she wants to take her power, which, yes, will kill America,
but to Wanda, she's earned that sacrifice.
Alex Byrne's costume in Ultron was Wanda's first outing.
So, she started out in store-bought street clothes
with the torn jeans, with the cropped jacket.
And then, by the time she gets to Infinity War,
she's wearing that red body coat, so leaning more towards the comics.
The whole WandaVision look, when she transforms into Scarlet Witch,
she's been, for some time, in possession of the Darkhold.
And such a powerful tome can have a sort of devastating effect on a person,
if they try and use its powers, so it has its downside.
You get this sort of Multiversal mold and contamination growing over your body,
your costume, as you're overtaken by the sort of evil powers within it.
I wanted, if this evil kind of thing was growing over your body...
Her shoulders were covered, and the armor is now...
The detail on the corset, on the bodice, is now really kind of deteriorated,
and the skirt is really fluid now.
The crown too has a... It's like it was a sort of jewel,
but now, it's sort of pitted and has patina and devastation to it as well,
so it's a lot more eroded and worn than in WandaVision.
And so, those were the changes I made
because it fitted within the idea that something had happened to her
in possession of the Darkhold that created this sort of distortion
and deterioration of her costume.
WANDA: Every night, the same dream.
And every morning...
the same nightmare.
We really wanted to have the audience identify with the villain of the piece,
really understand her, not make them a brouhahaha villain,
but somebody who you really loved and could relate to.
WANDA: You break the rules and become a hero.
I do it, and I become the enemy.
That doesn't seem fair.
RAIMI: That was so beautiful. Cut, that was great.
That was a constant thing for Sam Raimi and I.
I've had so much fun playing off of his ideas,
and I think he and I really relish in this character
and we've been enjoying how delicious it is
to justify some of the things she does in the movie.
RACHEL MCADAMS: That's just one of the things Marvel does so well
and better than anyone,
is that their villains, you know, you find yourself
siding with them at times, you're like, "Wait, I feel bad for you,"
or, "Well, they have a really good point, you know, Thanos has a...
"He has a really good point."
So I feel like they've built that with Wanda so well,
where you just feel for her and her struggle.
It's just a very filled-out character that, I think, makes you feel
a lot of complicated things. Those are always the best villains.
RAIMI: She's a villain because she believes
the end justifies the means.
She'll simply do anything to be with the ones she loves.
She just loved too much, was her problem.
But once you start taking the bad path in life,
you make one bad choice and another, it seems like,
sometimes, there's no way back.
-That's great, I think we got it. -OLSEN: Okay, good.
MAN: So, cut.
WALDRON: Doctor Strange and Wong bring America to Kamar-Taj for safekeeping.
The person you went to ask for help, is the person that's trying to kill me?
Yeah.
It doesn't quite work out how they hoped it would.
And arm the students. Kamar-Taj must now become a fortress.
ALL: No! No!
ALL: No!
You have no idea just how reasonable I have been.
Kamar-Taj stands against you.
-(GRUNTS) -Defensive positions!
We have a particularly big sequence
where Wanda, she's coming to attack Kamar-Taj.
(GRUNTS)
The Kamar-Taj battle, in terms of shot count, it's huge.
That scene was shot on three different stages.
We're here on the Sirius stage, as I understand it,
they lift these stages up for big concerts.
So, we lifted the stage up, it's quite a massive stage,
but not big enough for our Kamar-Taj.
Even though we only have one rooftop, it has to play as three different rooftops
on Kamar-Taj that are all oriented differently.
And so, one of the tricks is not only figuring out, on any given day,
who's supposed to be on that rooftop and how it's dressed
and what sort of damage is there, but also where the lighting comes from.
Wanda is flying around so she starts off on the approach
and there's a little bit of a stand-off. After that, Wanda starts doing attacks
and she starts to fly all the way around looking for weak points
inside this collective force field.
We call this the strafing run, it's kinda like what you'd picture
if you were in a jet fighter that's coming around banking
and just boom, boom, boom. Stuff flying and in your face.
TUCKER: Charlie did all of the design for Kamar-Taj.
That 3D model was then handed off to proof the previz company
that prevized the Kamar Taj sequence.
Then, to help us visualize that, that previz model gets put into
an iPad and that allows us to sort of temporarily position ourselves on set.
LEWIS: I've seen it in the past five years develop
from this big virtual camera, whole crew, whole expensive setup that takes days
and weeks to do, whereas now it's on an iPad
and it's in your back pocket, essentially.
Any characters or props, we can bring in with animation
and virtually see where it is so it's a great tool on set
when we need to look up and see a monster or an explosion.
One of the other things we have to really plan for is, is special effects.
