Doctor Strange

[GeneChing]

This just got interesting to me. ;)


Martial Artist Scott Adkins Joins Benedict Cumberbatch in Marvel’s ‘Doctor Strange’ (Exclusive) (http://www.thewrap.com/martial-artist-scott-adkins-joins-benedict-cumberbatch-in-marvels-doctor-strange-exclusive/)
MOVIES | By Jeff Sneider on November 13, 2015 @ 1:19 pm Follow @theinsneider

http://www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Scott-Adkins.jpg
LONDON, ENGLAND - AUGUST 13: Scott Adkins attends the UK premiere for The Expendables 2 at Simpsons On The Empire Leicester Square on August 13, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Dave Hogan/Getty Images)

Scott Derrickson is directing the comic book movie, which co-stars Rachel McAdams and Tilda Swinton
Martial artist Scott Adkins has joined the cast of Marvel’s “Doctor Strange,” an individual familiar with the project has told TheWrap.
Marvel declined to comment, while representatives for Adkins did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Scott Derrickson is directing the movie, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, Mads Mikkelsen, Tilda Swinton, Michael Stuhlbarg and Amy Landecker.
Cumberbatch plays neurosurgeon Stephen Strange, who after a horrific car accident discovers a hidden world of magic and alternate dimensions.
Adkins’ role is being kept under wraps, though insiders suggest he’ll have several major action scenes featuring hand-to-hand combat.
Kevin Feige is producing “Doctor Strange,” which was written by Jon Spaihts. Production is currently under way, Disney will release the comic book movie on Nov. 4, 2016.
Adkins is a world renowned martial artist whose movie credits include “The Bourne Ultimatum,” “The Expendables 2” and Kathryn Bigelow‘s “Zero Dark Thirty.” He’ll soon be seen in Sacha Baron Cohen‘s spy comedy “The Brothers Grimsby” and Ariel Vromen‘s “Criminal.” He’s represented by the Gersh Agency and LINK Entertainment.

[GeneChing]

JANUARY 21, 2016 3:09pm PT by Borys Kit
'The Martian' Actor Nabs Key 'Doctor Strange' Role (Exclusive) (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/martian-actor-nabs-key-doctor-858155?utm_source=twitter)

http://cdn2.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/scale_crop_768_433/2016/01/benedict_wong_0.jpg
Benedict Wong Getty Images

The movie is currently in production and heading toward a release date of November 4, 2016.
Doctor Strange has found his manservant.

Benedict Wong has been cast as Wong, the good doctor’s trusty sidekick in Marvel’s Doctor Strange.

Benedict Cumberbatch is starring as Marvel’s Sorcerer Supreme in the movie that is currently in production and heading toward a release date of November 4, 2016.

Wong, the character, is a Marvel mainstay, having been around since the 1960s. He performs healing duties, assists in occult matters, is knowledgeable in martial arts, and tends to Strange’s affairs. Among his functions is to look after Strange’s body when the hero is astral projecting himself into other dimensional planes.

Wong, the actor, joins Rachel McAdams Tilda Swinton, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Mads Mikkelsen, among others on the roll call.

Wong did some scene-stealing work when he played a Jet Propulsion Laboratory director in Ridley Scott's Oscar-nominated The Martian and he stars as Kublai Khan in Netflix’s costume drama Marco Polo.

Other credits include Prometheus and Kick-Ass 2.

I really like his work in Marco Polo (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?62877-Marco-Polo-Netflix-Original-Series).

[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E6suI1YMHk

[mickey]

Greetings,

WTF? This is a fukkin UK movie. Where are the American actors? It is as if American actors cannot give a Marvel movie any kind of dignity. And it is not just Dr Strange. Take a good look at the large number of UK actors popping up in major roles for the Marvel movies.

It sucks MAJOR. I would rather see Ming Na Wen or Russell Wong as Dr Strange. They both could really carry that character well.


mickey

[Jimbo]

It's not only Marvel movies that have such a preponderance of British (or Australian) actors. It seems as if there are more of them in American TV and movies than American actors. And it's not only when the filmmakers want an accent. Half the 'American' characters in TV and film are played by British/Australian actors trained to use an American accent. I suppose it's more economical to train British actors to speak like an American than to actually hire equally qualified American actors.:rolleyes: It's OK once in a while, but the sheer numbers are ridiculous.

[mickey]

Greetings Jimbo,

Maybe it is economic in that they are looking to gain dollars from an international market. It is not at all supportive to those actors in the USA who have devoted so much time to their craft. If there was a need to have more "fresh" faces, the American theater industry can definitely provide that. There are even those who do soap operas who can act with the best of them.

Speaking of soap operas, there was one that was well received in Europe: "Santa Barbara". That soap was off the chain.

mickey

[Cataphract]

I think it's sad when artists are judged by their nationality.

[Jimbo]

I think it's sad when artists are judged by their nationality.

It's obvious they ARE being judged...to be preferable. They are being shown almost overwhelming favoritism. Either that or American actors are simply inferior performers.

Let's be clear: My comments are not from a place of prejudice or nationalism. And I do realize that the film industry in general is about profit, not fairness. But how do you think British actors would feel if a high degree of British movies and TV series consistently starred imported American actors portraying British characters? Consider that.

[mickey]

It's obvious they ARE being judged...to be preferable. They are being shown almost overwhelming favoritism. Either that or American actors are simply inferior performers.


Yes. I agree with this.

mickey

[Cataphract]

I'm impartial in this. I care as much for the feelings of American actors as for Ugandan actors who don't get many roles in block buster movies at all. The biggest part of the audience probably won't care, as American movies are consumed world wide. Britain has a great acting tradition. Maybe Charles Chaplin started this trend in America? Who knows.

Mr. Cumberbatch seems to be the perfect fit for this role.

[mickey]

Greetings Cataphract,

Time will tell with this movie.

mickey

[Jimbo]

I'm impartial in this. I care as much for the feelings of American actors as for Ugandan actors who don't get many roles in block buster movies at all. The biggest part of the audience probably won't care, as American movies are consumed world wide. Britain has a great acting tradition. Maybe Charles Chaplin started this trend in America? Who knows.

Mr. Cumberbatch seems to be the perfect fit for this role.

And I'm sure it'll be a blockbuster. Perhaps he is perfect for it.

And mickey and I were simply pointing out a truth. Of course nobody will care. I certainly don't expect them to. If you've ever done any acting, then you're aware of how competitive and difficult it is just to get hired for scraps.

True, Britain has a great tradition of theatrical acting. So does the States, especially NYC.

[Cataphract]

If you've ever done any acting, then you're aware of how competitive and difficult it is just to get hired for scraps.

I haven't, but I happen to know some actors. Most semi-professional, but also professionals. It's tough everywhere, and I assume GB is no exception. Who would have thought that Hollywood couldn't accommodate a couple of dozen British actors.

That "enough is enough" argument ruffles a feather because I hear it day in and day out because of the refugee situation, and I don't feel it makes as much sense in either case. I watch many American productions and never thought them to be overly British. Maybe we simply have different levels of sensitivity in this matter. No hard feelings.

[Jimbo]

That "enough is enough" argument ruffles a feather because I hear it day in and day out because of the refugee situation, and I don't feel it makes as much sense in either case. I watch many American productions and never thought them to be overly British. Maybe we simply have different levels of sensitivity in this matter. No hard feelings.

No hard feelings at all. And as far as the refugee situations going on around the world, for the majority of them I feel they're in such a difficult situation and doing whatever they can to survive. Sure, there are bad people in every group, but that includes EVERY group, here as well. I don't believe for a minute that they're the majority. OTOH, I can also see the POV of many people in smaller European countries who feel that the numbers of people streaming in are overwhelming. It's a difficult situation with no simple answers. But I don't connect that at all with my observations on British or Australian actors' seeming preferential treatment in the US, and it's nothing against the actors themselves.

Sorry for going so far OT.

[GeneChing]

APRIL 15, 2016 3:57pm PT by Rebecca Sun, Graeme McMillan
Why Did 'Doctor Strange' and 'Ghost in the Shell' Whitewash Their Asian Characters? (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/doc-strange-whitewashing-shell-884385)

http://cdn5.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/scale_crop_768_433/2016/04/doctor_strange_and_ghost_in_the_shell_split.jpg
Marvel's 'Doctor Strange'; Paramount and DreamWorks' 'Ghost in the Shell' Courtesy of Film Frame; Paramount Pictures

This week in cultural appropriation: Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton and a conversation between two THR writers.

This week, Marvel dropped the first teaser trailer for Doctor Strange, based on its comic series about a critically injured neurosurgeon who travels to the Himalayas to learn mystic arts from a powerful sorcerer known as the Ancient One. Two days later, Paramount and DreamWorks released the first image from Ghost in the Shell, their live-action adaptation of the Japanese manga about an anti-cyberterror task force set in mid-21st century Japan and led by cyborg Major Motoko Kusanagi.

On paper, it reads like a great week for Asian representation in Hollywood — but the Ancient One and the Major are played, respectively, by Tilda Swinton and Scarlett Johansson. And so these two projects — long-awaited by many fans of their source material — instead join Gods of Egypt, Aloha and Pan as recent inductees to Hollywood's Whitewashing Hall of Shame.

Below, The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision blogger Graeme McMillan and senior reporter Rebecca Sun discuss the similar circumstances greeting the films so far.

Rebecca Sun: We braced ourselves when the castings were announced, but (just like that Nina trailer) the visual evidence still stung.

In flipping both race and gender to cast Swinton as a character who in the original comics is a Tibetan-born man, Marvel admirably went out of the box to correct one aspect of underrepresentation in its cinematic universe, but did so at the expense of another. Like its fellow Marvel franchise Iron Fist, it is steeped in cultural appropriation and centers around what Graeme previously noted as the "white man finds enlightenment in Asia" trope.

Give Hollywood partial credit for continuously trying to cleverly sidestep the Fu Manchu stereotype of characters like DC's Ra's al Ghul and Marvel's The Mandarin — but why is the solution consistently to reimagine those characters with white actors (Liam Neeson in Christopher Nolan's Batman films and Guy Pearce in Iron Man 3, respectively)? The Doctor Strange movie doesn't need its Ancient One to look like Lo Pan in Big Trouble in Little China, but there are creative ways to interpret the character without yet again erasing an Asian person from an inherently Asian narrative.

Graeme McMillan: The casting of Strange is a very frustrating thing; it's not just the Ancient One that's racebent — Baron Mordo, a white man in the comics, is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor in the movie; you see him for an instant in the teaser — but it all seems to be done with little thought about the implications of the changes. While I'm happy to see a "white role" played by a black man in the movie, Ejiofor's casting reinforces the implications of Thor, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the Iron Man movies that every white hero gets a black sidekick in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (see also Zoe Saldana in Guardians of the Galaxy, but there, she's painted green, because space).

Switching the Ancient One to Tilda Swinton feels similarly well-intentioned, but thoughtless. On the one hand, yes, you're trying to sidestep the stereotype present in the source material, but in the most lazy way short of making the character a white man. Wouldn't a younger Asian actor have offered enough of a play on the trope — not to mention a play on the character's name — while also avoiding the utter tone-deafness of having Strange head to Tibet in order to learn about enlightenment from another white English person.

Sun: Too many stories, from Lawrence of Arabia to Avatar, relegate natives of a culture to background players and, at best, mentor, antagonist, love interest or sidekick. In Doctor Strange, Swinton fills the mentor role, Mads Mikkelsen is the villain and Rachel McAdams seems to be the damsel, leaving British actor Benedict Wong to play Dr. Strange's personal valet.

Of the four, he's the only one not glimpsed in the two-minute trailer, which mostly features Benedict Cumberbatch's Dr. Strange wandering through streets in Nepal and Hong Kong and learning magical martial arts from Swinton in a temple beautifully appointed with traditional Asian architectural features. In other words, Doctor Strange is a movie that looks very Oriental, except for the people part.

McMillan: To make matters worse — or, at least, more frustrating — there's the fact that, in the casting of Cumberbatch, Marvel managed to sidestep the possibility of offering up a nonwhite, non-male lead in one of its movies for the first time. Unlike, say, Iron Man or Captain America, there's nothing inherently gendered or racially-specific in the lead character's main concept — while it's unlikely that anyone other than a white man would be chosen to be the figurehead for the U.S. Army in WWII, or the head of a multinational arms manufacturer built up by his genius father, all that's really required of Dr. Strange is that they're a successful surgeon who suffers a terrible accident that sets them on a new path afterward. That role, literally, could have gone to anyone.

That train of thought points me toward a theory put forward by comic writer Kurt Busiek on social media recently — namely, that Dr. Strange as a character is an early example of the comic book industry whitewashing itself. The idea, as Busiek lays it out, is that artist and co-creator Steve Ditko "conceived Doc Strange as a stock 'mysterious Asian mystic' type", and later actually changed his look after writer Stan Lee wrote an origin in which he was Caucasian.

It's a weird coincidence that offers a worrying excuse to those supporting Marvel's decision to whitewash the Ancient One for the movie: It has historical precedent! Perhaps Doctor Strange, for all its positioning as a project that opens up horizons to new realities and new possibilities, has an accidental metatextual purpose of demonstrating how tied to the safer, cowardly white "norms" entertainment can be. continued next post

[GeneChing]

Sun: Which brings us to Ghost in the Shell and that first-look image of Scarlett Johansson this week. Ghost in the Shell (at least all previous iterations of it) also is set in Asia, albeit a very different one from that of Doctor Strange. There is no indication that the name of Johansson's protagonist has changed from the source material — IMDb still lists the character as "Kusanagi," although the press copy released alongside Thursday's image refers to her simply by her police rank, "the Major." That photo continues to send an ambiguous message — Johansson appears in a short black bob and darkened eyebrows, hewing closely to how Kusanagi is depicted in the comics.

Traditionally, this is a fan's greatest hope — an adaptation as faithful to the source material as possible. But in this case, Paramount/DreamWorks seem to have retained all the markers of Kusanagi's Japanese identity — her name, her basic physical appearance — except for the actual ethnicity of her portrayer. Perhaps the whitewashing controversy wouldn't have gone quite as viral had the producers cleanly erased all traces of the material's origins, as Edge of Tomorrow did in adapting the Japanese novel All You Need Is Kill and anglicizing protagonist Keiji Kiriya into William Cage, played by Tom Cruise.

