Benedict Cumberbatch debuts new Doctor Strange trailer at Comic-Con
It feels like forever since Benedict Cumberbatch did something nerdy/dorky/fan-baity. He used to be the king of nerd-baiting, but I suspect Sophie Hunter made him stop. Or Bendy just grew up a bit. But Bendy did attend Comic-Con this year for the big Marvel panel, and he and his Doctor Strange costars did a lot of press. Rachel McAdams was there, as was Tilda Swinton, Benedict Wong, Mads Mikkelsen and Chiwetel Ejiofor. That’s the core cast of Doctor Strange, and Strange is Marvel’s next big franchise, or so Marvel hopes. DS comes out in November of this year, and they dropped a new full-length trailer at Comic-Con. So many new trailers! This one tells us more about the story than the first trailer, and we get to see more of Mads’ villian, and more of Chiwetel. Here’s the trailer:
A few thoughts… I think that Tilda Swinton’s casting as The Ancient One is still going to blow up in Marvel executives’ faces. I don’t think Benedict’s face merkin looks believable at all. And there are more than a few effects that look like outtakes from Inception. The cape thing is really cool, and I am enjoying the costume overall. My biggest irritation (beyond Tilda and the whitewashing) is that Chiwetel’s supporting role seems to be a particularly outdated film trope (literally, his character is “magical”).
Benedict also chatted about his version of Doctor Strange and who Strange is in the Marvel-comic world. Some assorted quotes:
Strange is rich: “He’s recognizably of our world. He’s rich but he’s not a Stark. His past definitely informs who he is, as it obviously does with Tony Stark. And there’s a rich degree of backstory which I’m sure will just keep coming up through our films and the Avengers as well I guess. But the point is you recognize him hopefully as a trope, a type. Very alpha male, very arrogant. Brilliant at his job, but human. Alone at the top of his castle. It’s very Xandau-like, his life. He’s created a bubble of insularity. This is all about him going from a place where he thinks he knows it all to realizing he knows nothing.”
Strange’s arc, the Avengers: “There’s nothing normal about his character arc in this. By the end of the film, he’s a superhero. He’s kind of an in-brackets ‘defender.’ He hold stuff together in a way that’s not always immediately obvious and doesn’t always involve fighting a lot bad guys and stray bullets. There is that but he kind of tidies up the universe and makes sure nothing breaks through the boundaries… He is more important than all the Avengers put together. I’m going to get in a lot of trouble.”
Benedict was joking when he said Strange is more important than all of the other Avengers. There were rumors that at least one of the Avengers would make a cameo in Doctor Strange too, although I don’t know if that actually happened. After all, there were rumors that Strange would make a cameo in Captain America: Civil War and nothing came of that.
Also: The new Sherlock Season 4 trailer. This looks… good? It looks interesting, I’ll say that. It doesn’t look like they’re doing wacky sh-t for fan-service, how about that?
Benedict’s hair looks really great these days. It’s a shame he hides it under that fug hat, like in these photos from LAX ahead of Comic-Con.
Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.
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