A lot of planning going into, from the previz,
where certain explosions will happen inside the floors of Kamar-Taj.
MAN: Three, two, one, action!
So, we're setting up 25 different explosions, some fireballs,
some ground hits, where the ground is erupting, total mayhem.
This particular sequence was a great collaboration
between special effects, stunts, camera crews.
The whole second unit has worked miraculously to all mesh together
and create a wonderful little sequence.
I think that was our biggest action sequence of the film.
There were some shots that were extremely choreographed,
I mean, we had camera winches, and we had R ratchets
that blow people back.
We did somewhere between 40 and 50 different ratchets.
Those are the explosions when cannons blow up,
we ratcheted six people back there, when she lands,
that had six or seven people on it, but it was a lot of fun to develop.
We actually, kind of, started the idea by putting one of our stunt guys
in the winch holding a DSLR camera. And then we did all the action,
kind of buzzed him through as if he were the camera.
That's sort of our poor man's version of the motion-based winch camera.
JEFF: So, we've got a camera on a wire, a 3D winch system
that basically is the Scarlet Witch's point of view
and it comes around behind the building.
You see the first explosion go up right in front of it.
It comes through it, it comes around and it just sees all of this,
chasing it all and then we got four more cameras in various positions to catch
Rintrah's run, catch the bell falling, catch individual people flying
and hitting the ground and coming right at ya.
CORBOULD: The explosions, we really wanted
to get the stunt people right on top of them.
Rather than use traditional black powder, we've gone for a high pressure nitrogen
which is really, really safe, you can almost stand right next to it,
but gives a wonderful effect.
MAN: Action!
SAVANI: So we've just done the first explosion
and I'm the first one that sort of goes up
into the air. Obviously, it's a bit nerve-wracking
'cause you don't know exactly what'll happen.
We've rehearsed a lot of it before but with the SFX and stuff,
it's the first time, with full costume, it's the first time.
JEFF: I think everyone was a bit surprised how big it was on the day,
which kinda helps their acting 'cause it turns from acting to, like,
"This is really happening."
We actually had a little too much dust so you lost 'em and you couldn't see 'em,
but it looked really cool in that dust so we're gonna lower the dust a little bit
and hopefully we'll see a bit more of that.
I saw some of the playback. Really pleased with it.
So, yeah, we just take our time, don't rush and pick every camera position
to get the most out of what all the stunt players are doing
and the special effects explosions are doing.
CORBOULD: We've been testing this for probably four months now,
to reach this point. But it's great when it all comes together.
Unfortunately, it's all over in about 20 seconds,
but it'll be great on the screen.
That sequence was what every stunt coordinator looks forward to,
to be honest with you. You get to hire a lot of stunt performers
that are really talented and you get to show off their talents
and you get to blow stuff up.
This is an extremely wire-intense film.
So, we've got two separate rigging teams that are working on different sequences,
pretty much full-time. I've been a part of five other Marvel films before this
and this is the most wire-intensive one I've been a part of.
MAN: Three, two, one, action!
COUNTS: The audience and the actors and the studio really like to see the actors
doing their own stunts, so, we facilitate that.
We had Strange fly in, around this corner, starting at about 30 feet
and he probably flew about 80 feet down around the street and we land him
in the middle of the street and then action.
The whole point was to show him, a really small figure,
and to land right in front of camera, a foot-and-a-half away from it, on a cue.
So, they're computerized and they're all rehearsed
and that allows us
to get selfish and use Benedict's face as much as we can.
MAN: And rolling!
So, I just got off the wires and I'm not gonna lie, they're really scary.
COUNTS: Xochitl's been great. She's got a great work ethic.
She really wants to rehearse and do lots of her own stunts.
Unfortunately, she is a minor. So, we can only allow her to go so far.
I think she's had a blast on this.
We've actually had her in the winches and stuff like that.
We've moved her around, we've dropped her on things.
I don't know how to describe it. It's like, the second you go down,
it's like every gut feeling just disappears and it's like,
"Where'd everything go?"
MAN: Go!
It's been a lot of fun. And I've got two daughters at home,
they're not quite as old as she is, but it is a lot of fun
to sit and watch someone who's in their mid-teens
develop a character and get to be a part of the Marvel universe
at such a young age.
OLSEN: For some reason, I'm okay being in a harness.
It's fine to fly around
and be in it for a certain period of time and I really do enjoy it a lot
and with these things called tuning forks. So, I'm not just being held up on wires,
but I actually have a harness on with a big piece of metal that hugs my waist.
I have found that to be really helpful
because you have more control over your body
and so we've done a variation of these tuning forks and wire work.
COUNTS: The great thing about Lizzie is that
she's played this character for a while.