McMillan: The comparison to the (lack of) outrage met with Edge of Tomorrow is an interesting one, but perhaps a more appropriate one is the response to the multiple attempts to make a live-action Akira with non-Asian actors — which is to say, any of the numerous American attempts to make a live-action Akira. Both Akira and Ghost in the Shell are better-known properties than All You Need Is Kill — which started life as a prose novel, which arguably also allowed for more visual/racial deviation as a result — and so any attempt to move away from the (to fans) iconic elements of the original are likely to be met with, at the very best, apathy or dismay. Add in the implied racism of casting only Caucasian actors, and you have something that seems utterly guaranteed to upset almost everyone.

By far the strongest response I've seen to the Ghost in the Shell casting comes from indie comic writer Jon Tsuei on Twitter, where he argued that the story is "inherently a Japanese story, not a universal one" because of the context in which it was created, specifically the cultural relationship the country had with technology, and how that feeds into the characters' relationships with tech in the story.

I'm not entirely sold on that line of thinking, I admit — in part because I think that the relationship with technology has become a universal thing in the decades since the original manga was published 27 years ago — but it touches on the degree to which the story is interconnected with the culture in which it first appeared. Watching filmmakers misunderstand that to such a degree as they appear to have in casting alone doesn't really offer much hope that they'll manage to handle the themes of the story with any greater sensitivity.

Sun: The reaction to Johansson's Ghost in the Shell look reminds me of the backlash when the Nina Simone biopic starring Zoe Saldana was released last month. In both cases, the filmmakers went to some lengths to alter the appearance of their leading ladies, rather than cast actresses who more naturally matched the subjects. What makes these two examples different from the countless instances of actors transforming themselves for a role — Steve Carell in Foxcatcher, Nicole Kidman in The Hours — is that Asian women and dark-skinned black women rarely get to be the leads in Hollywood movies. So whitewashing any Asian character is unfortunate, but keeping the character Asian-ish (but not actually Asian) is salt on the wound.

Many online commenters have trumpeted Oscar nominee Rinko Kikuchi as the ideal live-action Kusanagi — no one has come closer than her to doing it already, as robot pilot Mako Mori in Pacific Rim. Many other actresses of Asian descent have been mentioned as well, but the harsh truth is that their combined star wattage doesn't even come close to touching Johansson's.

And therein lies the problem: A Kikuchi (who is four years older than Johansson) — or a similar Asian-American actress — couldn't have debuted as the daughter of John Ritter and Sean Connery, as Johansson did in her early films. She likely wouldn't have gotten her big break as an equestrian-loving teen in Montana opposite Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer. (She might have made a good Rebecca in Ghost World.) She couldn't have effectively played an outsider in Tokyo in Lost in Transition, which catapulted her to stardom, or a Dutch painter's muse in Girl With a Pearl Earring, or Woody Allen's muse in Match Point, Scoop or Vicky Cristina Barcelona. She couldn't have played a London magician's assistant in The Prestige or Mary Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl. And most of all, she never, ever would have been cast as the Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

So how does an Asian actor become famous enough to play an Asian character? Judging by Speed Racer (starring Emile Hirsch), Dragonball Evolution (starring Shameless' Justin Chatwin), Ghost in the Shell and the upcoming Death Note (starring Nat Wolff), Hollywood has yet to answer the question.

You'd think with the trend towards China, getting some Asian actors in the cast would be good global marketing.

[mickey]

Greetings,

I noticed the date of that article. It was dated after my funk on this thread. The author either read it or was fed it. I gotta find a way to get paid for this. I may have to change my handle for increased recognition. Then I can go after the bucks.

mickey

[mickey]

Greetings,

If the Marvel Universe is understood. There can be more than one Dr Strange. This was shared on another thread. Understanding the MU means that there is much money to be made.

When it came to The Avengers, I never saw The Black Panther as belonging on that team. I never saw him as being in the same universe as them: just a superhero in a very different world. Yet, when understanding the MU, it is possible to have such a team up.

mickey

[Jimbo]

Greetings,

When it came to The Avengers, I never saw The Black Panther as belonging on that team. I never saw him as being in the same universe as them: just a superhero in a very different world. Yet, when understanding the MU, it is possible to have such a team up.

mickey

The first time I ever saw The Black Panther was in a 1970 or '71 issue of Daredevil; it *might* have been his first comic appearance ever(?). As far as I knew, it was. And though Daredevil was never an Avenger, he definitely occupied the same Marvel Universe as The Avengers. In fact, DD was teamed/paired with The Black Widow for a time in the mid-1970s. So that puts The Black Panther in that same universe.

[mickey]

Hi Jimbo.

I did some checking around. The Black Panther first appeared in the Fantastic Four issue #52 in 1966.

He appeared in Daredevil issue # 52 in 1969. I had this issue. It was so well written that the drawings seemed to move. I think that at that time, the Black Panther was the only person other than Starr Saxon who knew DD's true identity: The Black Panther learned this in this issue.

mickey

[Jimbo]

Thanks, mickey. That 1969 issue might be what I was thinking about. I haven't looked at it since, but I *think* the Daredevil issue I was referencing (#52?) was drawn by Gene Colan(?), if my memory of the art style is accurate. I do remember at the end, DD offering to treat Black Panther to a Coke.

[mickey]

Hi Jimbo,

I have a link for you to see the cover. Check out the dialogue written for Starr Saxon at the top. By today's standards, it is amazingly good.

http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Daredevil_Vol_1_52


mickey

[Jimbo]

Thanks for the link, mickey. Agreed, much better quality than today. Then again, IMO, superhero comics during the 1960s and 70s were WAY better quality in all aspects than today's.

I've found out which issue I was talking about. It's Daredevil Vol. 1, No. 69.

[mickey]

Hi Jimbo,

Never saw that one.

mickey

[GeneChing]

The complaint grows: first Ghost (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?68356-Ghost-in-the-Shell&p=1293167), then Dr. Strange (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69097-Doctor-Strange), and now Power Rangers (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69253-Power-Rangers-reboot-movie). :o


OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Why Won’t Hollywood Cast Asian Actors?
(http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/23/opinion/why-wont-hollywood-cast-asian-actors.html?mwrsm=Facebook&_r=0&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com%2F)
https://cdn1.nyt.com/images/2016/04/23/opinion/23chow/23chow-articleLarge.jpg
DADU SHIN
By KEITH CHOW
APRIL 22, 2016
HERE’S an understatement: It isn’t easy being an Asian-American actor in Hollywood. Despite some progress made on the small screen — thanks, “Fresh Off the Boat”! — a majority of roles that are offered to Asian-Americans are limited to stereotypes that wouldn’t look out of place in an ’80s John Hughes comedy.

This problem is even worse when roles that originated as Asian characters end up going to white actors. Unfortunately, these casting decisions are not a relic of Hollywood’s past, like Mickey Rooney’s portrayal of I. Y. Yunioshi in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” but continue right up to the present.

Last week Disney and Marvel Studios released the trailer for “Doctor Strange,” an adaptation of the Marvel comic. After exhausting every “white man finds enlightenment in the Orient” trope in less than two minutes, the trailer presents Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One, a Tibetan male mystic in the comics. Though her casting was no secret, there was something unsettling about the sight of Ms. Swinton’s clean-shaven head and “mystical” Asian garments. It recalled jarring memories of David Carradine from “Kung Fu,” the 1970s television series that, coincidentally, was itself a whitewashed version of a Bruce Lee concept.

A few days later, DreamWorks and Paramount provided a glimpse of Scarlett Johansson as the cyborg Motoko Kusanagi in their adaptation of the Japanese anime classic “Ghost in the Shell.” The image coincided with reports that producers considered using digital tools to make Ms. Johansson look more Asian — basically, yellowface for the digital age.

This one-two punch of white actors playing Asian characters showed how invisible Asian-Americans continue to be in Hollywood. (Not to be left out of the whitewashing news, Lionsgate also revealed the first images of Elizabeth Banks as Rita Repulsa, another originally Asian character, in its gritty “Power Rangers” reboot.)

https://cdn1.nyt.com/images/2016/04/22/opinion/chow-ss-slide-HTTQ/chow-ss-slide-HTTQ-jumbo.jpg
Slide Show | Whitewashing, a Long History White actors playing Asian characters demonstrate how invisible Asian-Americans continue to be in Hollywood.

Why is the erasure of Asians still an acceptable practice in Hollywood? It’s not that people don’t notice: Just last year, Emma Stone played a Chinese-Hawaiian character named Allison Ng in Cameron Crowe’s critically derided “Aloha.” While that film incited similar outrage (and tepid box office interest), no national conversation about racist casting policies took place.

Obviously, Asian-Americans are not the only victims of Hollywood’s continuing penchant for whitewashing. Films like “Pan” and “The Lone Ranger” featured white actors playing Native Americans, while “Gods of Egypt” and “Exodus: Gods and Kings” continue the long tradition of Caucasians playing Egyptians.

In all these cases, the filmmakers fall back on the same tired arguments. Often, they insist that movies with minorities in lead roles are gambles. When doing press for “Exodus,” the director Ridley Scott said: “I can’t mount a film of this budget" and announce that “my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such.”

When the screenwriter Max Landis took to YouTube to explain the “Ghost in the Shell” casting, he used a similar argument. “There are no A-list female Asian celebrities right now on an international level,” he said, admonishing viewers for “not understanding how the industry works.”

Mr. Landis’s argument closely tracks a statement by the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. In a leaked email exchange with studio heads, he complained about the difficulty of adapting “Flash Boys,” Michael Lewis’s book about the Wall Street executive Bradley Katsuyama, because “there aren’t any Asian movie stars.”

Hollywood seems untroubled by these arguments. It’s not about race, they say; the only color they see is green: The reason Asian-American actors are not cast to front these films is because not any of them have a box office track record.

But they’re wrong. If minorities are box office risks, what accounts for the success of the “Fast and Furious” franchise, which presented a broadly diverse team, behind and in front of the camera? Over seven movies it has grossed nearly $4 billion worldwide. In fact, a recent study by the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that films with diverse leads not only resulted in higher box office numbers but also higher returns of investment for studios and producers.

And Hollywood’s argument is circular: If Asian-Americans — and other minority actors more broadly — are not even allowed to be in a movie, how can they build the necessary box office clout in the first place? To make matters worse, instead of trying to use their lofty positions in the industry to push for change, Hollywood players like Mr. Landis and Mr. Sorkin take the easy, cynical path.

[GeneChing]

‘Doctor Strange’ Writer Explains Casting of Tilda Swinton as Tibetan (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/27/world/asia/china-doctor-strange-tibet.html?_r=0)
Sinosphere
By EDWARD WONG APRIL 26, 2016

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/04/27/world/27CHINASTRANGE/27CHINASTRANGE-master768.jpg
Tilda Swinton, at the Berlin International Film Festival on Feb. 11. Some have questioned her casting as the Ancient One in “Doctor Strange.” Credit Michael Kappeler/European Pressphoto Agency

BEIJING — The trailer for “Doctor Strange” from Marvel Studios has ignited outrage against what some people call another example of Hollywood’s racist casting. It reveals that a Tibetan character from the comic book, the Ancient One, is played by Tilda Swinton, a white British actress.

It turns out that the filmmakers wanted to avoid the Tibetan origins of the character altogether, in large part over fears of offending the Chinese government and people — and of losing access to one of the world’s most lucrative film markets, according to one insider account.

In an interview last week, C. Robert Cargill, the main screenwriter, offered that as an explanation for why the Ancient One was no longer Tibetan.

The Tibetan issue is one of the thorniest involving China and other nations. The Chinese Communist Party and its army occupied Tibet in 1951, and Chinese leaders are well aware that many non-Chinese believe that Tibet should have independence or greater autonomy.

Marvel said in a statement that there was no problem with the casting of Ms. Swinton as the Ancient One since the character was written as a Celt in the film and is not Asian at all. Some critics have said that studio executives and filmmakers must have assumed Asian actors had less drawing power than white actors.

In an interview on the pop culture show “Double Toasted,” Mr. Cargill said the decision to rid the character of its Tibetan roots was made by others working on the project, including the director, Scott Derrickson. It came down to anxieties over losing the China market, he said, if the portrayal of the Ancient One ended up stirring political sensitivities in China.

In response to an angry viewer’s question about the casting of Ms. Swinton, Mr. Cargill said: “The Ancient One was a racist stereotype who comes from a region of the world that is in a very weird political place. He originates from Tibet, so if you acknowledge that Tibet is a place and that he’s Tibetan, you risk alienating one billion people.”

He added that there was the risk of “the Chinese government going, ‘Hey, you know one of the biggest film-watching countries in the world? We’re not going to show your movie because you decided to get political.’ ”

Earlier in the interview, Mr. Cargill had acknowledged that the origin story of Dr. Strange in old Marvel comics does involve Tibet, and that his mentor was Tibetan. “He goes to a place in Tibet, the Ancient One teaches him magic, he becomes a sorcerer, then later he becomes the Sorcerer Supreme,” Mr. Cargill said.

The Chinese box office is the world’s second biggest, behind the United States, and Hollywood executives often alter films to avoid offending Chinese officials and to help their movies get shown in China. The Chinese government sets a strict limit on the number of foreign films shown in cinemas each year.

Mr. Cargill’s take on how Chinese officials and moviegoers might react to a Tibetan character was overly simplistic, though. The government and many Chinese people do not deny the existence of the cultural idea of Tibet or Tibetans. They just assert that China should rule the territory.

Mr. Cargill also said that because the original character of the Ancient One was a racist stereotype, the role would be hard to pull off with modern sensibilities. He added that if a Tibetan had been cast, it would result in the stereotypical narrative of a white hero, Dr. Stephen Strange, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, being indoctrinated into Eastern mysticism.

From the trailer, the film appears to retain some of the origin story’s Tibetan Buddhist flavor. There are shots of temples in what seems to be the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal. At one point, Mr. Cumberbatch’s hand turns Tibetan prayer wheels. Ms. Swinton’s character, though Celtic, appears to be training Dr. Strange in Nepal.

Mr. Cargill said some critics had suggested the filmmakers could have cast Michelle Yeoh as the Ancient One. Ms. Yeoh is an ethnic Chinese actress from Malaysia who is a martial arts icon and starred in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”

“If you are telling me you think it’s a good idea to cast a Chinese actress as a Tibetan character, you are out of your **** fool mind,” Mr. Cargill said.

Mr. Cargill also drew a parallel, saying that the only thornier situation he could envision was if Dr. Strange’s origin story had involved him going to Palestine in the 1930s and studying under a Palestinian mentor.

