A Vibrant First Look at Marvel’s Doctor Strange

Entertainment Weekly has delivered a nice round of scoops to kick off this week after Christmas, usually a relative dead zone for movie news, including this fantastically colorful first look at Marvel’s Doctor Strange.

In 2016, Marvel will make its first dive into the world of mysticism and magic with Doctor Strange, which hits theaters in November. The Benedict Cumberbatch led film has already assembled an incredible cast, signed on a cerebral filmmaker in Scott Derrickson and now we get to see that it’s going to be a very weird and wonderful visual experience.

Here are a few of the new photos from EW’s upcoming “First Looks” Issue:

The most striking thing about these new photos is the color palette the movie intends to use. It’s very reminiscent of James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which was another Marvel movie that had to do a lot of world-building, as it was the first one to leave earth. Doctor Strange will follow suit and become the first Marvel movie to leave the dimension. The hope is that the directorial choice of Derrickson, which feels similar to that of Gunn in his ability to let a movie breath within a specific genre, will be one that propels audiences into uncharted territory in which the only familiar thing is that kinetic Marvel energy.

To his credit, Cumberbatch looks as great as Dr. Stephen Strange as we could have hoped. That costume is wonderful and even in still photo form, you can get a sense of what Cumberbatch calls the “balletic” way that Strange is able to create magic. “These gestures are ways of creating the magic. It’s a beautiful thing, it’s balletic, it’s very dynamic,” he told EW from the set. “And once the boys in the backroom get to work on it, there’s going to be crazy s–t going on.”

EW also confirmed a few interesting tidbits in their preview piece:

• Mads Mikkelsen (Hannibal) has been confirmed for the yet-unnamed villain, described by Marvel chief Kevin Feige as “a sorcerer who breaks off into his own sect. [He] believes that the Ancient One (played by Tilda Swinton) is just protecting her own power base and that the world may be better off if we were to allow some of these other things through.”
• The character being played by Rachel McAdams has been confirmed, though still nameless. “Rachel McAdams plays a fellow surgeon that has a history with Strange and is his sort of lynchpin to his old life, once he steps into he role of a sorcerer,” explained Kevin Feige. “She is someone he connects with at the beginning, and reconnects with, and helps anchor his humanity.” Cumberbatch would not confirm whether or not she plays a love interest, but he did say that “if I hit on her more than the Ancient One, put it like that.”