MAN: Action!
COUNTS: She really knows the character inside and out.
Scarlet Witch is supposedly
one of the most powerful Marvel characters out there.
The difference is, she uses her magic. So, when we do these fights,
you'll notice that she very rarely gets touched or touches anybody else.
Everything is done with magic, so, it is a fight,
but we don't actually physically hit her with stuff.
YANG: This is the first time I'm working with the Wanda character.
COUNTS: She's done an amazing job with helping us build the action.
So, it'll kinda culminate in this Illuminati fight
you'll see with the superheroes.
RAIMI: Cut! MAN: Yeah, can we cut?
RAIMI: That was good. I think we got the master we need.
Secret societies.
Don't think they're real?
Well, think again, pal.
Ever heard of the Freemasons, or the Knights Templar?
How about the Ten Rings, or HYDRA?
Maybe those last two things aren't real, but I know you've heard of 'em,
'cause you're wearing Captain America underpants.
The point is, I'm willing to roll with the idea
of some clandestine organization running the whole show
from behind the proverbial curtain.
Just don't tell me that those folks are ridin' around in yellow hoverchairs
and throwing Vibranium frisbees painted like Union Jacks. (LAUGHS)
Don't tell me that.
The Illuminati's been a group we've wanted to introduce in our movies for years.
BARON: Stephen Strange,
you are now called before the Illuminati.
The Illumi-what-y?
Doctor Strange and America Chavez find themself in another version
of our reality where there is an Illuminati.
PALMER: They're a secret organization that works off-the-grid.
They do the things that the other groups like the Avengers
wouldn't be too happy about.
Your alternate self created the Illuminati
to make difficult decisions that no one else could.
PALMER: To do it in an alternate universe in the Multiverse,
was a really exciting thing
because we get to meet a version of this group in this other universe,
and then we still might get to see an Illuminati of our main MCU one day,
which is also very exciting.
Yeah, that's definitely a case of me just not knowing
what to do with the script and thinking...
Crap.
"We're in the second act. Something's gotta happen.
"What should it be?"
It comes at a point where it's like, "We're a little past halfway.
"Let's break the movie and do something really nuts."
RAIMI: When Marvel first wrote about the Illuminati,
they had their characters.
Doctor Doom was among them,
Doctor Strange, plenty of different characters.
But we had to make a selection.
WALDRON: Who's the most exciting cast of characters?
Do we just pick who we want from the comics?
Obviously, there's different rights' issues,
folks showin' up in other movies.
RAIMI: So, we did take into account what the fans wanted to see.
We wanted the fans to go, "Oh, how cool!" I mean, that really was our goal.
We wanted to give the fans what they wanted.
Just not exactly what they expected.
The Illuminati you meet in this movie is made up of Mordo...
It is very much a different character, but with the same, or a similar essence.
I'm sorry, Stephen.
EJIOFOR: From the beginning of the first film,
this was what the build was.
Strange and Mordo are, at some point, really gonna get into it.
The bill comes due.
Always.
EJIOFOR: Mordo is somebody who took Strange under his wing.
And somehow, part of that is also echoed in the fight,
even though it's in a different universe.
It's still the teacher and student dynamic.
They're not able to use their magic.
So, now we're seeing the Mordo-Strange fight,
but as a street brawl.
It's a great way of expressing character through physicality.
So, I'm always keen to do it, as much as I can, to do it myself.
And that is also fun, you know? I mean, lest we forget.
It's also enjoyable to do.
WALDRON: Alternate Peggy Carter...
Captain Carter.
...that got the serum, that's awesome.
Hayley Atwell is obviously somebody that the fans love.
Great. I loved every bit of that. Badass.
That's what the kids want to see. Cut.
As I understand it, the whole thing came out of the What If...? animation.
So, she became the super-soldier.
We took references, so First Avenger and then Ultron,
along with Ryan's illustration,
which captures the What if...? vintage feel.
And we've used the same fabric as we used on the Age of Ultron
Captain America costume. So, it's not like a skin-fitting suit.
It's very much like Captain America, a combat suit.
Hayley's really happy with the whole structure
and fit and silhouette of it.
We kept Peggy in the Captain America sense-of-fighting-style.
(GRUNTING)
That was a fun sequence to do because we got to use the shield
and it is a little more practical hand-to-hand fighting.
Haven't you had enough?
(SPITS)
Oh, I could do this all day.
Captain Marvel. Defender of the cosmos.
Maria Rambeau, who really stole the show in Captain Marvel...
Call me "young lady" again,
I'm gonna put my foot in a place it's not supposed to be.
WALDRON: To see her put on the suit and kick ass is so cool.
Get the hell out of my universe!