The Ancient One was a character who had “fallen into a weird place,” he said. “There’s a really, really ugly piece of history that we wish there was an easy solution to, and there wasn’t one.”

Mr. Cargill said Mr. Derrickson, the director, hoped that changing the gender would help offset bad choices that had to be made.

Mr. Derrickson, he said, reasoned that “there’s no real way to win this, so let’s use this as an opportunity to cast an amazing actress in a male role.”

“And sure enough, there’s not a lot of talk about, ‘Oh man, they took away the job from a guy and gave it to a woman.’ Everybody kind of decides to pat us on the back for that and then decides to scold us for her not being Tibetan.”

Ms. Swinton, in an interview with Den of Geek, confirmed that the change to the character had been made early in the process.

“The script that I was presented with did not feature an Asian man for me to play, so that was never a question when I was being asked to do it,” she said.

A Marvel press officer issued a statement defending the casting, saying that “Marvel has a very strong record of diversity in its casting of films and regularly departs from stereotypes and source material.”

“The Ancient One is a title that is not exclusively held by any one character, but rather a moniker passed down through time, and in this particular film the embodiment is Celtic,” the company said. “We are very proud to have the enormously talented Tilda Swinton portray this unique and complex character alongside our richly diverse cast.”

Mr. Cargill had a more sober take in the interview on “Double Toasted.” He likened the cultural issue involving the Ancient One to the Kobayashi Maru, a famous battle simulation game in the “Star Trek” universe that Starfleet Academy cadets must play during training. The game had been programmed so that all choices would lead to a loss.

“I could tell you why every single decision that involves the Ancient One is a bad one, and just like the Kobayashi Maru, it all comes down on which way you’re willing to lose,” Mr. Cargill said.

He neglected to mention the fact that James T. Kirk, one of the main heroes of “Star Trek,” famously did beat the game with an unorthodox gambit.

Actually, this is a reasonable argument. That China market is huge and the role of a Tibetan would make it difficult.

Then again, they could have just relocated the Ancient One to Wudang or Songshan or any number of Chinese mystic mountains....:rolleyes:

[Mor Sao]

They should have set in Hua Shan.

[GeneChing]

The disregard of the China market is getting twisted up by the ignorant. Some critics are accusing Hollywood of bowing to PRC censors, but that demonstrates a basic misunderstanding of the global film market and how films get approved in China. Censorship is a knee-jerk word here in the U.S. where it freedom of speech is a thing. But in China, that's not a thing, not at all.

Here's feedback from a Tibetan:

Hollywood’s Latest Whitewash: What Doctor Strange's Casting of Tilda Swinton Means (http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/hollywoods-latest-whitewash-what-doctor-stranges-casting-of-tilda-swinton-means)
By Gelek Badheytsang
April 27, 2016

https://vice-images.vice.com/images/content-images/2016/04/27/hollywoods-latest-whitewash-what-doctor-stranges-casting-of-tilda-swinton-means-body-image-1461780864.jpeg
Still via 'Doctor Strange'

If you're not white, chances are when you're watching a movie or a TV series, you'll catch yourself on the lookout for anyone who's not white.

It's a very minor event, this trying to find someone who looks like you onscreen, and most of us probably do it unconsciously.

That Hollywood has blind spots when it comes to race and race-based issues is not a groundbreaking revelation. Its audience, increasingly non-white and vocal, are challenging the films and their filmmakers about this gap when it comes to who is shown on-screen and who isn't.

It's in this context that we find Doctor Strange. Screenwriter C. Robert Cargill, in a fit of exasperation and indignation, responded to criticisms recently that his movie committed the age-old Hollywood tradition of whitewashing by casting Tilda Swinton in the role of the Ancient One. In the Marvel comic book lore, the Ancient One was based on a Tibetan mystical master. He guides the titular hero (portrayed onscreen by Benedict Cumberbatch) in his journey from a brilliant but ordinary surgeon, to a brilliant and powerful superhero; cloaked and ready to join the pantheon of Marvel characters, and the next instalment of the money-printing enterprise that is the Avengers series.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt-U_t2pUHI

As Cargill explains it, the decision to cast Swinton was not done lightly. "The Ancient One was a racist stereotype who comes from a region of the world that is in a very weird political place," he says in a video interview posted on YouTube. "He originates from Tibet, so if you acknowledge that Tibet is a place and that he's Tibetan, you risk alienating one billion people who think that that's bull****."
The one billion people that Cargill is referring to are the Chinese people. He continues:

"[You] risk the Chinese government going, 'Hey, you know one of the biggest film-watching countries in the world? We're not going to show your movie because you decided to get political.'"

He ends this matter by saying that anyone who proposes casting a Chinese actor in this role as a workaround is "out of [their] **** fool mind and have no idea what the **** [they're] talking about."

Cargill is referring to some comments online that suggested the movie could have cast Michelle Yeoh, who is Chinese-Malaysian, instead of Tilda Swinton.

https://vice-images.vice.com/images/content-images-crops/2016/04/27/hollywoods-latest-whitewash-what-doctor-stranges-casting-of-tilda-swinton-means-body-image-1461780456-size_1000.jpg
Tilda Swinton as "the Ancient One"—bald, but still not Tibetan.

Many Tibetans, like myself, remember the time when Kundun, a film by Martin Scorsese about the Dalai Lama's escape from Tibet to India, first came out. Scorsese and many of his colleagues were subsequently banned from entering China. That was almost 20 years ago. Disney at the time stood by its project, even in the face of harsh retribution from the Chinese government. In the intervening years, the Chinese market for Hollywood films has grown exponentially.

The demands of "one billion people" outstrip those who number far fewer than 10 million. This is basic economics.

But let me tell you how thrilling it was to see Kundun as a Tibetan. When the movie was screened in theatres in Nepal and India (where there is historically, and still remains, the largest influx of Tibetan refugees) grown men wept and old women prostrated to the image of their spiritual leader on aisles between the seats.

I was around 12 years old at the time in Nepal, and even though I was mostly preoccupied by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and WWE (WWF then), I remember vividly how big of a deal it was that this movie was coming out. Scorsese became a kind of a hero, even though I knew next to nothing at the time about one of the greatest living filmmakers.

There was that undeniable magic of cinema—when a character looms larger than life onscreen, against the backdrop of the expansive Tibetan landscape (by way of Morocco)—that swells your heart and transposes you from inside that packed auditorium to the mountains of Tibet, alongside the Dalai Lama, kicking ass, being kind, crying over the loss of loved ones, and just being human.

https://vice-images.vice.com/images/content-images-crops/2016/04/27/hollywoods-latest-whitewash-what-doctor-stranges-casting-of-tilda-swinton-means-body-image-1461780354-size_1000.jpg
Still from the movie 'Kundun' (1997) featuring: actual Tibetans as Tibetan monks

There is no amount of dollars or marketing strategy that will quite capture that sense of seeing yourself, or someone like you, projected and humanized on a giant theatre screen. We knew then that in spite of what the mighty Chinese government wanted (the elision of all things Dalai Lama and Tibetan), a short, plucky Italian-American director from the Bronx gave them the finger and realized his vision.

Cargill, it seems, has thrown up his hands. Even though he could doubtless imagine and write pages upon pages of heroic, magical feats for Doctor Strange, on the matter of casting a Tibetan actor, that well is nigh empty. Sorry, but not sorry, because dollars. At least he was honest about it.

The very fact of my existence is a sore point for the Chinese government. Cargill and his ilk would like you to believe that their hands are tied on this matter, but I don't buy it. Their influence over our (and the Chinese audience's) decision to buy tickets to their shows extends beyond just cold hard economics. There is something to be said for doing it the right way. For imagining a world (or at least an America) where, for once, the white skin is not the default, neutral canvas.

In the age of #OscarsSoWhite, Cargill's decision (and his white, male background) is political. Of the panoply of controversies to navigate and confront, he chooses a route that inconveniences him the least.

It's also a bit rich hearing Cargill speak about how he and his team had to carefully, painfully, consider not casting Asians so as to not reaffirm past stereotypes. That consideration falls flat when Hollywood keeps pumping out movies that showcase white dudes in white saviour roles (see: The Legend of Tarzan, coming to a screen near you later this summer).

For what it's worth, between a white actor and a non-Tibetan but Asian-American actor playing the role of the Ancient One, my vote (and dollars) will easily go for the latter. In an industry where it's already hard enough to find roles beyond just extras in the background, here is a character tailor-made for an Asian American actor to shine in. And it goes to Tilda Swinton.

Oh well. I continue to be on the lookout for faces like me. Somewhere in Toronto or Los Angeles, there is a Tibetan kid dreaming to be the next Denzel Washington or Tilda Swinton. I hope she gets a fair shake.

Follow Gelek Badheytsang on Twitter.

[mickey]

Greetings,

The article by Gelek Badheytsang is a very good one. He summed it up very well.

The director really should have pursued guidance on this matter because there was definitely a middle way to be pursued. If I could find it in just a split second, the director could have been guided to it just as easily.

mickey

[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSzx-zryEgM

[GeneChing]

There's a Yahoo vid if you follow the link but it wasn't playing for me. This is more fallout from SDCC.



Doctor Strange
Mads Mikkelsen Says His 'Doctor Strange' Baddie Was Inspired By Bruce Lee (https://www.yahoo.com/movies/mads-mikkelsen-says-his-doctor-strange-baddie-205511822.html)
Kevin Polowy
Senior Editor
July 26, 2016

To be clear, Mads Mikkelsen’s crack-eyed Kaecilius in Marvel’s upcoming mythical actioner Doctor Strange is not a good guy. A disciple of the Baron Mordo (played in the film by Chiwetel Ejiofor), Kaecilius wasn’t all that well developed in the comics, but we do know he did his evil master’s bidding, and will be making life extra tough for Benedict Cumberbatch’s titular superhero.

Mikkelsen says his inspiration for the part, however, is one of cinema’s most revered good guys of all time: late martial arts icon and movie star Bruce Lee.

“We have a lot of physicality going on, and it’s martial arts, and one of my biggest heroes of all time is Bruce Lee,” Mikkelsen told us at San Diego Comic-Con (watch our chat above). “Who would’ve thought at the age of 50 I would get to be a miniature version of him?”

The Danish actor, probably best known for TV’s Hannibal, is a former dancer and gymnast. He first cracked into the film business in Drive director Nicholas Winding Refn’s Pusher trilogy and the drama After the Wedding, but has since been racking up action roles in tentpoles like Casino Royale and the upcoming Star Wars spin-off Rogue One, in addition to his entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Doctor Strange.

Mikkelsen assessed his own martial arts skills as “fantastic,” adding, “I’m really good at it. I’ve been practicing all my life in the sense that I’m an ex-gymnast and I’ve always wanted to do something like that. But it took a Marvel film to do it for me.”

Doctor Strange opens Nov. 4.

[GeneChing]

‘Doctor Strange’ Is Going To Be Magical, Which May Cost Them Dearly (http://uproxx.com/gammasquad/doctor-strange-magic-china-ban/)
BY: CALEB READING 08.10.16

https://uproxx.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/doctor-strange-01-cropped.jpg?quality=90&w=650&h=373
MARVEL

Marvel’s Doctor Strange is filled with mind-bending “Escher stuff” as seen in the first trailer and the Comic-Con trailer. But there’s a reason to be concerned. If they try to explain away the magical aspects with pseudoscientific woo, we have to sit through boring, goofy exposition and try not to groan. (Marvel handled this about as well as they could with Thor explaining magic and science to Jane Foster in Thor.) But if the film references magic or ghosts or other such things too much, China will ban the movie, just as Suicide Squad and Ghostbusters didn’t screen there.

Marvel stands to make over $100 million in China off Doctor Strange, so they’ve been trying to stay in China’s good graces. Script co-writer C. Robert Cargill claims Tibetan character The Ancient One was changed to very white woman (or possible swan masquerading as human) Tilda Swinton because China would have banned the movie if it referenced Tibet. Marvel denied this, however, but they still haven’t denied that Swinton is actually a swan.

So you would assume there will be scenes in Doctor Strange where they try to explain away the magic stuff to appease Chinese censors, right? Well, director Scott Derrickson told Games Radar they’re not going to do that:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYX0Sn5Qqsc

“Magic is magic in this movie. It’s not something that’s explained away scientifically. It’s not something that’s easy to define. As magic should be. Magic should be mysterious. There’s mystery to magic and there’s mystery to the tone of the movie. Mystery is a good thing.”
They’re sort of daring China to ban the movie by not making excuses for the magical elements, but perhaps removing the Tibetan version of The Ancient One is how they’re compromising here. We probably should have known they wouldn’t downplay the magical aspect with something as trippy as Doctor Strange (or “psychedelic” as Mads Mikkelsen calls it in the video above). It was implied in the trailer, when possible swan Tilda Swinton says, “Forget everything that you think you know” that sh*t’s about to get real magical up in here.

https://uproxx.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/doctor-strange-04a.gif?w=650


Doctor Strange without magic? How would that even work? :rolleyes:

[Jimbo]

I really hope that Hollywood grows some balls and doesn't kowtow to China on this. At least not anymore than everyone already has. It's a very dark day indeed when China gets to dictate what types of subjects/genres the U.S. and the rest of the world gets to watch.

[mickey]

Greetings,

The makers of the movies featuring Marvel characters need to understand the universe that is Marvel. These movie makers are too linear and the Marvel Universe (MU) not always that. The people could have used the year 1940 as a time travel access point to Tibet, where the magic and the sacred knowledge still exists. They could have even used the year 1949 as the point of exodus for Dr Strange's teacher. And they could still travel to gateways to ancient Tibet, on the inner planes, for training sequences. What could China say about that then? Our counter argument would always be that the China we have today did not exist at that time.


mickey

[Jimbo]

I don't think any of that will matter to the Chinese gov't. Surely ANY depiction of Tibet, including apart from China in the past, would be forbidden.

Besides, the entire magical aspect (which is inseparable from Dr. Strange) is not acceptable to the Chinese, who view it as promoting 'superstitious beliefs'. They want to control the entire world by bringing everyone else in line through the threat of not getting their money. Nothing will be acceptable to them until the Dr. Strange character is no longer Dr. Strange.

[Cataphract]

They want to control the entire world by bringing everyone else in line through the threat of not getting their money.
No, Hollywood should make smaller/cheaper movies so they don't need to please the censors in every part of the world just to break even. America has its own set of no-gos. Anyway, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" someone said.

