Last week, the Doctor Strange teaser trailer debuted during Jimmy Kimmel Live!, giving fans their first glimpse of the Master of the Mystic Arts in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, like most teaser trailers, this first preview gave fans just a quick taste of what the movie will offer, mainly focusing on Stephen Strange’s background before he starts learning the ways of magic. Doctor Strange co-writer C. Robert Cargill recently drove this point home further, saying that it only scratched the surface of what’s coming.
While visiting The Sunday Service, Cargill mentioned that the Doctor Strange teaser trailer only provided the briefest of looks at the movie’s insanity and its major players. He said:
This teaser is, it’s the definition of a teaser. You are only getting a like a small taste of just how crazy this movie gets. We have only just the slightest hints of magic in there. There are major characters you don’t even glimpse in that trailer, there is so much stuff going on, that this thing is just nutty, the stuff they let us do, I can’t believe they let us do it.
At approximately two minutes in length, the Doctor Strange teaser trailer felt like a mix of Batman Begins and Inception. With the first half focusing on Stephen Strange’s life when he was an accomplished surgeon, it was in the latter half that we saw a lot of weird magical feats, from The Ancient One striking Stephen Strange into his astral form to that shot of three versions of the same city moving away from each other in the same space. That was some freaky stuff, so to hear C. Robert Cargill say that that’s only a little bit of what moviegoers can look forward to gives more hope that Doctor Strange will be Marvel’s most psychedelic and visually trippy entry yet.
As far as characters who appeared in the preview, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Stephen Strange was obviously the focus, showing his surgical career, the car accident that irreparably damaged his hands and him finding Tilda Swinton’s Ancient One for a cure. She couldn’t provide him that, but she did open him up to the world of mysticism. We also caught brief glimpses of Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Karl Mordo, Rachel McAdams’ character and what looked like Mads Mikkelsen’s character, though it was hard to tell with the makeup and far away shots. We’ll likely see more of them in the next trailer, along with these other major characters Cargill is talking about, which hopefully includes Wong, Stephen Strange’s valet. It’s also worth reminding that our only glimpse of him in Stephen Strange as a superhero was at the very end walking up steps in the Sanctum Sanctorum wearing his trademark cloak and his back turned to the camera. Marvel, next time give us a clear shot of the Sorcerer Supreme wielding his powers against the forces of darkness!
Doctor Strange will cast its spell in theaters on November 4.