WALDRON: And Lashana brings so much to that character.
CHURCHYARD: Maria Rambeau switching into the Carol Danvers costume,
it's black and silver.
It holds onto all the same design elements of Brie Larson's costume.
But we've transposed it into metallic-silver,
kind of gun-metal color and black. It looks really amazing.
That was great. That's awesome.
WALDRON: And then the big surprise...
BARON: Our final member, Professor Charles Xavier.
It was just an honor for me to get to sit and type dialogue for him
and to introduce him into the world of the MCU.
Everybody making comic-book movies owes him a great debt.
Movin' on, beautifully done.
Thank you, Sir Patrick, for that great concentration.
OCHS: On this film,
I think our biggest challenge was working in a global pandemic.
Really, it's a scheduling issue.
For instance, Wanda's orchard...
RAIMI: Here we go. Roll camera.
It was a really important scene for Sam from the very beginning.
He wanted her to be in this beautiful apple orchard
and we were gonna shoot the movie pre-COVID.
It was gonna work out perfect
because we were gonna be here for the apple blossoms.
Then our schedule shifted.
And because there's been a cold spell in England, the blossoms haven't come yet.
We were like, "What do we do?
"Do we film them on a green screen? Do we do an entirely CG orchard later?
"Or do we go out to the orchard and do we put CG blossoms on it?"
Charlie Wood, our production designer sent an army of people out there
and tied little wire blossoms onto about six trees and then
they added another so many thousand pounds and then they got eight trees
and then ten trees and we went out there and they've shot this beautiful scene now
and no visual effects and you can't tell that these are fabricated blossoms
that have been tied on to these trees by hand.
Sometimes, people may get the impression that these films are
almost entirely virtual, they're not.
We have hundreds of people working on these sets and it takes us
many, many months to build them.
There's nothing better than the real thing
for an actor to be able to understand the environment they're in,
for a director to be able to direct a scene and to understand
where everything is, and how it is.
That's incredibly important as it is for the camera man.
Am I going on action?
WOOD: We try and build as much as we can,
to a point at where it becomes impractical or impossible.
So, if we're building this temple in Kathmandu,
we physically built all the interiors they're walking around,
whether it's corridors, or the interiors of these temple rooms.
We would build those in their entirety, 360 degrees.
You know the set where I am in the bio lab and Doctor Strange and America
are in these glass boxes, and they're trapped in there.
And we couldn't even hear each other.
So, they gave me this weird earpiece because I'm in this glass box.
Here. And I can't hear anything at all.
The sets are so elaborate and built out.
Charlie's vision is to create these wonderful sets,
which have got incredible detail in them.
WOOD: We've got this great team of plasterers and painters
and mold-building and there's all sorts of things we can do.
GIBBS: You've got these stone structures, you've got bronzes,
you've got incredible carved timber. So you go from the Kamar-Taj,
which is Nepalese and then you've got the Sinister Sanctum,
it's this stunning mansion on Bleecker Street.
Then when we get to Wundagore,
you've got an incredible stone temple that's been produced.
This isn't a tomb.
It's a throne.
It was a tremendous challenge. It took teams of really great artists.
That was a really exciting challenge to take on.
Can I and these teams of artists make the audience believe
that they're taking a journey through multiple universes?
Right now, we're in New York City, but we're not actually in New York.
We're at Longcross Studios in England in the UK and Marvel actually built this.
The streets of New York, I mean, look at how amazing it is.
Everything lights up, everything actually works.
It was originally gonna be shot in Cleveland.
Cleveland has stood in for New York for the Avengers movies once before.
And we were all set to go there.
PALMER: And then, of course, due to the COVID pandemic,
travelling to Cleveland seemed like something we weren't gonna be able to do.
Our executive producer, Jamie Christopher, who is a genius in movie-making
and has been around for decades in this business said,
"I think we need a New York backlot set." And I think, at first, people were like,
"I don't know, Jamie." He said, "Guys, just let me prove it to you."
And sure enough, we have a whole small section
that passes for Greenwich Village, it passes for Midtown.
And we got about four blocks of New York streets
with all the set dressing, you know, a lot of it brought from New York.
A car is gonna flip over and I have to try and not react to it.
Kinda nervous. If I do end up reacting, they might have to redo the whole thing.
(SHUDDERS)
RAIMI: And cut!
And I did it. I'm proud of myself. Pat on the back.
A lot of the set has been built to be ratcheted backwards, pushed over,
hydraulically dropped, we got big debris drops coming into the street.
Anything that can be practical, Sam wants practical.
Sam's got Chris Corbould on speed dial, our special effects supervisor.
He can call him in every day. He's saying,
"Chris, can we do this for real? Can we do this for real?"