[Jimbo]

No, Hollywood should make smaller/cheaper movies so they don't need to please the censors in every part of the world just to break even. America has its own set of no-gos. Anyway, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" someone said.

Won't happen in Hollywood on any large scale anytime soon. Those are mostly small independent films outside of the major studio system. Besides, they wouldn't make the kind of money to satisfy the studios.

TBH, I watch far fewer Hollywood movies anymore anyway because of that. Hollywood tries to make everything bigger and more exaggerated, resulting in more and more underwhelming product, more often than not. How many colossally budgeted Hollywood movies are even remembered anymore two months after their release? Yet I don't like nor do I accept another country dictating what content (such as magic or the supernatural) can and can't be put into other countries' movies. If it hurts their little sensibilities then forget them and their money. And Dr. Strange IS about magic/the supernatural, which could be argued is not something 'out there' but something that simply isn't understood yet. Do you really think that definition would fly with the Chinese authorities?

And it is clear what China is doing (its leaders and big businesses, not necessarily the average citizen there). Hollywood's kowtowing to China is only one example, besides buying up properties and resources in the U.S., I'm not going into it beyond those. And they couldn't do it without big business (including Hollywood) cooperating with them.

[Cataphract]

I really hate being the one defending the censors, but I don't think they care much about dictating the moviegoers in other countries.
Also what is wrong about investing in the American economy? Is it wrong for American business to invest overseas, too?
Last but not least, "little sensibilities" is a bit thick coming from a country that routinely freaks out about female nipples.

What I can't stand is adding location specific scenes to movies like they did in Iron Man 3. This is a proof that the narrative is just pretense and scenes can be plugged in and out at random.

[Jimbo]

I'm certainly not "USA USA USA." I have no problem pointing out hypocrisies, stupidities and other issues with the way things are done in the States. In fact I have, many, many times. So don't take me as some self-appointed representative of 'Merica. I simply call it like I see it. But yes, something IS wrong when so much favoritism and control is given to China. There can be no bad guy characters who even happen to be Chinese in American movies anymore, so any Asian bad guys must be Japanese, N. Korean, etc., etc. Yet Chinese depict all types of foreigners as villains in their own movies and nobody else gets their panties in a wad. And clearly now, Tibetan characters are not allowed at all. I'm not thrilled about Tilda Swinton being chosen to portray The Ancient One, a Tibetan character, but clearly Marvel didn't have much choice because of China. Well, they did have a choice but chose to cave.

Hopefully the movie will be good in spite of it.

[boxerbilly]

Well all I know is Gere and Pitt should not go to China.

[GeneChing]

Tilda Swinton responds to Doctor Strange casting controversy (http://www.ew.com/article/2016/08/12/doctor-strange-tilda-swinton)
BY CLARK COLLIS • @CLARKCOLLIS

http://www.ew.com/sites/default/files/styles/tout_image_612x380/public/i/2016/08/10/tilda-swinton_0.jpg?itok=dYyeLJrV
(Marvel)
Doctor Strange
Posted August 12 2016 — 2:00 PM EDT

Tilda Swinton has responded to the controversy which erupted over her casting as the magic powers-possessing The Ancient One in Marvel’s new superhero movie Doctor Strange. In the Marvel comics, the character, who is responsible for mentoring the titular ex-surgeon in the mystic arts, is traditionally depicted as Asian. Swinton’s playing of the Ancient One became a major news story following the release of the movie’s first trailer last April, with Marvel accused of “whitewashing” the character.

“Anybody calling for more accurate representation of the diverse world we live in has got me standing right beside them,” says Swinton. “I think when people see this film, they’re going to see that it comes from a very diverse place, in all sorts of ways. Maybe this misunderstanding around this film has been an opportunity for that voice to be heard, and I’m not against that at all. But I do think that when people see the film, they’ll see that it’s not necessarily a target for that voice.”

Swinton previously addressed the controversy earlier this year, saying that she “wasn’t asked to play an Asian character, you can be very well assured of that.” Marvel issued a statement at that time, saying that the Ancient One “is a title that is not exclusively held by any one character, but rather a moniker passed down through time, and in this particular film the embodiment is Celtic.”

Director Scott Derrickson also responded to the uproar on Twitter, writing, “Raw anger/hurt from Asian-Americans over Hollywood whitewashing, stereotyping & erasure of Asians in cinema. I am listening and learning.”

Doctor Strange, also starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Rachel McAdams, Mads Mikkelsen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Benedict Wong, opens in theaters on Nov. 4. You can see the film’s most recent trailer below (http://bcove.me/d7vcb1gi).





Well all I know is Gere and Pitt should not go to China. Haaaa. Good one, boxerbilly.

[GeneChing]

Of course, we all knew this already because of one name: Scott Adkins.


Wait, Doctor Strange Is A Supernatural Martial Arts Movie? (http://www.cinemablend.com/news/1560349/doctor-strange-will-borrow-heavily-from-a-surprising-movie-genre)
BY SEAN O'CONNELL
22 HOURS AGO

Marvel loves playing around in different genres. Of course, the studio makes superhero movies. But Captain America: The Winter Soldier was a 1970s spy thriller. Guardians of the Galaxy was as much a space Western as Star Wars was. And Ant-Man was a heist movie. So what genre will Scott Derrickson's Doctor Strange fit into? You might think supernatural science-fiction, but you would be wrong.

We were lucky enough to visit the set of Doctor Strange earlier this year, where director Scott Derrickson talked at length about his upcoming origin story for damaged neurosurgeon Stephen Strange aka the Sorcerer Supreme. We have been breaking down several angles with regards to the upcoming film, but this it caught us off guard. When Derrickson explained the types of movies that are influencing his vision of Doctor Strange, the filmmaker told us:


There's definitely a martial arts influence on the movie, because that is the action that I like, for starters. It is also, martial arts is the kind of action that does tie in well to the supernatural. That is a whole sub-genre within martial arts cinema, the supernatural martial arts movie, particularly within Asian cinema. I felt like, when it came to fighting in the movie, that just made sense, to certainly to go in that direction and stay away from weapons, gunfire, and things like that and to avoid having fighting be the casting of bolts of light.

Well, NOW you have my attention, Mr. Derrickson. The director, whose credits include The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Sinister, is going to lift from supernatural martial arts movies when constructing Doctor Strange? How gonzo might that look? To a certain extent, this makes sense. After a crippling automotive injury, Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) embarks on a quest to heal his hands, which puts him under the tutelage of The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) in the Kamar-Taj in Nepal. As we can seen in the photo above, Strange trains in what looks like martial arts. And in the trailer screened in San Diego for Comic-Con, there's plenty of visual cues to supernatural martial arts, which has us salivating over what Derrickson might have in store for audiences.

It's exciting when Marvel allows a new filmmaker to enter the MCU and take over the format of an origin story and fashion it around an unexpected and unpredictable genre. Doctor Strange expects to explore even deeper the magical aspects that were touched on briefly in Ant-Man. This one has the potential to blow people's minds, and Derrickson's comments about the films that will influence Doctor Strange have us chomping at the bit for November 4, when the movie opens everywhere.

[GeneChing]

Wonder if he trained with a no-touch knock-out (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?13292-Gene-Ching-Believes-in-No-Touch-Knockouts) choreographer? :rolleyes:


Cumberbatch says feeling heat over ‘Doctor Strange’ role ahead of release (http://www.themalaymailonline.com/showbiz/article/cumberbatch-says-feeling-heat-over-doctor-strange-role-ahead-of-release)
Thursday October 13, 2016
05:33 PM GMT+8

http://www.themalaymailonline.com/images/sized/ez/Cumberbatch_Doctor_Strange_090916_620_400_100.jpg
Cumberbatch said he hoped his first time playing a superhero would meet the high bar of enthusiasts. — AFP pic

HONG KONG, Oct 13 — British film star Benedict Cumberbatch said today the pressure is on to please diehard comic fans as he takes on the role of Marvel’s Doctor Strange, a fictional superhero sorcerer.

Speaking in Hong Kong ahead of the movie’s release later this month, Cumberbatch said he hoped his first time playing a superhero would meet the high bar of enthusiasts.

“These comics and the films that Marvel make are driven by the people who read them and are fans,” Cumberbatch said.

“It’s very important to us that the fans are thrilled, that their expectations are met, but most importantly that they’re exceeded,” he added.

With co-star Tilda Swinton, director Scott Derrickson and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige at his side, Cumberbatch also said playing the character had rubbed off — and he too wished he could have a superpower.

“I’d love to be able to fly,” he told reporters.

“There’s nothing better than that, and I got to do some of that in this film.”

While in Hong Kong, Cumberbatch also said he was looking forward to a possible swim in Hong Kong’s famous Victoria Harbour and eating dim sum.

Cumberbatch, 40, who rose to global stardom playing the title role in the BBC’s hit television detective series Sherlock, did most of his own fight scenes in Dr. Strange.

“When I think about the production, a lot of what comes to mind is Benedict being in physical pain and having to perform in situations where he’s sparring or fighting and getting hit and kicked — because that’s what happens when you do your own fight scenes,” director Derrickson said.

Surreal, reality-bending scenes set in international locations, including Nepal and New York were featured in the trailer of the movie, which opens in Hong Kong on October 27 and November 4 in the US.

Cumberbatch is the latest of a slew of Hollywood stars to take lead roles in Marvel movies, including Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Scarlett Johansson, as Black Widow, and Chris Evans as Captain America.

Kevin Feige said the British actor had always been his first choice to play Stephen Vincent Strange, a neurosurgeon who loses the use of his hands in a car accident.

“We moved the schedule of the movie release around specifically for Benedict which we’ve never done before, but he’s clearly, perfectly Doctor Strange.”

In his quest to repair his injuries, Dr. Strange starts a mystical journey which sees him become a hero sorcerer with superpowers.

Created in the 1960s, the character uses his large trademark red “cloak of levitation” to fly. — AFP

[GeneChing]

How magical. ;)


‘Doctor Strange,’ ‘Fantastic Beasts’ Score China Releases (http://variety.com/2016/film/news/doctor-strange-fantastic-beasts-china-release-dates-1201894351/)
Senior Film and Media Reporter
Brent Lang @BrentALang

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/doctor-strange.jpg?w=670&h=377&crop=1
COURTESY OF DISNEY
OCTOBER 19, 2016 | 03:06PM PT

“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” and “Doctor Strange” will both be allowed to screen in China, sources tell Variety.

Both films appear likely to debut at roughly the same time that they bow in the United States. “Doctor Strange,” an adaptation of the popular comic book about a former surgeon who becomes a sorcerer, is the first out of the gate, and will hit the Middle Kingdom on Nov. 4.

“Fantastic Beasts'” date hasn’t officially been confirmed and could shift, but it appears that the “Harry Potter” spinoff will debut on Nov. 18.

China is the world’s second-largest film market, and can add tens of millions of dollars to a film’s gross. Previous Marvel releases such as “Iron Man 3” and “The Avengers: Age of Ultron” did more than $100 million in the People’s Republic. The “Harry Potter” franchise hasn’t been as successful, with the most recent film in the series making a little more than $60 million in the country. However, that film hit theaters five years ago, and China’s box office has continued to grow exponentially since that time.

China maintains a tight quota on the number of foreign productions it allows to screen in the country, limiting it to 34 non-Chinese films annually. It appears that the remaining slots are going fast. Just this week, “Trolls” scored a release date. “Inferno,” a thriller with Tom Hanks, and “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” Ang Lee’s war drama, will also get screened in China.

Benedict Cumberbatch stars in “Doctor Strange,” along with Tilda Swinton and Rachel McAdams. “Fantastic Beasts” is set in the world of Hogwarts, though it focuses on new characters. Eddie Redmayne stars, with David Yates, who directed several previous “Potter” adventures, sliding behind the camera.

Spokespeople for Disney, the studio behind “Doctor Strange,” and Warner Bros., the maker of “Fantastic Beasts,” declined to comment.

[GeneChing]

At the TCL Chinese Theater. That makes it all okay.


‘Doctor Strange’ Cast Addresses Whitewashing Controversy at Film’s World Premiere (http://variety.com/2016/scene/vpage/doctor-strange-premiere-whitewashing-controversy-tilda-swinton-benedict-cumberbatch-1201896693/)
Lawrence Yee

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/tilda-swinton-benedict-cumberbatch-rachel-mcadams.jpg?w=670&h=377&crop=1
OCTOBER 21, 2016 | 10:56AM PT

The world premiere of “Doctor Strange” was held at the famous TCL Chinese Theater on Thursday night. Fans braved the 90-degree heat to get a glimpse of the Sorcerer Supreme himself, Benedict Cumberbatch.

Hollywood Boulevard was transformed into a grand magic sanctum as the cast and crew took the red carpet to celebrate the opening of 14th Marvel Universe movie.

They also took the opportunity to address criticism from some fans over the casting of British actress Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One, who in the comics is depicted as an Asian man.

Director Scott Derrickson took on the whitewashing controversy, explaining how selecting Swinton was a diversity choice itself.

“I think diversity is the responsibility of directors and producers,” Derrickson told Variety. “In this case, the stereotype of [the Ancient One] had to be undone. I wanted it to be a woman, a middle-aged woman. Every iteration of that script played by an Asian woman felt like a ‘Dragon Lady,'” Derrickson explained, referencing another negative on-screen stereotype of an exotic and domineering Asian woman. “I’m very sensitive to the history of ‘Dragon Lady’ representation and Anna May Wong films. I moved away from that. Who’s the magical, mystical, woman with secrets that could work in this role? I thought Tilda Swinton.”

Writer Jon Spaihts also praised the casting choice. “Tilda is an instance of us taking a male role and putting a woman in it, which I think the film badly needed. The comic world of ‘Doctor Strange’ is very male. So we were looking for opportunities to have not only ethnic diversity, but to have gender diversity in the film.”

Swinton herself urged audiences to see “Doctor Strange” before criticizing it, while championing diversity.

“They need to see the film to understand why Scott Derrickson and [Marvel Studios President] Kevin Feige decided to reimagine the Ancient One as a woman. People shouting loud and proud about needing more diversity in Hollywood cinema have got us right behind them.”


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Benedict Wong, who plays Master Wong, said producers worked to dispel the Asian stereotypes around his character found in the source material. “The idea of a man servant and tea-making sidekick isn’t that appealing,” the British Chinese actor said. “Scott and Kevin said vehemently ‘were not doing this.’ And I said, ‘Fantastic because neither am I.'”

