Interview (Written): Scott Derrickson (“Doctor Strange”)

A /film interview with Doctor Strange co-writer and director Scott Derrickson:

This morning we asked Kevin [Fiege] what sort of subgenre this movie falls into. And he said supernatural, which feels very vague. But just from what we’ve been able to sort of see, it looks like sort of like a martial arts movie in a way. I mean, is there like a heavy martial arts movie influence here?

Scott Derrickson: Yeah. There’s definitely a martial arts influence on the movie. Because that is the action that I like for starters. It is also martial arts is the kind of action that does tie in well to the supernatural. There’s a whole subgenre within martial arts cinema. The supernatural martial arts movie. Particularly within Asian cinema. And I felt like when it came to fighting in the movie that just made sense to certainly to go in that direction and stay away from gunfire and things like that. And to avoid having fighting be the casting of bolts of light. That was another thing where I feel like I really feel like magic has been, we’ve been drawing on the Emperor in Star Wars for over 30 years, you know, and so we gotta start doing this some other way. You know, the magic power, the utilization of magic power. But there’s some good fighting in it. But that fighting is again, always within a context of something I think more fantastical and more surreal and more mind trippy than just the supernatural action of combat. I think that it’s always supernatural action, combat, fighting within a larger surreal canvas. That was the thing I always wanted to preserve so that we’re never just watching fighting.

Scott Derrickson

I’ve seen on your Twitter feed lots of great art, well actually Ditko art and a lot of stuff. When you’re adapting a story like this and so much lore and so much visual cues from the comics, what is the most important personally? What did you really wanna make sure what was in this film, whether it’s a caution piece or a set piece, design or something like that?

Scott Derrickson: That’s a great question. That’s a really incisive question. For my love for the comics I think is probably I’ll start by saying this. I love the comics so much and I grew up reading Marvel Comics. And Doctor Strange is my favorite comic book character probably I think honestly the only comic book I would feel personally suited to work on. And for me it was my long-standing love for Doctor Strange comes from first of all, the fantastical visual imagery of all the comics, particularly the early Ditko stuff, Into Shamballa, The Oath, a lot of the images that I have picked are from those three sources. And then individual issues.

Thematically the loneliness of that character, I always really liked the idea of a character who had gone through so much trauma and was placed into a position between our world and other worlds, other dimensions literally. That’s a lonely position. I like that.

But I think my that as I’ve gotten older, my continuing love for Doctor Strange has been that he is a character who transforms through suffering. He goes through this gauntlet and for me that’s kind of the most powerful thing. He goes through this gauntlet of trauma and suffering, going all the way back to his childhood in the comics. But then he appropriates that suffering in a certain way that limits him. And then he goes through the loss of everything in a really painful, you know, unbearable way. And eventually finds self-transcendence in something mystical.

That’s Doctor Strange. You know, and I love that. And I think that again, in getting to why I think I got the job, I think it’s my genuine love for that. That was that somehow connected to what I didn’t know it at the time, but I think it really connected to what Marvel wanted the movie to be. And when I came in, I talked about Doctor Strange in those terms and for me it’s like that’s the only way I could make the movie. You know, that and I had set piece ideas already about how to make the movie as weird, as visually weird in this day and age as the Ditko comics were at their time.

A trailer for Doctor Strange:

For the rest of the /film interview, go here.