And, you know, we usually can.
GOMEZ: There was this one specific thing we did in the New York streets.
I'm running and they had all these special effects.
Like, lights were going off, a tree was falling,
cars were crashing into each other, a fire hydrant goes off,
a building completely collapses behind me.
There's more than probably 30-40 different gags in there,
all with a different mechanical mechanism. It's a great moment.
This is probably one of the larger sets.
Probably the largest set on the movie.
And it's probably one of the largest sets I've ever built, I'd say.
But all of these images on the wall shows you
what, in fact, we ended up building.
I saw it when it was just wood and now I'm seeing it all done
and I'm like, "Oh, my gosh." The detail they have put in.
Looks exactly like New York.
It makes you hungry. Because all these restaurants look pretty awesome.
PALMER: It's a testament to Charlie Wood's production design team
and to our executive producer, Jamie Christopher, who came up
with the crazy idea to go build it. It's amazing.
Not only does it pass for New York in our universe,
it passes for New York in multiple universes.
WOOD: This set serves three purposes.
Because we have three different realities in the film.
Sam, you know, I remember being in a meeting with him one day
and he was like, "Gosh, how are we gonna sell to everyone
"that this is the exact same place they were in that universe before?"
And he had an idea of, every scene where they land in New York,
they kind of land in the same alley. So, it was very important for him,
for all of the storyboard artists, and all the previz artists,
across all of the scenes, to really make this exit from the alley
and this turn down the avenue recognizable every time you came to that universe.
The different dimensions are on the same street where originally one was a normal,
busy New York street. The second one was snowbound.
So, it was totally snowed up with weird cars floating in the air
which we hung up on cranes and were rotating.
So, you've got this weird, surreal, deserted New York.
Because we're chopping and changing as we shoot
between these three different periods,
we wouldn't have time to physically change the street.
And one of the easiest ways of doing it is with snow.
Because this is something we can literally do in a day and it's effective, yeah?
And this wanted to be a much more abstract, haunting place.
A look like this is the right way to go, I think.
I mean, it's rather Dickensian.
Eventually they get to the end and the snow turns into black sand
with a wave, from an Atlantic wave coming across the road.
WOOD: With Sanctum Sanctorum. I think we rebuilt the foyer for...
I know I've built it three times.
And I think it's been built by a couple of other films a couple of times.
I think that's number four or number five.
We changed it a bit in this reiteration. We always do.
And then we had to come up with another room, a big room,
based on a kind of Victorian salon with a glass roof
that has become one of the main spaces in the house.
We ended up recreating again the foyer, which is the entrance hall
that leads into the house.
With the Sinister Sanctum, Charlie wanted to do something completely different.
So, he wanted to make it bigger, more unusual, more "out-there."
So, as you open the front door, you come into this black beach.
Architecturally, it could be elongated, it could be expanded, it could be open.
You could be open to the elements.
WOOD: So, it's really kind of our most abstract world.
We tried very hard to make each experience,
each place you go something different.
By the time we'd got to Mount Wundagore,
we felt that this world should be much more primeval than anything else
we were doing on the film.
In the comics, Mount Wundagore is a castle-like structure
in this snowy mountain range
and we looked at a lot of stuff from Petra.
We'd wanted to come up with something which was carved from the mountain.
We ended up finding this beautiful mountain range in the Dolomites, in Italy.
So that was our setting. Then we had this big conversation
with the studio about how it should be adorned,
and all of the inscriptions and all of this language we see in the Darkhold.
So, that was all built into the design of the walls of this temple.
To me, the sets are one of the most magical things that you get to see
on these films, because it's so world-building.
Mount Wundagore, I just thought they did such a beautiful job.
I'm having them ship it overseas, so that I can have it in my backyard.
Another area where we're really referencing the comics on this movie
is for the spells.
So, there's all of these spells that Doctor Strange has
and we need to come up with new spells that haven't been seen somewhere else.
Keeping it fresh is really important.
The characters to be in the situation that they're in
and have a spell from the Marvel history books.
I'm mostly doing the spell
and hand gesture movements for Doctor Strange, Wong.
I've also worked on Infinity War, Endgame.
They saw the work that I did on a previous commercial.
I was doing tutting, which is a very niche dance style
that uses shapes with hands and arms.
They were like, "Well, what could we do with that?"
So, in one of these moves, he is ripping open a bus,
kind of like dissecting it, and anytime something involves
levitation or a movement of matter, this is involved.
So, if you see, like, he's flying, right?
If he's flying with his cloak, he's also using these.
But that's him, he's the matter. So, in this, the bus is the matter
and he's connecting to it. And then he's just splitting it.