Other Marvel stars including Stan Lee (creator), Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), Chadwick Boseman (Black Panther), Elodie Yung (Elektra) and Gabriel Luna (Ghost Rider) made their way down the carpet before the screening.

Cumberbatch and Swinton received the loudest applause as the credits rolled, which was of course followed by Marvel’s signature post-credits scene, featuring a certain Avenger (no spoilers here) and a post-post-credits scene.

An after-party followed celebrating the film and premiere’s success.

Check out more photos from the event below.

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/doctor-strange-launch.jpg?w=670
“Doctor Strange” World Premiere

[GeneChing]

You can find Doctor Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum on Google Maps (http://www.ew.com/article/2016/10/24/doctor-strange-sanctum-sanctorum-google-maps)
BY JESSICA DERSCHOWITZ • @JESSICASARA

http://www.ew.com/sites/default/files/styles/tout_image_612x380/public/i/2016/10/24/sanctorum_0.jpg?itok=YgvX85j0
(Jay Maidment)
Doctor Strange (film)

Posted October 24 2016 — 8:43 AM EDT

Doctor Strange, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular hero, doesn’t cast its way into theaters until next week — but ahead of that, you can find the Sorcerer Supreme in the not-so-mystical digital realm.

As spotted by Empire’s Chris Hewitt, Strange’s homestead can be found on Google Maps. Typing in “Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum” brings up the location at 177A Bleecker Street in New York City, and Google classifies it as an “Association or Business.” (Perhaps not surprisingly, Marvel.com is listed as its official website.)

People have also been leaving reviews of the Sanctorum. “I came in for just a headache, the good doctor also cured my demonic possession and gave my aura a facelift. Now that’s service!” one satisfied customer said. Another wrote, “Came by to cleanse an ancient artifact. 10/10 Would def recommend.”

http://www.ew.com/sites/default/files/i/2016/10/24/google-maps.jpg

Doctor Strange, also starring Tilda Swinton, Rachel McAdams, Mads Mikkelsen, and Chiwetel Ejiofor, opens Nov. 4. For more on the film, check out EW’s recent cover story.

The location is a Deli apparently. Hope they can nerd out and milk it for what it's worth.


This Week's Cover: Getting weird with Doctor Strange (http://www.ew.com/article/2016/10/12/doctor-strange-benedict-cumberbatch-cover)
BY CLARK COLLIS • @CLARKCOLLIS

Doctor Strange (film)
Posted October 12 2016 — 8:44 AM EDT

Are you ready to get weird?

This week’s cover star is Benedict Cumberbatch, dressed in the full Sorcerer Supreme garb of his titular, magic powers-wielding character in Doctor Strange (out Nov. 4). And the Sherlock star has no doubt that Marvel’s new superhero movie is indeed a freaky affair.

“It’s a peculiar one — Strange by name, strange by name,” says the British actor.

Don’t believe him? Then maybe you’ll believe your own eyes when you see the array of eye-popping exclusive images from the movie which EW has snagged for this week’s issue. Plus: we chat with Cumberbatch’s fellow cast members Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, and Mads Mikkelsen, Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson, and Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige, who reveals he has big big plans for Strange. You can also get the lowdown on the Doctor Strange costume and find out if the rumors are true about McAdams’ emergency room doctor Christine Palmer adopting the alter-ego of Night Nurse in the course of the film.

Is that enough superhero coverage? Not even close! For this special, double issue, our crack team of comics-loving writers judged the strengths, origin stories, and style of more characters than even Brainiac could count to come up with the ultimate list of the 50 Most Powerful Superheroes. What number is Batman? Or Black Widow? Or Buffy? You’ll have to get the magazine (or develop X-Ray vision) to find out.

But wait, there’s more! In this week’s issue we also get up close and personal with actress and podcaster Anna Faris, singer JoJo, and the be-witching Elvira while an array of horror-loving filmmakers recommend the scary movies we should be watching this Halloween. The really terrifying thing? We still somehow found the space to review all the new films, TV shows, music, and books. The result, if we say so ourselves, is downright super.

And if that’s not enough, EW is offering an advance screening of Doctor Strange on Friday, Oct. 28 at EW PopFest. Tickets are available as a bonus to the first 300 two-day VIP tickets sold, so get clicking for your chance to be one of the first people to see the film before it hits theaters. EW PopFest runs from Oct. 29-30 at The Reef in Downtown Los Angeles. For more information and to purchase tickets, go to http://ewpopfest.com/.

To read more on Doctor Strange and EW’s 50 Most Powerful Superheroes, pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly on stands Friday, or buy it here now – and subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.

http://www.ew.com/sites/default/files/i/2016/10/12/84651320000-ewcvr1436-37.jpg
Image Credit: Jay Maidment/©2016 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0K2X3JNph0

[boxerbilly]

Loved it !

[GeneChing]

http://cdn.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2016/11/02/doctor-strange-director-owns-up-to-whitewashing-controversy/jcr:content/image.crop.800.500.jpg/49269286.cached.jpg
© MARIO ANZUONI / REUTERS

DIVERSITY
‘Doctor Strange’ Director Owns Up to Whitewashing Controversy (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/02/doctor-strange-director-owns-up-to-whitewashing-controversy.html)
Filmmaker Scott Derrickson opens up about the MCU’s trippiest film yet, and the ****storm surrounding his decision to erase The Ancient One’s Asianness.
JEN YAMATO
11.02.16 2:14 AM ET

In Marvel’s Doctor Strange, Benedict Cumberbatch’s brilliant neurosurgeon damages his million-dollar hands in a fateful accident, exhausts all known Western medicine in search of a cure, then goes careening across the world into the mountains of Kathmandu to give Eastern treatments a shot. What he learns there from The Ancient One, a powerful mystic occupying the Caucasian female form of Tilda Swinton, is far more than he bargained for.
“It comes down to two lines from The Ancient One in her meetings with Strange,” offered director Scott Derrickson, whose eye-popping visuals and cracking pace drew praise from early critics. “In the first one, on that magical mystery mind-trip, she says, ‘Who are you in this vast universe, Doctor Strange?’” And then: “‘It’s not about you.’ Somewhere in that question and statement is the whole of the film.”
Doctor Strange cracks open the door to infinite new possibilities and spiritual questions—for example, what does the introduction of godlike powers and secret dimensions say about the existence of God in the MCU? “That’s a very compelling question,” pondered Derrickson, who makes his Marvel debut after helming The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Sinister, and Deliver Us From Evil. “It confirms the existence of a complex spiritual plane, and it doesn’t give closure to that. Does God exist in all of it, or beyond all of it?” He paused. “To me, yes. But not to everyone who reads [the comics]—nor does it need to.”

Derrickson co-wrote Doctor Strange, the 14th film in Marvel’s expansive superhero playground, with his Sinister collaborator C. Robert Cargill, filling the picture with expansive, dazzling dimensions hidden beneath the surface of the MCU’s earthbound and galaxy-tripping worlds. But the pair had a trickier road to travel to bring the Doctor Strange of Marvel’s 1960s comics into the 21st century—gifted with a charismatic hero in the vein of the MCU’s brilliant egocentric fave Tony Stark, yet hampered by the problematic streak of Orientalist cultural appropriation that looms over his origin story.
In the comics, Swinton’s character, known as The Ancient One, was a powerful Tibetan mystic who introduced jerky American Stephen Strange to a new life filled with magical powers and an Asian-influenced aesthetic. He was originally written as an Asian man, and a dated stereotype at that. Another character central to the mystical stronghold of Kamar-Taj was Wong, a descendant in a long line of Chinese servants loyal to the Ancient One. Derrickson knew he had an issue on his hands that would have to be addressed.

http://cdn.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2016/11/02/doctor-strange-director-owns-up-to-whitewashing-controversy/jcr:content/body/inlineimage.img.800.jpg/49269286.cached.jpg
Tilda Swinton and Benedict Cumberbatch in 'Doctor Strange.'
MARVEL

“It was a challenge from the beginning that I knew I was facing with both Wong and the Ancient One being pretty bad racial stereotypes—1960s versions of what Western white people thought Asians were like,” he said. “We weren’t going to have the Ancient One as the Fu Manchu magical Asian on the hill being the mentor to the white hero. I knew that we had a long way to go to get away from that stereotype and cliché.”
Derrickson first chose to change the gender of The Ancient One, making her a wise and powerful female magician in charge of the sorcerer-warriors in training at Kamar-Taj (now transplanted from Tibet to the more China censors-friendly Nepal). The move instantly multiplied the presence of significant female characters in Doctor Strange, which include Rachel McAdams as the ex-flame and fellow doctor who tethers Strange to his old life in a strong but still rather thankless supporting turn.
Thankfully, Swinton’s Ancient One has far more to do, and more on her mind, than just help Strange realize his super-powered potential—although yes, she also does that. She battles, she leads, she ponders the mystery of life and beyond with a complexity that belies the sparse details of her background. Thanks to Swinton’s androgynous tranquility and effortless sense of strength, the character takes on its own new intriguing magic, and she stands out as one of the highlights of the film’s cast. (If only Doctor Strange actually passed the Bechdel test.)
The move at least marks an overdue step toward progress for Marvel, which has earned scrutiny for its glaring lack of strong female roles in over a dozen feature films and counting. The company has shortchanged the female heroes it does have when it comes to selling toys, and has yet to give a non-male leading superheroine her own standalone adventure within the vast and fantastical MCU, where playboys and aliens with magical hammers and talking raccoons keep saving the world, but audiences will have to wait until 2018’s Black Panther for a black hero to get his due—and even longer to see a woman claim top billing.
“The first decision that I made was to make it a woman, before we ever went to draft, before we ever had a script,” said Derrickson. “I thought it was interesting to not only make it a woman, but let’s find a woman with some maturity—not a 26-year-old leather-clad fanboy dream girl. Let’s get a real female actor in here. There was a desire for diversity in making that decision."
continued next post

[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSzx-zryEgM

However, although writing The Ancient One as a woman was a step forward for gender representation, it presented a new cultural predicament, Derrickson says. He and Marvel discussed casting an Asian actress in the role before making another major change to the character—in order to avoid playing into yet another Asian stereotype.
“As we started to work on it, my assumption was that it would be an Asian character, that it would be an Asian woman,” he said. “We talked about Asian actors who could do it, as we were working on the script, every iteration of it—including the one that Tilda played—but when I envisioned that character being played by an Asian actress, it was a straight-up Dragon Lady.”
“I know the history of cinema and the portrayal of the Dragon Lady in Anna May Wong films, and the continued stereotype throughout film history and even more in television,” he continued. “I just didn’t feel like there was any way to get around that because the Dragon Lady, by definition, is a domineering, powerful, secretive, mysterious, Asian woman of age with duplicitous motives—and I just described Tilda’s character. I really felt like I was going to be contributing to a bad stereotype.”
In order to avoid one offensive stereotype, Derrickson and Co. effectively erased The Ancient One’s Asianness. Along with it disappeared any discernable debt the character might have represented to the place and people and culture the film’s setting, costumes, and multicultural spiritual mishmash still borrows. In trying to be one kind of woke, Doctor Strange became most unfortunately unwoke—and that’s a lesson Marvel, Disney, and other Hollywood studios should learn from.
In the process, the director says, he learned a lot about the term ‘whitewashing’ from the irate Asian community that took to the internet to take him and Marvel to task. “At the time when casting was happening there was a lot of anger circulating about female representation, but the term ‘whitewashing’ wasn’t even a term that I knew in the way that it’s used now,” he explained. “I knew it in the classical sense of yellowface, of white actors playing Asian characters. So I wasn’t as sensitive to that issue—but I was aware that I was erasing a potential Asian role.”
To counterbalance the shift away from an Asian Ancient One, Derrickson and Cargill reinvented the character of Wong, played in the film by Benedict Wong. “I inverted everything about him from the comics,” he explained. “Instead of a manservant, he’s a librarian. Instead of a sidekick, he’s Strange’s intellectual mentor. He’s a master of the mystic arts. He’s a very different kind of presence, and I felt like that was required.”

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UYZAM5x-H9o/Vw3H1rBWlgI/AAAAAAAAT9E/0hPjZfUgCdwsig-JkBM3CTi14BZP0oboQCLcB/s1600/giphy-3.gif

Wong most certainly comes off better in the film as a sage librarian warrior than he would have as a subservient house Asian. But all of this will still sound deeply unsatisfying to many of the fans and cultural critics who have rightfully taken issue with Doctor Strange’s high-profile racebending.
Give credit to Derrickson for acknowledging that the very community he was trying to avoid offending is the one most justifiably upset at the erasure—and that trading one underrepresented onscreen minority for another is far from an ideal solution to correcting entrenched racism, in any property being given the blockbuster treatment.
“Diversity is the responsibility of directors, and I took that as seriously as I could,” he said. “Whitewashing, if you use the term the way it’s used now—it’s what I did with the role. But it also implies racial insensitivity and it implies racist motives and I don’t think I had either. I was really acting out of what I still feel is the best possible choice. But it’s like I chose the lesser evil—and just because you choose the lesser evil it doesn’t mean you’re not choosing an evil.”
To the vocal opponents upset over Swinton’s casting, Derrickson lends his support. “I don’t feel that they’re wrong,” he said, sympathetic. “I was very aware of the racial issues that I was dealing with. But I didn’t really understand the level of pain that’s out there, for people who grew up with movies like I did but didn’t see their own faces up there.”
He offered an antidote to the evasiveness that greets most complaints when studio products are hit with critiques of cultural appropriation: Ownership of the creative choices he made and the negative ripple effect they may have on the culture by virtue of the enormous reach of the MCU. So rarely do filmmakers comment on their own controversies—let alone agree with their critics from within the heavily fortified Disney-Marvel machine—that Derrickson’s candor, in itself, feels like progress.
“The angry voices and the loud voices that are out there I think are necessary,” said Derrickson, who’s looking at breakout $70 million opening weekend projections for Doctor Strange, which is already topping the overseas box office. “And if it pushes up against this film, I can’t say I don’t support it. Because how else is it going to change? This is just the way we’ve got to go to progress, and whatever price I have to pay for the decision I’ve made, I’m willing to pay.”

We saw the screener last Tuesday and will have our own exclusive tomorrow. :cool:

[GeneChing]

Nice attempt by this author to connect malla-yuddha, but he missed Scott Adkins - that's so key to anyone who follow the martial arts drama.


