Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange makes an electric appearance.

Doctor Strange | Marvel tries its hand at casting a new type of movie spell. It’s a kind of magic...

As someone once said, what doesn’t kill you simply makes you… stranger. Lately, chinks in Marvel’s geek-plated front have included Ant-Man’s undeservedly diminished box-office haul and faint grumbles about Age Of Ultron’s tight-squeezed plot. But worry not: after Civil War’s screen-packing ruck, a Doctor will be here to help.

Building on sci-fi and Quantum Realm detours, Marvel will extend itself again with Doctor Strange, the mighty magician with the arrogance/ability to reshape the MCU. And the word is that the perfectly cast Benedict Cumberbatch will have plenty of multidimensional, universe-bending tricks (and sparklers, going by the profile pic) up those capacious cloak sleeves.

Much ambiguity surrounds how this portrait of the Sorcerer Supreme (aka Stephen) will unfold, but this much we know. Strange is a surgeon who, having wrecked his hands in a car crash, embraces the mystical healing tuition of the Yoda-esque Ancient One (Tilda Swinton, pleasingly gender-swapped from the comics). Also involved is another Ms Ancient pupil. Baron Karl Mordo will be played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who’s keeping mum on whether he becomes Strange’s nemesis in this origin story. “Oh, he’s a very complex character that, really, I don’t think can be nailed down either way, you know,” Ejiofor says. “I guess it’s something to experience, is what I’d say.”

Overseeing that experience is sci-fi/horror helmer Scott Derrickson ( Sinister, The Day The Earth Stood Still), who isn’t giving his tricks away, this Inception- ish promise aside: “What you can expect… Is a mind-trip action film.” You can also expect Hannibal’s Mads Mikkelsen as a stillunnamed villain (Nightmare?), Rachel McAdams as a still-unnamed medic/audience PoV (Night Nurse?), and more evidence that Marvel knows better than to buckle to formula. “It’s definitely not going to be like any of the other films,” McAdams has teased. Could it be… magic? KH

‘It’s not going to be like any of the other Marvel films’ rachel mcadams