In my head, as soon as he's dissected this thing,
his energy is already connected to each and every piece.
So, you'll see, like, he chops one of the legs off 'cause he's dissected it
and he's still connected to it. You can just pick one out and chop it.
He doesn't have to do another spell. He's already connected to it.
(GROANS)
(GRUNTS)
(SCREAMS)
OCHS: That shot had a pretty amazing history.
We started with many, many ideas.
Probably 30 ideas of different environments that could be
something that you've never seen before. Just this ride through the universes.
Our visual effects supervisor, Janek Sirrs.
I mean, he was kind of really the mastermind behind that shot
and a lot of the shots in our movie.
He really came up with the worlds that we wanted to explore
so there was a lot of talk about which world do we wanna do.
Well, here's some cool ideas. Here's an all-bone world
and here's a world that's futuristic. Here's a world where everybody's paint.
OCHS: And I think we ended up with about 15 universes that are in there now.
Lots of little Easter eggs in there. I think the whole thing was challenging
because there's so many elements that go from shot-to-shot
and you couldn't really work it as a punch-in. It had to be one long shot.
MURAWSKI: And then the next part of that was creating the soundtrack for it.
And our sound designer, Jussi Tegelman, really spent a lot of work.
Because, you know, every one should have a different soundscape.
Every one should feel like a different universe.
In the Multiverse, there are alternate versions
of everyone and everything.
So, it gives the characters
the dramatic opportunity to meet themselves.
I'm just one of us.
PALMER: Out of the infinite Doctor Stranges in the Multiverse,
we do get to meet a few in this movie. We've given them different nicknames.
One is Defender Strange.
The first Strange that we meet, Defender Strange,
we wanted him to be a little bit of a swashbuckler.
Little bit of an adventurer.
Lot of the fabrics in the costume are like vintage fabrics from regions of Pakistan.
I think he was a little more of a fun-loving,
Patrick Swayze in Point Break kind of Strange.
Somewhere out there I had a ponytail.
WALDRON: You've got then the Strange in the universe with the Illuminati.
He was Sorcerer Supreme in this universe. Which was probably even less fun.
The look goes back to earlier comic versions
where Strange had a blue cloak.
We're doing the biggest collar ever seen so far.
WALDRON: He was a little more emotionally buttoned-up, maladjusted.
Probably spent more time negging Christine.
I guess it worked because she didn't get married in that universe.
And then you have Sinister Strange.
-Are you happy, Stephen? -What?
CHURCHYARD: So, it is essentially the same costume that he wore in Endgame,
and so, we've repurposed the disciple costume and aged it down much more,
and created a texture treatment to it.
WALDRON: With Benedict, because he is Doctor Strange,
it's been such a collaboration from start to finish.
I just really wanted to push on the darker edge
of what was a potential face-off in this film.
The gist was more thrilling, was more sinister, more adventurous.
The artwork that was already in place, very early on for this, is amazing.
This picture of the Sanctum kind of bleeding off into infinity.
It's really good fun.
RAIMI: And then we have Dead Strange.
Our Strange was trapped in an alternate universe.
And he had to get back to our universe to help save America.
But he couldn't get there, except by Dreamwalking.
This ugly spell where you can take your spirit
and send it across the universe
and inhabit your alt self in that universe.
Unfortunately, the only version of himself in that reality he needs to get to
is a corpse,
which does lead to very Evil Dead-ish, very Sam Raimi hero, Dead Strange.
When we pitched Dead Strange to Kevin, we made sure that we partnered it
with an even stupider pitch.
What if there was a blob version of Strange?
Because we knew that that's how we're gonna get a Zombie Strange.
It was a little bit of a learning curve. How do you pilot a dead body?
I wanted that character to have conflict. What problems could a Zombie Strange have?
Well, in my mind, he was doing something that was against the laws of the universe.
That there could be demons that would try and stop him.
But he is Doctor Strange. He's Master of the Mystic Arts.
Nobody, certainly not a bunch of sprits or demons, can stop him.
So, he takes these spirits and demons and weaves them together
into a Cloak of Souls that he uses to propel him forward into his battle.
Now, he is their master.
An evil book, full of evil magic.
A vintage Oldsmobile that couldn't possibly pass a smog test.
A handsome dark-haired devil with a chin that could kill.
If all of this sounds very familiar,
then I'd say you have extremely good taste in movies.
But listen, my friend Sam Raimi was dropping so-called Easter eggs
into his films when cellphones were the size of house cats,
and Sam has carried on that tradition with his latest cinematic opus.
So, keep your peepers properly peeled during the movie,
and you're bound to come across
what we in the biz like to call Raimi-isms.
You know, I think the genius of Sam is he's able to balance all those genres.