#DoctorStrange
The Real Martial Arts of Marvel's Doctor Strange (https://champions.co/p/the-real-martial-arts-of-marvels-doctor-strange/4137484)
November 3, 2016 at 07:41AM

https://images.champions.co/image/upload/c_fill,h_470,q_auto:good,w_620/i37mlfohxyrtg4kz3cbc.jpg
Photo by Marvel via YouTube / Screenshot
Posted by Matt Juul @MattJuul
Digital Arts and Entertainment Writer at Boston Magazine
Matt Juul
#Marvel will take a bigger step into the world of magic and multiple dimensions with its latest superhero blockbuster #DoctorStrange, starring Benedict Cumberbatch. While the idea of a spellcasting sorcerer should conjure up images akin to a Gandalf or a Harry Potter, the MCU's newest hero actually has more in common with martial arts icons like Bruce Lee.

Similar to Marvel's upcoming Iron Fist Netflix series, Doctor Strange is heavily influenced by the mystical elements of old school kung fu movies. According to director Scott Derrickson, those types of films made a huge impact on how the fights scenes were choreographed, due to his love of the genre.

"Martial arts is the kind of action that does tie in well to the supernatural," Derrickson recently told Collider. "That is a whole subgenre within martial arts cinema. The supernatural martial arts movie. Particularly within Asian cinema. And I felt like when it came to fighting in the movie that just made sense to certainly to go in that direction and stay away from gunfire and things like that."

He added that the "supernatural action, combat fighting" takes place "within a larger surreal canvas" so that the viewer is "never just watching fighting."

The love for kung fu movies even extends to the film's main antagonist, the conniving Kaecilius played by Mads Mikkelsen. The actor revealed to Polygon that he has always been an avid martials arts and comic book fan, so getting a role in Doctor Strange was a "dream come true."

"Basically, half of my life I was reading comic books, and the other half I was watching Bruce Lee," Mikkelsen said.

While they may be used to create rifts in reality and magical bolts of energy, the actual martial arts skills shown on screen in Doctor Strange are actually rooted in real-life techniques that come from cultures with a lot of training experience.

Set on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal, the film takes place in a region with a long history in martial arts, such as the combat-wrestling style known as malla-yuddha. The 5,000 year old art, which was created in the area now known as Nepal and South Asia, utilizes grappling, punching, and pressure point strikes, in addition to unsavory techniques like joint-breaking and biting.

Although malla-yuddha sounds perfect for the UFC circa 1993, it doesn't really work with the movie's aesthetic. Instead, Doctor Strange drew on kung fu styles that originated in Nepal's northern neighbor of China, before spreading to other areas of Asia and around the world.

Since Kathmandu has become a welcoming place to practitioners of Buddhism, it's no surprise that the fights in the film were influenced by a martial art that developed alongside this belief system.

The Shaolin monks are probably the most well-known kung fu fighters, having fine tuned the art for more than 1,000 years, but modern incarnations of the style didn't really become popular in Nepal until quite recently, thanks to people like this Buddhist nunnery and groups of interested kids.

Any longtime martial arts movie fan can spot the technical motifs of kung fu styles, such as the use of open palm strikes and linear attacks. These movements, although a bit outdated for combat in a cage, work seamlessly with the spellcasting techniques and projections used in Doctor Strange, There's a flair to kung fu moves, and the film expertly uses them to connect the physicality of the characters to their otherworldly skills.

In addition to using hand-to-hand combat as a means of channeling one's inner magic, the Ancient One, played by Tilda Swinton, and her various followers can also imbue their weapons with extraordinary powers.

Many of the fighting tools used in Doctor Strange are your garden variety "ancient weapons," ranging from bo staffs and sticks to spears and blades. These items are pretty much universal among traditional martial arts, including kung fu.

Two weapons featured in the film that you don't see often, though, are the fan and chain whip. Both are used as magically created weapons in training and in battle.

The fan has been a tool of war in many cultures, particularly in Japan, which used several versions of the weapon. The Japanese tessen was a metal folding fan that could be used as a club, while the large open gunbai were used to protect from arrows. A similar weapon known as the tieshan is also in the armory of tai chi practitioners.

The Ancient One is the only sorcerer in Doctor Strange who seems to project fan like weapons when she's on the battlefield. Much like their real life usage, the fans both deflect blows and can inflict damage.

Doctor Strange often uses a mystical version of a chain whip that he creates with his powers. Much like the fan, this weapon is well known to those who study tai chi and other Chinese-based martial arts.

All in all, Doctor Strange taps into the mystical side of martial arts, using old school styles like kung fu to keep the magical elements grounded in the physical world.

[GeneChing]

£150m = $187m


Harry Potter special effects firm looks east with sale to China group (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/nov/03/framestore-sale-china-group-harry-potter-paddington-doctor-strange?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1)
Shanghai-listed CIH buys Oscar-winning special-effects firm behind Doctor Strange in deal valuing company at £150m

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/afaa21594fa5319ae66a7dd066b58dbb216353ab/0_157_5009_3010/master/5009.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&
Framestore worked on the Harry Potter films. Photograph: Alamy

Julia Kollewe
Thursday 3 November 2016 11.31 EDT Last modified on Thursday 3 November 2016 20.05 EDT

An Oscar-winning British visual effects company, which has worked on films including Doctor Strange and the Harry Potter franchise, is selling itself to a Chinese group in a deal that values it at nearly £150m.

Framestore has agreed a deal with Cultural Investment Holdings Co (CIH) that will mean the Shanghai-listed group acquiring 75% of the business.

The remainder is owned by the firm’s founder and chief executive, Sir William Sargent, and the rest of the management team.

Framestore is currently working on Paddington 2, the sequel to last year’s box office success about the bear from Peru. The London-based firm has also performed the visual effects for JK Rowling’s Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which opens later this month.

As part of the deal, Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional Berhad is selling its 30% stake in Framestore along with other shareholders who used to work for the business.

“I started the process about nine months ago. We’re swapping the partners we had before for the Chinese group,” said Sargent, who set up Framestore 30 years ago and retains a 10% stake. “I’m looking east.”

Following the firm’s success in North America and Europe, it wants to tap into the fast-growing Chinese and Indian film markets. “It’s not easy to do on our own,” he said.

Sargent said CIH had been chosen from a list of 100 interested parties that included bidders from North America, the UK and Asia-Pacific.

Framestore employs two people in Beijing, the centre of the Chinese film industry, and plans to open an office there before Christmas. CIH is also based in Beijing.

Framestore started as a five-person team based in Soho, the heart of London’s creative industries, and has become one of the world’s biggest post-production houses in the film industry. It now employs 1,400 staff and has offices in London, New York, Montreal and Los Angeles.

Framestore works with Hollywood film studios Warner Bros and Disney-owned Marvel. It has won an Oscar for its work on Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity in 2014 and was nominated for Oscars for Superman Returns, The Dark Knight and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1.

The deal would be the latest in a series of Chinese takeovers of British companies. Cala Homes, the UK’s largest private housebuilder, is reportedly in talks with Chinese property developer Evergrande Group, whose shareholders include Alibaba chief executive Jack Ma.

British television and film production is booming, thanks to a number of tax breaks. According to the latest official figures, film and TV programme production was the fastest-growing segment within Britain’s dominant services sector in the third quarter, with 16.4% growth.

[GeneChing]

More Marvel Martial Magic! Read What a Long DOCTOR STRANGE Trip It’s Been… (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1324) by Patrick Lugo and Gene Ching

http://www.kungfumagazine.com/admin/site_images/KungfuMagazine/upload/2921_KFM201639DoctorStrange_03.jpg

[GeneChing]

I'm with Kusatsu on this. :cool:


NOVEMBER 03, 2016 12:02pm PT by Aaron Couch
'Doctor Strange': Wong's Journey from Stereotype to Unlikely Symbol of Progress (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/doctor-strange-wongs-journey-stereotype-symbol-progress-943871)
The character has a troubled past in the comics, but the first actor to play him in 1978 says the role was a step forward.

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Benedict Wong in 'Doctor Strange'

The character has a troubled past in the comics, but the first actor to play him in 1978 says the role was a step forward.
In 1978's Dr. Strange TV movie, Clyde Kusatsu got to do something rare for an Asian-American actor at the time — portraying a character who wasn't steeped in stereotypes.

"I didn't have to run around with exotic robes anything representing the mysterious East or whatever," says Kusatsu. "At that time in '78, it was trying to overturn stereotypes people had about being Asian. Because everybody thought it was so exotic. You're going to do Kung fu or something like that."

What makes this even more remarkable is his character, Wong, has its comic book roots in such stereotypes. His politically incorrect origin is a famous blemish in Marvel history, with 1963's Strange Tales No. 110 introducing Wong as a manservant to Stephen Strange. His early tales are problematic, to say the least. (At one point, martial arts expert Wong declares that it's his duty to see to Strange's care and comfort, just as his father and forefathers have done for the Sorcerer Supreme throughout history.)

But Kusatsu's Wong was none of that. He spoke with an American accent and dressed like James Bond, favoring three-piece suits as he assisted an ancient magician (played by Oscar winner John Mills). Wong was a talented magician in his own right, standing up to the villainous Morgan le Fay (Jessica Walter) in battle.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzKA2J6NIrg

For Kusatsu, being No. 2 on the call sheet for a CBS project in 1978 was a major sign of progress. Less than a decade earlier, one of his professors at Northwestern not-so-subtly suggested he should quit acting.

"He cornered me and said, 'Why do you want to be an actor? There's only August Moon and the King and I. How could you possibly think of making a living?' " Kusatsu recalls. "It crushed me. Until after I realized, 'I've got to work ten times harder than a white actor.' "

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/sites/default/files/custom/Aaron/wong_strange.jpg
Kusatsu with John Mills in 'Dr. Strange'.

Nearly 40 years later, Doctor Strange is preparing to hit the big screen — and for Marvel Studios, adapting source material written in a very different time was a challenge.

"Wong — as rendered in the original comics — is so problematic that we weren't sure he was going to make the cut," says Doctor Strange screenwriter Jon Spaihts. "He needed to be more than a Man Friday to our hero. He needed to be a complex human being with power and agency and a presence of his own."

In the new film, Wong (played by Benedict Wong) is the librarian in Kamar-Taj, where Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is learning the mystic arts. He's no sidekick to Strange, and he's certainly not a manservant, with Benedict Wong's performance giving him some truly breakout moments in the film.

The film has taken heat for the casting of Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One, who is traditionally Asian in the comics. Those involved with the film have said The Ancient One can be anyone throughout time and is no one person.

Kusatsu, who has enjoyed a career spanning 43 years of continuous work as an actor, has been observing Benedict Wong's performances from afar, taking particular note of his work on British television. He would like to turn the conversation away from the whitewashing controversy surrounding Swinton's casting and focus it on the actor who succeeded him in the role of Wong.

"We all know why the Ancient One was cast in that way. It's just part of the age old thing of how to get people and the money and the distributors and open up the marketplace and not offending China or anything like that," he says. "To me, what the biggest point that was missed was Benedict is Asian and he was cast as an Asian character. It would have been worse if Tilda Swinton wound up playing Wong. Then you really have a problem."

He also points to Benedict Wong's TV work as being a force for good when it comes to breaking down stereotypes.

"You don't usually except to see an Asian face with a British accent of any kind [on TV]. That's another way of breaking down people's stereotypes of how Asians should sound like," says Kusatsu. "We all know what they look like but everyone has this ingrained thing promoted by television and stereotypes of how a person should sound. It's always been something to push forward at."

http://cdn2.thr.com/sites/default/files/2016/11/clyde_kusatsu_-_sag_afta_awards_-_getty_-_embed-_2016.jpg
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
Clyde Kusatsu

[Jimbo]

I agree 100% with Kusatsu on this.

I've known or met Asians who spoke with a variety of non-Asian accents (and languages): English, Australian, French, Spanish, Brazilian/Portuguese, Texan, Arkansas(ian?), New York, etc., etc., etc. Yet when lots of people see that, they seem puzzled.

"What??? WTF?!? Japanese guy speaking Portuguese!?! Lol."

"Lol @ Chinese dude talking like a cowboy."

"I just couldn't get over the Asian guy from Australia at my church, talking with an Aussie accent. I always do a double-take. It's freaky."

"Chinese guy talks like the Sopranos, LMFAO!!"

These are actual comments I've seen online over the years. It should be obvious to even a simpleton that you speak the language/dialect and have the resulting accent of wherever you grew up.

[boxerbilly]

Leo Fong is an old cowboy !

My sister can speak either American English or Australian English accent wise and do so better than the natives. She has that gift. Me, I can manage enough American English to offend everyone and get kicked out of everywhere.

edit- She did not start learning English until about 16. She was raised a very traditional Okinawan lifestyle.

[Jimbo]

Leo Fong is an old cowboy !

My sister can speak either American English or Australian English accent wise and do so better than the natives. She has that gift. Me, I can manage enough American English to offend everyone and get kicked out of everywhere.

edit- She did not start learning English until about 16. She was raised a very traditional Okinawan lifestyle.

That's cool!

When I was acting, I studied/trained the 'standard British accent', Received Pronunupciation, or RP for short. I added it to the 'special skills' category on my resume. I was pretty good at it for a while. But since then it's gone a little downhill. If you study it, you kind of lose it a bit if you don't keep it up or use it a lot.

[GeneChing]

Called it. From our review (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1324): "Benedict Wong brings the same smoldering gravitas that he imbues into his groundbreaking performance as Kublai Khan in the Original Netflix Series Marco Polo. Often, Asian Hollywood film roles are just ‘flower vases’ nowadays – just decoration and of no consequence to the story – Oriental is only ornamental. Wong steals every scene he is in just like he did in The Martian (2015). At first, Wong echoes the growling ‘noble savage’ stereotype of the bodyguard/manservant Oddjob from Goldfinger (1964). But later, just as Bruce Lee took the subservient Kato to a whole other level, Wong becomes the most standout character after Strange and the Ancient One. Benedict Wong has already committed to continuing to play Wong in Avenger: Infinity War, slated for May 2018. Asian actors lost the role of the Ancient One, but gained the first significant recurring role in the big screen MCU with Wong."


