Fanboy director hits his target
Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson reveals to why he’s the ideal person to helm Marvel’s latest adventure.
Scott Derrickson is unashamed to say he’s a Marvel fanboy. So naturally the 39-year-old American writer-director is pretty excited at being in charge of the company’s most ambitious movie yet.
Named after the character created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in 1963, Doctor Strange is the story of a brilliant, yet vain neurosurgeon whose life is transformed after a car-crash and an encounter with an ancient practitioner of mystical arts. Not only is the conceit far more trippy than the stories surrounding the likes of Iron Man and Thor, but it introduces the idea of multiple-universes.
It’s also a tale that has taken 30 years to reach the big screen, with the likes of Wes Craven, Guillermo Del Toro, David S Goyer and Alex Cox attached to previous incarnations of the project.
Former Marvel Entertainment boss Avi Arad once joked that it would take the ‘‘Jerry Garcia of writers’’ to bring it to life, a suggestion that elicits a hearty laugh from Derrickson when I put it to him. A university background in both theology and philosophy certainly helped, he admits, as did his cinematic CV, which includes religious horrors The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Deliver Us From Evil. However, he’s convinced it was his Marvel knowledge that won him the gig.
‘‘When I first met with [current Marvel Studios boss] Kevin Feige, I slapped my Marvel wallet, which I’d carried for two years, down on the table. I had to go through eight meetings with him to get the job and, if I’m honest, I think I actually got it because of this metaphysical interest that I have and I think he saw within my work a combined interest in realistic grounded characters and good dramatic stories that are merged with the extremely fantastical. That’s what Doctor Strange called on and it was an amazing thing to be able to take the Marvel Universe into that kind of weirdness.’’
When asked why he thinks it has taken so long to make it to the big screen, Derrickson has no hesitation in attributing it to the only relatively recent advances in visual effects technology.
‘‘I don’t think that an adaptation of Doctor Strange that was truly dedicated to the comics could have been made even five years ago. It was certainly my intention all along to be inspired primarily by that Steve Ditko artwork from the early Strange comics – artwork that is progressive, psychedelically fresh and still cuttingedge. Then, once we figured out where we were going to go ‘full Ditko’ in the movie, my attitude was to make sure that all the other scenes were fresh, innovative and new, but with a 1960s-mindset. That doesn’t mean being visually nostalgic, but attempting to create new mindbending imagery to match a story that is ultimately about growth and mysticism. And my God, what could be better than that.’’
As for finding an actor who could take audiences on Strange’s journey through the ‘‘gauntlet of trauma’’ that transforms the skilful, yet shallow Stephen Vincent Strange into a completely different individual? There was only one man who fitted the bill for Derrickson. ’’To play Strange, you have to have high intelligence, be articulate and think critically, but also have a depth of feeling and emotional understanding of humanity. Benedict [Cumberbatch] just seemed like the only actor that I would buy being able to achieve all of those things.’’
He says the pair found themselves in sync on most things, especially when there was talk of shifting a key part of the shoot away from Nepal after the devastating earthquake there in April 2015. ‘‘When we visited Kathmandu while scouting locations, I found it unbelievably, disorientatingly beautiful, evocative and unique in its own way. But when there were safety concerns, I remember having an email exchange with Benedict, where we both agreed that we had to film there now because of the beautiful people there who seemed to really appreciate us. Benedict also has history with them – he went there as a young man.
‘‘We know that their tourism just plummeted after that earthquake and is still down. Maybe though we’ll be one of the first movies to really put Kathmandu on the map and make people want to go there.’’
Now, as the film rolls out across the world over the next week, Derrickson is relaxed about what audiences and critics make of it.
‘‘From this point on, how it does critically, how it does at the box office and what people say about it, is out of my hands. It exists on its own now. All I know is I set the target for this movie far and high and I hit the target I was aiming at. And that’s the only real reward an artist gets. I’ve missed before, so I know what that feels like. I kind of want to finish this press tour and just forget about it. Just let the film go and let it have the life it’s going to have.’’
Doctor Strange
(M) is now screening. Review, E26