This time, it's gonna take more than killing me to kill me.
MURAWSKI: And for years, it was a huge problem with the studios.
They said, "You have to pick a lane."
And they didn't understand Sam's genre-bending
and they didn't understand the tone shifts and everything else.
And that's something I really give Marvel credit for, you know.
They got behind it. Played more to Sam's strengths.
So, over the course of the shooting, they kept adding more horror elements.
When Kevin Feige announced that he wanted to bring a little bit of a horror element
to Doctor Strange, that was interesting to me.
I love to dabble in horror.
It's always been a fun aspect of movie-making for me.
I saw Evil Dead 1 when it came out. I just thought the movie was incredible.
And Sam always has a lot of cool motifs that he puts in his movies time and again.
I mean, you can trace all these things back.
Sam used a lot of the same people from Evil Dead 1.
I'm Bruce Campbell and I'm playing the role of the pizza guy.
(EXCLAIMS ANGRILY)
I'm glad that's over. (GROANS)
You know, we spoke with the head of Marvel and threatened him
and said that he couldn't do any Marvel without me, especially if Sam's directing.
MURAWSKI: It's good to see those guys work together.
They have the kind of shorthand that only comes from
working together since you're ten years old.
CAMPBELL: It's important for the editors to always have stuff to cut out.
That's what I'm providing. Especially Academy Award...
-Yes, it is. -Yeah. See?
Especially Academy Award winning editors. They love to play cutty-cut-cut.
"Oh, look at me cut, look at me cut." Yeah, see, he's already doing it.
-I'm already cut. -Trying to keep 'em honest.
He was on the cutting room floor but we ended up
putting him back in at the last minute.
CAMPBELL: Thanks for nothin'.
Unbelievable.
MURAWSKI: Bruce was almost like a prop for Sam.
He could tell Bruce to do anything.
"Bruce, throw yourself on the ground. Hit yourself over the head with a pan."
Yeah, I gotta go beat myself up some more.
(GRUNTS)
Yeah, cheers.
And then, I think, once Sam started to work with, like, professional actors,
they weren't so malleable.
When I heard Sam was directing this movie, I said,
"You know, Sam, you realize that you're working with an actual actor?
"You might actually have to kinda get ready?
"He's not just gonna make silly faces for you, like I did for years.
"He might ask questions about motivation, so you better step up your game.
"I saw Sherlock Holmes. That boy can act."
(GRUNTS)
If he looks at me, I always never make eye contact.
I always pretend like I'm looking at my script.
I know all the tricks.
"Can I get you anything, Mr. Cumberbatch?" And if he screws up a line, I own it.
"Benedict, that was me.
"That was my mistake. Sorry."
I got this all figured out.
MURAWSKI: Of all the directors I've worked with, Sam is one of the best
working with the actors.
He understands the power of a good shot.
And the choreography between the camera and the actor.
He just has a really good sense and his eye on every single detail of the film.
For me, the fun has been just how he moves the camera.
Stuff that's really inventive and really fun.
MURAWSKI: Sam always has a lot of cool mirror gags in his movies,
from Evil Dead 1.
The whole scene where the Scarlet Witch is caught in the mirror trap
and she was using the puddles, and the gong as a mirror to get out of.
The mirror thing is something he's always been interested in,
and the duality of the characters. Of course, the Delta 88.
WOOD: We got Sam Raimi's car, yeah? The Delta 88.
Sam's fans are gonna love this bit.
The Delta 88 is the ultimate Easter egg.
When I was a film student, we'd always love to see the Delta 88
in the Sam Raimi movies.
In Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2,
I remember walking into the stage one day and going, "There's the car!"
Yeah, the '73 Delta 88.
It's been in every one of Sam's movies, including his western.
Yeah, he had the body taken off and put a wagon over the chassis
so he could say (IMITATING RAIMI) "It's been in all my movies."
WOOD: We actually got a bloody great big crane and puppeteered it down the street
in this kind of snowstorm.
And you get to see a few versions of the car.
I've done everything I can to destroy that car,
because I don't appreciate Sam's infatuation with it.
He won't really let me near it 'cause he knows
I will silently slit the seats.
And one day, he might just wake up and it's gone.
(LAUGHS)
The amazing thing is, it's not even a fake version of the car. That's the car.
It was actually the car that we drove in high school.
And I know when you open the door and the key is in it, it goes...
(MAKES WHINY NOISE)
But I have to say, I hate it, but I love it.
When I sit back in that car,
you really do, honestly, not even exaggerating,
you get a flood of memories that come back from that piece of crap.