Benedict Wong gives 'Doctor Strange' a needed Asian superhero (http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2016/11/07/benedict-wong-doctor-strange/93236974/)
Brian Truitt , USA TODAY 6 p.m. EST November 7, 2016

Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Tilda Swinton star in the Marvel movie 'Doctor Strange.' Marvel

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/88c621408cb5e4a779209fc31a30abd9543730fd/c=247-0-2341-1574&r=x404&c=534x401/local/-/media/2016/11/03/USATODAY/USATODAY/636137707796724948-HKS0220-comp-v524.1004.jpg
(Photo: Marvel)

Beyoncé. Adele. Wong.

All one-named icons in their fields, though the latter is magical rather than musical in Doctor Strange, which topped the box office this weekend with $85 million. But Wong conjures something never seen before in Marvel's multiverse of comic-book movies: an Asian superhero.

Who better to play a mystical drill sergeant and hard-nosed librarian with that moniker than British star Benedict Wong?

“Honestly, I was watching Marvel films and was always crestfallen: Where are the super-Asians?” Wong says with a laugh. “People are looking to be represented by their heroes.”

A regular on Netflix’s Marco Polo (as Mongol leader Kublai Khan) who also has appeared in Ridley Scott's The Martian and Prometheus, Wong co-stars as one of the sorcerers of the Kamar-Taj, a group of magic folks dedicated to protecting Earth. When the villainous Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen) tries to bring darkness and doom, Wong (the character, not the real dude) wields the Wand of Watoomb to help out alongside Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch).

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Benedict Wong at last month's world premiere of 'Doctor Strange' in Hollywood. (Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez, Getty Images for Disney)

It’s a different take on Wong than the one familiar to many Doctor Strange fans. He first appeared in 1963 as Strange’s sidekick and valet, and while he has come into his own as a martial-arts master, the filmmakers wanted Wong to stand out as a figure of influence.

“Wong at his worst in comics is a dated stereotype, the obedient Chinese manservant, and there’s so much more possibility in him,” says screenwriter Jon Spaihts. “It was important that Wong be powerful in his own right.”

Growing up in Manchester, Wong (the real guy, not the wizard) was a big Spider-Man fan and comics collector. Yet when it came to role models, “I looked to space, really,” says Wong, the son of two Hong Kong immigrants, who loved Star Wars and Steven Spielberg as a kid.

The 45-year-old actor did the Bard's work in the late 1990s — from The Merchant of Venice to Antony and Cleopatra — and had a string of supporting roles in films such as Spy Game, Dirty Pretty Things, Sunshine and Moon.

Wong isn't a household face yet in the USA, but he's a bingeworthy one: In addition to Marco Polo, he also stars as a cop in the "Hated in the Nation" episode of Netflix's Black Mirror, which Wong calls "twisty darkness."

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/1fb74b3984801e91d6cd90db0884b90b822a2b6c/c=172-0-2828-1997&r=x408&c=540x405/local/-/media/2016/11/03/USATODAY/USATODAY/636137707859125348-CM-15107-R.jpg
Master Wong (Benedict Wong) wields the Wand of Watoomb in 'Doctor Strange.' (Photo: Jay Maidment)

Another highlight for Wong was voicing an as-yet-unnamed character in Spielberg’s upcoming Ready Player One, the adaptation of Ernest Cline's novel. “You’re working with him," Wong says of the filmmaker, "and your inner 11-year-old child is shrilling, ‘What is going on?!’ ”

He hopes his diverse superhero is magical not only to youngsters but also to actors like himself. “Let’s bang the gong and chime for more Asian superheroes,” he says. “The gatekeepers can certainly open the door — there’s a wealth of East Asian talent around, and that needs to be tapped into.”

And Wong will be Wong again onscreen soon enough. He already has had discussions with directors Anthony and Joe Russo about what the character could do alongside Strange in Avengers: Infinity War (in theaters May 4, 2018).

“Wong is fully aware of the Avengers,” the actor says. “I feel very welcomed in the whole Marvel universe, and we’ll just see what unfolds. I’m ready to go with Wong and his bag of relics.”

[GeneChing]

Scott Adkins, not the diet. ;)



Action Star Scott Adkins Steps Up From 'Undisputed' to Marvel Studios’ 'Doctor Strange' (http://www.muscleandfitness.com/features/edge/)

After making a name for himself in the "Undisputed" franchise, actor Scott Adkins sees his days on the C-list coming to an end with his mysterious role in Marvel Studios’ "Doctor Strange."

by Andrew Gutman | gutman26

http://cdn-maf3.heartyhosting.com/sites/muscleandfitness.com/files/styles/full_node_image_1090x614/public/media/scott-adkins-2.jpg

British-born martial artist and actor Scott Adkins has more than 50 movie credits to his name. He’s built a cult following as lead protagonist Yuri Boyka in the last three films in the Undisputed franchise and shared the screen with action movie legends Sylvester Stallone and Jean-Claude Van Damme in The Expendables 2. Adkins is next set to appear alongside Benedict Cumberbatch in Marvel Studios’ latest blockbuster, Doctor Strange, which hit theaters on Nov. 4. Despite all of these roles, Adkins is still stuck on Hollywood’s C-list, which is something the 40-year-old action star is determined to roundhouse kick to the curb.

“They compare my films with The Expendables or Marvel movies, but you can’t compare them. Those films are made in six months.”

Adkins filmed his Undisputed movies in just five weeks.

“I challenge you to find anyone making films in that amount of time that are better than the ones I’m making, but of course, people don’t see it that way.”

http://cdn-maf1.heartyhosting.com/sites/muscleandfitness.com/files/media/scott-adkins-3.jpg
Above: Adkins as Yuri Boyka in Boyka: Undisputed, in theaters January 2017. Adkins throws his signature spinning side kick at fellow Brit, Martyn Ford. Photo credit: Millenium Films

What they just see, and can’t get past, is Adkins’ ripped physique. Bringing Yuri Boyka’s world to life translates to 14 hours of physicality six days a week, plus additional workouts to maintain the shredded 190 pounds for the role of a Russian prison fighter who routinely goes all Bruce Lee—he performs all the moves—on his opponents in spectacular fashion. To look the part, Adkins typically follows a traditional bodybuilding split four days per week with two days dedicated to martial arts, refueling with balanced portions of whole foods, so he’s ready to do it all again the next day.

“It doesn’t even make sense to think that I can’t up my game. The thing is when you’re making a martial arts film it affects your performance as a dramatic actor as well because you are absolutely shattered,” Adkins says. “Directors can attest that I’m one of the hardest working actors because I love [acting], and I feel privileged to be able to do it.”

Adkins grew up a reserved kid from Sutton Coldfield, a small village 10 miles north of Birmingham. Early on he had aspirations of joining his action-movie idols—Lee and Van Damme—as an action-movie icon. At 18 he started acting and eventually enrolled in drama school. With eight years of martial arts already under his black belt, he landed small gigs in TV shows and low-budget action flicks. Although every actor has to start somewhere, Adkins admits these decisions could have played a role in the lack of attention he receives from big-time studios. It wasn’t until 2006 when Undisputed 2 was released that Adkins’ following began to gather. And after appearing in The Expendables 2 as one of Van Damme’s henchmen, his fans set up an Internet campaign pushing to get him more lead roles. Adkins’ response: “Well, I quite agree.”

The man who turned his father’s garage into a dojo is gaining momentum.

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Photo credit: Millenium Films

With a cash cow like Marvel Studios’ movies—The Avengers, The Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Iron Man 3 all earned more than $1 billion each at the box office—will this be the role that finally catapults Adkins’ career? He’s not banking on it.

“I’m not the star of the movie. Hopefully what I do in it gives me more notoriety so I can be a part of bigger films,” says Adkins. “But it just takes somebody high up to say, ‘OK, we’re going to take a chance on you, kid.’ I don’t feel like I’ve had that opportunity. At least give me the shot, and if I fail, OK. I’ve only got myself to blame.”

Adkins is starting to film Accident Man—a hit man who makes his kills look like accidents—and just completed work on two more films, Savage Dog and Altar Rock. As usual, the days on set were long. And as Adkins continues to wait for his big break, he knows when the day arrives, it won’t feel strange.

[Jimbo]

I saw Doctor Strange and have to say, IMO it's the best superhero movie I've ever seen. 'Nuff said.

[sanjuro_ronin]

I saw Doctor Strange and have to say, IMO it's the best superhero movie I've ever seen. 'Nuff said.

I must say that I agree.
It was just really, really well done.
From the Special effects to the writing to the acting.

There was no weakness.

The only critique I have is that there was a bit too much "building warping" at times, but that's just me nitpicking.

[GeneChing]

Tilda Swinton Releases Email Exchange With Margaret Cho About Whitewashing In ‘Doctor Strange’ (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tilda-swinton-releases-unedited-email-exchange-with-margaret-cho-about-whitewashing-in-doctor-strange_us_58555bdae4b08debb7897962?)
Two actresses we love are having a tough conversation.
12/17/2016 12:53 pm ET | Updated 1 day ago
Cole Delbyck Entertainment Writer, The Huffington Post

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MARVEL
Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One in “Doctor Strange.”

Everyone in Hollywood has apparently learned a lesson from the Taylor Swift/Kim Kardashian Snapchat debacle of 2016: always keep your receipts.

On Wednesday, comedian Margaret Cho revealed that Tilda Swinton reached out over email to discuss the controversy surrounding her casting as the Ancient One in “Doctor Strange,” a character who is a Tibetan man in comic book canon. Swinton’s casting was immediately met with resistance from the Asian and Asian-American community, which has historically been erased and stereotyped on screen due to Hollywood selecting white actors to play roles intended for them.

“Tilda eventually emailed me and she said that she didn’t understand why people were so mad about ‘Doctor Strange’ and she wanted to talk about it, and wanted to get my take on why all the Asian people were mad,” Cho told actor Bobby Lee on his podcast TigerBelly. “It was so weird.”

Cho and Swinton evidently had a “long discussion” about whitewashing in the film industry, which the “Snowpiercer” actress asked her not make public. The conversation struck an uncomfortable note for Cho, an unapologetic critic of Hollywood’s representational deficiencies, who in her own words, ended up feeling like a “house Asian.”

In response to Cho’s interview, Swinton’s team released the entire unedited email exchange on Friday for “the opportunity to clarify and with all good wishes to all,” according to Vulture. Later that night, Cho made a statement reiterating that “Asian actors should play Asian roles,” but writing that she remains a huge fan of Swinton’s.

The five emails between the two actresses were written in May 2016 months before the premiere of “Doctor Strange,” as the backlash to Swinton’s casting gained traction. You can read them below:

On Friday, May 13, 2016, Tilda Swinton wrote: continued next post

[GeneChing]

Dear Margaret,

We’ve never met, but you’ve been in my head for years - I’m a fan.
I want to ask you a favour now which is sprung out of a truly important social conversation but may be heading for some crazy-making ****.

The diversity debate - ALL STRENGTH to it - has come knocking at the door of Marvel’s new movie DR STRANGE.

I am told that you are aware of this. But since I am that extinct beast that does no social media, I am unaware of what exactly anybody has said about any of it. I believe there are some ironies about this particular film being a target, but I’m frankly much more interested in listening than saying anything much.

I would really love to hear your thoughts and have a - private - conversation about it. Are you up for this? Can we e-mail?

No wrong answer here. Tell me to **** off if you feel like it. In any and every case,

Much love to you,

Tilda


From: Margaret Cho
To: Tilda Swinton
Sent: Fri, 13 May 2016 13:32
Subject: Re: Strange matters

Sure! I’m a big fan of yours - since orlando!

Well, what do you know so far? I can tell you from my perspective what’s happening!

The character you played in Dr Strange was originally written as a Tibetan man and so there’s a frustrated population of Asian Americans who feel the role should have gone to a person of Asian descent.

The largerpart of the debate has to do with the ‘whitewashing’ of Asian and Asian Americans in film. Our stories are told by white actors over and over again and we feel at a loss to know how to cope with it.

Protest seems to be the only solution- we just want more representative images of ourselves in film. TV is getting better in terms of diversity but film is lagging behind.

Anyway - hope this helps! We can totally email and we can be private! Best, m


On Friday, May 13, 2016, Tilda Swinton wrote:

Thank you so much for your reply! So grateful to have a chance to chew this cud with you. Super clear.

Here’s the situation I reckon Marvel was in. The old comic books from way back when are stuffed with stereotypes that we could all find offensive for any number of reasons.

The film - like any film adaptation - is a riff on the books. The Ancient One may have been written as a Tibetan man in the comics, but Marvel, in a conscious effort to shake up stereotypes, wanted to avoid tired cliché. They cast Chiwetel Ejiofor as the second lead - a white Transylvanian in the books. And wrote a significant Asian character to be played by Benedict Wong.

With The Ancient One (the ‘wise old Eastern geezer’ Fu Manchu type in the book), wanting to switch up the gender (another diversity department) and not wanting to engage with the old ‘Dragon Lady’ trope, they chose to write the character as being of (ancient) Celtic origin and offered that role to me. Presumably on Ancient grounds. I accepted happily, impressed that, for once, they aimed to disrupt the ‘wisdom must be male’ never-ending story - and, by the way, for once, wanting to feature a woman who’s a badass, over 26 and not simply bursting out of a bikini.

The biggest irony about this righteous protest targeting this particular film is the pains the makers went to to avoid it.

A - personal - irony to my being even remotely involved in this controversy is what I stand up for and always have. Whether it is challenging the idea of what women look like, or how any of us live our lives, or how we educate our children, diversity is pretty much my comfort zone. The idea of being caught on the wrong side of this debate is a bit of a nightmare to me.

I am as sick as anybody at the lack of a properly diverse cinematic universe. Pretty much sick of the Anglophone world in general, sick of all the men’s stories, sick of all the symmetrical features and Mattel-inspired limbs..

I’m a Scottish woman of 55 who lives in the Highlands. There’s precious little projected on contemporary cinema screens that means a great deal to my life, if truth be told.

So

How best might we focus this thing? To offer intelligent and empowered thinking.. And see something constructive coming out of this moment?

Ducking the issue is not what I am about. I want to meet it, but, if possible, move things forward by how I meet it.

I realise, as far as I am concerned, this possibly means saying nothing: so far I have attempted to correct the notion that I accepted an offer to play an Asian.. (!!) the most significant and damaging misunderstanding out there, it seems. Beyond that, I don’t feel it appropriate for me to add anything, certainly at this point.

