If you've ever read one of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's early Doctor Strange stories, you'll no doubt be well aware of how crazy and trippy the latter's incredible artwork became when bringing the Sorcerer Supreme to life on the page. Thankully, the movie will be heading in a similar direction, with Scott Derrickson telling EW that those comics are what have inspired the visual effects they're utilising. "I was always interested in the extreme mind-bending visuals of the comics. I had very ambitious for the visuals, which were rooted in the comics, that movies haven’t done yet. And a lot of that goes back to the Ditko artwork and all that ’60s craziness you see in the comics."
"When this comic appeared in the early ’60s, it really informed, in a way that is pretty amazing, a lot of the psychedelic ’60s as we know it," adds Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige. "Stan Lee and, in particular, Steve Ditko, had an amazing psychedelic style. I don’t know that they were doing anything weird in the bullpen in Marvel, but certainly the stuff they were doing inspired all those people who were doing mind-expansion experiments at the time. So, that’s inherent to the property. And that’s our mission statement for the visual effects on this movie." Feige then went on to descibe a scene which takes place between Strange and The Ancient One when she first introduces him to "the array of alternative dimensions" which make up the MCU's Multiverse.
"[The] sequence culminates in what we, behind-the-scenes, refer to as the ‘Magical Mystery Tour,’ which literally takes him in a shocking and very fast way through the multiverse," he teases. "The images can be just as trippy — for lack of a better term — as those Ditko images were in the past. So, that, we hope, is going to set this movie apart from any of the other movies. And, from any other movie." That sounds awesome, but perhas it's Cumberbatch who says it best: "There’s all sorts of craziness [in Doctor Strange]. Falling, flying, jumping, fighting, punching, getting punched. It’s really rough and tumbleThere’s going to be crazy s–t going on."