It's always fun to work with Sam. He's really funny and entertaining
and he's very serious about things, but at the same time,
-doesn't take things seriously. -(LAUGHS)
That is fine. Let us go. Let's go, you animals.
I think one of the things that's most fun for me about watching one of Sam's films
and working on Sam's films is just the joy that he has in the process,
in the art form.
I don't know anybody that quite loves cinema the way that Sam does.
Can I have even more of, "It feels good to be back."
-Okay. -"This is who I am."
-Okay. -You ready?
WALDRON: I've learned so much from him.
Just the way he conducts the orchestra of the movie,
working with me on script pages, directing the cameras,
swinging across a set, you know, working with the actors.
I love that elegance. That was beautiful. Perfectly timed with the move too.
That's great, man.
I want you to play this more vulnerable than I've ever seen.
I love all that emotion. Give me a double.
All right, let's take it back to one.
WALDRON: Every day, when we're starting in on a new scene,
it's like, let's look at this
as if this is the most important scene in the movie.
NOLAN: He is just so aware of every aspect of filmmaking.
I think a few weeks ago, Bob Murawski, the other editor who's been with Sam
for 25-30 years said something like, "If Sam sat in every single chair,
"he would be able to pick it up and do it right away,"
'cause he's just so aware of what every person on a film is doing.
Sam has fostered such a collaborative environment,
Sam really wanted to make sure that we had the best ideas on the table.
-RAIMI: I think it's gonna work. -I think so.
Yeah, I can't ask for better.
Guys, thank you very much. This was a great place to live and work.
You guys were wonderful.
So, so professional.
I really appreciate that, and I've learned a lot from so many of you,
made some good friends, and the movie will be a lot of fun
thanks to all your hard work, and inventiveness, and craftsmanship.
Thank you very much. I salute all of you.
MAN: Thank you.
(ALL APPLAUDING)
MCADAMS: It's a real honor to be in the family.
So many talented people all working together
to take people on this incredible journey.
It does feel like one of the biggest things Marvel's ever done.
It's pretty unfathomably exciting to be the test pilot for all things Multiversal.
We've got this amazing canvas of imagination to sort of bounce off ideas
of what the human condition is and what the challenges that we all face are
and what the best version of ourselves could possibly be.
Protecting America Chavez becomes not just about protecting his universe
but protecting his friend.
He's capable of emotional growth in a way he was never able to demonstrate before.
CUMBERBATCH: What he comes to realize in that relationship
is he has to empower her,
he has to give up control himself. It's not about him.
It's actually about somebody else.
Of course, being an egotistical hero, he's scrambling around in every universe
for the answer for the weapon, for the surgeon's knife
in order to save the day and not realizing all the time
that the weapon is right in front of him.
It's someone who needs love, trust and encouragement.
I think the lesson for Strange is really how to be the best version of yourself,
and it's not necessarily about self-perfection.
It can be about helping someone else
rather than thinking that you can do it all yourself.
A real hero has to believe in others.
This is the only way.
RAIMI: He allows himself to believe in America Chavez and she saves the day.
(GRUNTS)
And that's the beauty of these comic books, these heroes,
is that they show us the people that we can be, what we're capable of.
Wanda doesn't actually do the work that maybe someone like Strange
is gonna eventually have to do, which is, take a look at our surroundings
and how we treat one another and find something that is in front of us
as opposed to what we are leaping different universes for.
Where does it leave the MCU? We've blown the lid on the Multiverse now.
PALMER: The Multiverse is going to be so big in the future of the MCU,
primarily because of the events of this movie.
After Infinity War and Endgame,
Doctor Strange was poised to be the chief protector of the MCU,
but now, in this movie,
we see Doctor Strange become not just the protector of the MCU,
but the protector of the Multiverse within the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
What's compelling about where he's left is that third eye opens,
and now there's this evil awakened within him.
I think it begs the question,
is what makes Doctor Strange happy? Could it possibly be not being a hero?
Marvel is always about finding the humanity within the icon, right?
Finding the flaws beneath the cape or the mask or the armor,
and learning about who the human is inside it.
PALMER: Based on this ending,
who knows where that could take us?
Into the Dark Dimension and beyond, I don't know.
RAIMI: We're trying to give the audience a mind-expanding experience,
something that makes them talk about the nature of reality in a fun way
and ask questions like great comic books or science fiction can do.
I don't know about you, but being here today,
I had an epiphany of sorts.
I realized that making a film is not unlike conjuring another facet
of the Multiverse.
It's about creating an alternate reality from the ground up,
where time and space can bend any which way
according to the whims of those pulling the strings behind the scenes.
I know that might sound a little lofty, but well, I'm a lofty kinda guy.
This is Bruce Campbell saying farewell, until we meet again in the next dimension.