But I would love to know what ideas you - or anyone you know - have of something properly progressive to bring to this table. The debate is so important for all of us. It needs to build itself on strong ground.

love

Tilda


From: Margaret Cho
To: Tilda Swinton
Sent: Fri, 13 May 2016 20:44
Subject: Re: Strange matters

I’m totally unfamiliar with all the comic books so I can’t speak on anything about that - and the efforts to make this film more diverse is unfortunately lost in the translation here. Hopefully that comes up more when the film comes out and is finally brought to audiences!

I think that it’s just a timing thing - Asian Americans are fed up with not being given roles even if the part called for someone of Asian descent - and that the Ancient One role was being used as another example of ‘whitewashing’. Social media has grown to the point where we can use it effectively to express - well whatever.

I believe very much that you as an artist are about diversity and your body of work shows that - but this particular case of the Ancient One is just another in a long list of ‘whitewashed’ Asian characters and so you’re likely to feel the heat of history.

I am not sure what to say other than I am glad you want to meet the issue head on - it’s a tough one I know.

I think that talking about the issue frankly - as you have done with me is the right way to go. It’s hard I know - people get very angry and it’s difficult to know what to do to get around that anger. But you should know that it’s anger built up over many many years of invisibility within film/tv/media that’s just exploded now with this film. And it’s not just you - It’s also directed at Scarlett Johanssen for Ghost in the Shell.

Maybe what’s best is the highlight the diversity that you do see in the film and that being why you felt drawn to the project.

Also acknowledge that you’re all about diversity and how you want the films you make to be diverse and how film can benefit from that.

I’d even suggest getting into producing content that would give Asian American voices a platform? That’s really what is being asked for. Asian Americans feel as if we have no place in film and so we want one to be created. Whether that is found in supporting projects that would bring Asians into the foreground or even just discussing what it would take to do such a thing would help.


On Friday, May 13, 2016, Tilda Swinton wrote:

I can’t thank you enough for this.

It really helps me sort out the lay of the land. To be continued.

x

By the way, the project I have been developing as a producer over the past two years is with Bong Joon Ho - my colleague from SNOWPIERCER - a film called OKJA shooting this summer in Korea, NYC and Vancouver - to my knowledge the first ever half Korean/half English speaking film, which we are making with Plan B and Netflix, in which the lead is a 14 year old girl from Korea and which stars Steven Yeun, amongst others.. fingers crossed it will be a big deal and help the landscape somewhat.. I hope and believe it will.


From: Margaret Cho
To: Tilda Swinton
Sent: Fri, 13 May 2016 22:30
Subject: Re: Strange matters

Hey that’s great about OKJA!
It's always interesting what the actual emails reveal... :rolleyes:

[mickey]

Greetings,

I recently saw this and it quickly got to the point where I was just waiting for the line, "I have had the I Ching manual for 12 years. If I haven't mastered it by now, I'd regard myself as an idiot!" (Chinese language version with subs was 10 years). I now understand why Dr Strange's was not depicted as Asian because, basically, it was Shaolin vs Lama. What a fukkin' rip. And Dr Strange's woman friend was Shao Shier, always there to help him out. I saw touches of "Contact" and "Mad Monkey" (the hand issue), with an added splish of theme music reminiscent of the movie "The Omen".

I did not like the way immortality was explored nor did I appreciate how the Dread Dormamu (sp?) was portrayed: as a powerful simpleton.

I only wish I could get that green amulet so I could get my time back.


mickey

[GeneChing]

I'll split this into an indie thread later.


DECEMBER 11, 2018 2:20pm PT by Borys Kit
Scott Derrickson Returning to Direct 'Doctor Strange' Sequel (Exclusive) (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/doctor-strange-2-scott-derrickson-returning-direct-1168156)

https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/scale_crop_768_433/2018/12/doctor_strange_bts.jpg
Jay Maidment/Marvel
Benedict Cumberbatch (left) and Scott Derrickson on the set of 2016's 'Doctor Strange'

When it comes to negotiations, they're in the endgame now.

Marvel is finally ready to conjure up a sequel to Doctor Strange.

Scott Derrickson, who directed and co-wrote the mystical Marvel hero's initial 2016 outing, has quietly finalized a deal to helm the new installment.

A search for a writer to pen the script is about to get underway.

Benedict Cumberbatch will return as Stephen Strange, the good doctor turned master of the mystic arts, as will Benedict Wong, who played his right-hand man, Wong. Rachel McAdams, who played Stephen Strange’s love interest, is likely to return as well.

Strange was last seen de-materializing in the $2 billion-grossing Avenger: Infinity War, where one of his lines of dialogue served as the inspiration for the title of the fourth Avengers movie, Avengers: Endgame.

Marvel has been tight-lipped about its plans for life after Endgame, which it is calling Phase Four. After all, how much can there be when half your heroes are supposed to be dead?

In any case, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that the plan is for the script to be hashed out in 2019 with an eye toward a spring 2020 production start. If all goes well, the movie would be casting its spell on audiences in May 2021.

Marvel had no comment.

Derrickson carved out a résumé of horror movies such as 2005's The Exorcism of Emily Rose and 2012's Sinister before making 2016’s Doctor Strange, which grossed $677.7 million worldwide. Earlier this year, he directed the pilot for TNT’s adaptation of Snowpiercer, but parted ways with the production after the showrunner was replaced.

Derrickson is repped by WME, Brillstein Entertainment Partners and Ziffren Brittenham.


I suppose this is a spoiler for Avengers 4 (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71016-Avengers-4). :p

[GeneChing]

Splitting this into an indie thread - Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71710-Doctor-Strange-in-the-Multiverse-of-Madness) - from the original Doctor Strange thread (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69097-Doctor-Strange) now.


NEWSFEBRUARY 5, 2020 4:07PM PT
Sam Raimi in Talks to Direct ‘Doctor Strange 2’ (EXCLUSIVE) (https://variety.com/2020/film/news/doctor-strange-2-sam-raimi-1203475309/)
By ADAM B. VARY and JUSTIN KROLL

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/sam.jpg?w=1000&h=562&crop=1
CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK/MARVEL

Sam Raimi, who helped launch the modern superhero movie with 2002’s “Spider-Man,” is in talks to direct “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” for Marvel Studios, Variety has learned.

Raimi replaces original director Scott Derrickson, who Variety reported on Jan. 9 had officially departed the project due to creative differences. Derrickson will remain as an executive producer. Raimi, meanwhile, will need to get up to speed before the film’s scheduled production start date in May.

Marvel had no comment.

After finishing his “Spider-Man” trilogy for Sony Pictures with 2007’s “Spider-Man 3,” Raimi’s output as a director slowed considerably, with just the horror pic “Drag Me to Hell” in 2009 and Disney’s “The Wizard of Oz” prequel “Oz the Great and Powerful” in 2013. Instead, he’s been busy as a producer, helping relaunch various horror franchises like “Poltergeist” and his own classic, “Evil Dead.”

This is something of a coup for both Raimi and Marvel, given Raimi’s reputation with comic book fans — 2004’s “Spider-Man 2” is still widely regarded as one of the best superhero movies ever made. And with 15 features to his name as a director — including the beloved horror trilogy “The Evil Dead,” “Evil Dead II,” and “Army of Darkness” — Raimi is also the most established filmmaker to join the Marvel Studios fold since the earliest days of the studio, when Kenneth Branagh and Joe Johnston respectively directed the first “Thor” and “Captain America” movies in 2011.

Since then, Marvel’s m.o. has been to hire talented filmmakers who’ve made just a few (or zero) features before, and nothing at a blockbuster scale, like Joss Whedon, Anthony and Joe Russo, James Gunn, Ryan Coogler, and Taika Waititi. Raimi, by contrast, comes to “Doctor Strange 2” with his own distinctive visual style and decades of experience with making tentpole movies, especially featuring Marvel superheroes.

Benedict Cumberbatch is returning as the Sorcerer Supreme after his 2016 debut, and subsequent appearances in “Thor: Ragnarok,” “Avengers: Infinity War,” and “Avengers: Endgame.” Benedict Wong and Chiwetel Ejiofor are also expected to reprise their roles from the original film as, respectively, fellow sorcerer Wong and Strange’s compatriot-turned-nemesis Karl Mordo. And Elizabeth Olsen has been tapped to reprise her role as Scarlet Witch, aka Wanda Maximoff, for a storyline that Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige has said will link up with her Disney Plus series “WandaVision,” which will debut in December.

Rachel McAdams, however, will not reprise her role as Strange’s colleague Christine Palmer.

“Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” is scheduled to open on May 7, 2021.

Marvel Studios’ next theatrical project, “Black Widow,” will open on May 1, followed by “Eternals” on Nov. 6, and “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” on Feb. 12, 2021.

Raimi is repped by CAA.

[GeneChing]

May 20, 2021 7:27am PT
Kevin Feige Admits Marvel Shouldn’t Have Whitewashed Tilda Swinton’s ‘Doctor Strange’ Character (https://variety.com/2021/film/news/doctor-strange-whitewash-tilda-swinton-kevin-feige-1234977525/)

By Jordan Moreau

https://variety.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/tilda-swinton-doctor-strange.jpg
Courtesy of Marvel
Marvel film “Doctor Strange” courted some controversy when it cast actor Tilda Swinton, a white woman, in the role of The Ancient One, who is typically portrayed in the comics as an Asian man. Marvel Studios defended the casting leading up to the release, but now president Kevin Feige has addressed the controversy and admitted the company could have handled it differently.

In 2016, Marvel Studios released a statement about Swinton’s casting, saying “Marvel has a very strong record of diversity in its casting of films and regularly departs from stereotypes and source material to bring its MCU to life. The Ancient One is a title that is not exclusively held by any one character, but rather a moniker passed down through time, and in this particular film the embodiment is Celtic. We are very proud to have the enormously talented Tilda Swinton portray this unique and complex character alongside our richly diverse cast.”

On Wednesday, Feige spoke to Men’s Health for a cover story on the upcoming Asian-led Marvel film “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” saying that “Doctor Strange” could have cast an Asian actor.

“We thought we were being so smart, and so cutting-edge,” he said. “We’re not going to do the cliché of the wizened, old, wise Asian man. But it was a wake-up call to say, ‘Well, wait a minute, is there any other way to figure it out? Is there any other way to both not fall into the cliché and cast an Asian actor?’ And the answer to that, of course, is yes.”

At the time, “Doctor Strange” director Scott Derrickson and co-star Benedict Wong defended Swinton’s casting, while other Asian actors and visibility groups criticized it.

In a major push for diversity, “Shang-Chi” will be the first Marvel film to feature a predominantly Asian cast, with the lead role being played by Simu Liu. The film hits theaters September 3.

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[GeneChing]

‘Doctor Strange’ actress Zara Phythian and husband accused of sex with teen (https://pagesix.com/2022/04/27/doctor-strange-actress-zara-phythian-husband-accused-of-sex-with-teen/)
By Joe Tacopino April 27, 2022 | 7:29pm

An actress who appeared in “Doctor Strange” has been accused, along with her husband, of having sex with a teenage girl, a report said.

Zara Phythian — a martial artist who played a sorcerer in the 2016 Marvel movie — has been accused of sex crimes along with husband Victor Marke for “repeatedly having sex” with a 13-year-old girl, according to the Nottinghamshire Post.

The girl, who is now an adult, claims Phythian, 36, and Marke, 59, plied her with alcohol and had sex with her between 2005 and 2008. She also said they filmed some of the encounters.

“I knew it was wrong but I just didn’t know how to get out of the situation or say anything,” she told cops, according to the outlet.

“I remember trying to copy Zara’s reaction at the time because I looked up to her and tried to be like her in every way.”

Both Phythian and Marke were martial arts instructors in the UK when the teenager reached out to them.

https://pagesix.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2022/04/zara-phythian-134.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=1024
Zara Phythian and her husband Victor Marke are accused of having sex with a 13-year-old girl.
David M. Benett
https://pagesix.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2022/04/zara-phythian-136.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=682
The alleged victim claims some of Zara Phythian’s and Victor Marke’s sexual encounters with them were filmed.
zaraphythian/Instagram

The woman now claims that Phythian asked her to play a game of “dare” and give Marke oral sex.

Pythian and Marke both denied the allegations in court.


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[GeneChing]

Doctor Strange actress Zara Phythian and husband convicted of multiple counts of child sex abuse (https://ew.com/celebrity/doctor-strange-zara-phythian-convicted-child-sex-charges/)
The couple's offenses relate to sexual activity with a 13-year-old girl, as well as another underage victim.

By Joey Nolfi
May 11, 2022 at 04:14 PM EDT

Doctor Strange actress Zara Phythian and her husband, Victor Marke, have been convicted of multiple charges of child sex abuse in a British court.

According to a document provided to EW by the Nottingham Crown Court clerk, 37-year-old Phythian — who was tried under the name Zara Marke — was convicted of 14 counts, with her 59-year-old husband convicted of 18.

The counts for Phythian all relate to sexual activity with a child that occurred between December 2005 and December 2008. She is named alongside Marke in all of her charges, though he is individually included on four additional indecent assault charges (for actions dating back to September 2002) as an individual.

Marke's offenses include indecent assault of a 15-year-old victim, while both were convicted of multiple counts of sexual activity with another underage victim beginning when she was 13. Their actions span multiple years and repeated occasions involving the same victim.

https://imagesvc.meredithcorp.io/v3/mm/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.onecms.io%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F6%2F2022%2F05%2F11%2FG ettyImages-617805396.jpg
Zara Phythian at the 'Doctor Strange' premiere in 2016. | CREDIT: ANTHONY HARVEY/GETTY IMAGES
Phythian has two dozen credits listed on IMDb, the most notable being a small role in the 2016 Doctor Strange blockbuster opposite Benedict Cumberbatch as a "Brunette Zealot." She does not appear in the sequel, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Per BBC reporting, Marke claimed that the sexual activity occurred on only one occasion, and that Phythian was not involved alongside him. Phythian reportedly denied any sexual activity with one of the victims.

Judge Mark Watson remanded the couple into custody following the trial, ahead of their May 16 sentencing. "Both of you know the sentence I pass on 16 May is likely to be measured by a considerable period of custody," he said at the trial.

Nicole Hepburn from the Crown Prosecution Service said that Phythian and Marke were "exposed as the true liars" in the case, after the victims initially reported the pair years after the abuse began.

"This abuse may have occurred some years ago, but that makes it no less serious and nor is it a barrier to justice," Hepburn continued, according to the BBC. "I would encourage anyone who has been abused in the past to come forward with the knowledge that the CPS will take your case seriously."

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Busted-Martial-Artists (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?48947-Busted-Martial-Artists/)