Benedict Cumberbatch is far from done with playing Doctor Strange. The actor, who is at the Red Sea Film Festival with “We Live in Time” — produced by his company SunnyMarch — called the superhero a “complex man motivated by a need to control everything at any cost.” “I am interested in seeing where these costs take him,” he said. “There is a lot more to play and it’s very exciting.”
Cumberbatch said films like “Doctor Strange” and the offerings within the Marvel Cinematic Universe are “grand gestures.” “When they are really good, they capture the zeitgeist, speak to us and our culture. They are so much fun to do.”
Speaking of Marvel’s capturing of the current moment in culture and politics, the actor said that his “real fear” was not just about the fact the character “was a bit of a misogynist and an arrogant sod” but that the story needed to speak with “the idea of spirituality” at that moment in time.
“That was the key to the success,” he said of the treatment of spirituality in “Doctor Strange.”
“It was something we hadn’t seen in the MCU, a whole new ground. Also just what he brings in terms of harnessing power through sheer will. That is a superpower and, as an origin story, it is pretty rich.”
The actor said that Marvel “got it right many times before,” but it was “nerve-wracking enough for me to work really, really hard on it and hope that it would be successful without the arrogance of presuming it would be.”
Elsewhere in the conversation about his experience as Doctor Strange, the actor recalled first going to set and being “overwhelmed” by the talent of the crew. “The wealth of talent you are surrounded by is a little humbling and scary,” he continued, saying that he “hates” the sentence “the artist on set,” uttered when above-the-line talent enters the set. “The artist has been on set have been on set since this set was assembled, painted, decorated, filled with smoke-lit camera… We are one part of many others of artistry.”
The actor emphasized that there is a “lot of tangible stuff” within Marvel productions. “[Marvel] will do a lot of location. They do a lot of real set builds and there’s a lot of 360 stuff to work with, despite a lot of [moments] where you go, ‘I need to step outside because all I’ve seen is green and blue all day.” Cumberbatch recalled learning “how to have fun” by seeing Tom Holland and Robert Downey Jr. interact on set as Peter Parker and Tony Stark.
Of shooting 2021’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” the actor said that “watching Tom Holland off the success of the first ‘Spider-Man’ film was magic. I [realized] I gotta have fun. I can’t just turn up with the collar.”
“The best stuff on those huge canvases, those things with a huge amount of responsibility and expectation from all these amazing, devoted fans, is to play and have fun and be free to keep it alive. [Otherwise] it becomes stale.”
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