Doctor Strange had a big opening this weekend, getting $85 million dollars at the US box office. A majority of that was no doubt in part thanks to its star Benedict Cumberbatch. However, you might not have known that he played two characters in the film. He played the titular Doctor Stephen Strange, and he played classic Marvel villain Dormammu. At least, he did in the face of the villain. As Director Scott Derrickson revealed to IGN:
“We knew it was an all CG character, but as we were in production Benedict brought it up as an idea. He said, ‘What would you think about me doing it?’ I said, ‘Let me think about it, you know.’
“It’s an interesting idea, because I did fancy the idea that as this other-dimensional being he’s not moving through the Dark Dimension, with a countenance, with eyes and a face, eyes and a mouth, and a human visage – why would he? He takes that form on to communicate with Strange.”
“The more I thought about it the more I liked the idea,” said Derrickson. “Because no one understood Dormammu better than Benedict did. I also wrote that role to be a kind of ultra-inflated version of Strange. He is an ego run amok; he is this cosmic conqueror where everything, where literally everything in the multi-verse is about him.There’s something interesting about this confrontation of this little, tiny guy who has this power of time and this monstrous conqueror who is trapped by a clever gambit. There’s something about that worked well, and I didn’t think anybody to interact with Benedict than he, himself.”
This is hardly the first time Cumberbatch did such a thing, he did motion capture for Smaug in the Hobbit films, going so far as to move like a dragon to really nail the feeling of the scenes. So to just do a face? Was probably a walk in the park. A bargain you might say.
