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Thread: Doctor Strange

  1. #1
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    Doctor Strange

    This just got interesting to me.

    Martial Artist Scott Adkins Joins Benedict Cumberbatch in Marvel’s ‘Doctor Strange’ (Exclusive)
    MOVIES | By Jeff Sneider on November 13, 2015 @ 1:19 pm Follow @theinsneider


    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.
    Gene Ching
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  2. #2
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    First Scott, now Benedict Wong

    JANUARY 21, 2016 3:09pm PT by Borys Kit
    'The Martian' Actor Nabs Key 'Doctor Strange' Role (Exclusive)


    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.
    Gene Ching
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  3. #3
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    Doctor Strange Official Teaser Trailer #1 (2016) - Benedict Cumberbatch Marvel Movie

    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
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  4. #4
    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
    Last edited by mickey; 04-13-2016 at 01:06 PM.

  5. #5
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    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. It's OK once in a while, but the sheer numbers are ridiculous.
    Last edited by Jimbo; 04-13-2016 at 03:41 PM.

  6. #6
    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
    Last edited by mickey; 04-14-2016 at 07:00 AM.

  7. #7
    I think it's sad when artists are judged by their nationality.

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cataphract View Post
    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.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Jimbo View Post
    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

  10. #10
    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.

  11. #11
    Greetings Cataphract,

    Time will tell with this movie.

    mickey

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cataphract View Post
    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.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Jimbo View Post
    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.

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cataphract View Post
    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.
    Last edited by Jimbo; 04-15-2016 at 08:27 AM.

  15. #15
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    Interesting piece on THR.

    APRIL 15, 2016 3:57pm PT by Rebecca Sun, Graeme McMillan
    Why Did 'Doctor Strange' and 'Ghost in the Shell' Whitewash Their Asian Characters?


    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
    Gene Ching
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    Author of Shaolin Trips
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