DOCTOR STRANGE 2 Costume Designer Talks Black Bolt And Mister Fantastic's Last-Minute Inclusion (Exclusive)

DOCTOR STRANGE 2 Costume Designer Talks Black Bolt And Mister Fantastic's Last-Minute Inclusion (Exclusive)

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Costume Designer Graham Churchyard confirms Mister Fantastic and Black Bolt were late additions to the movie, and reflects on creating Captain Marvel's new look.

By JoshWilding - Jul 13, 2022 02:07 PM EST

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was a blast, and when expectations were so ridiculously high for the sequel, it's easy to overlook how mind-blowing The Illuminati's presence really was. 

Along with Sir Patrick Stewart as Professor X, we got to see a live-action Captain Carter, a new Captain Marvel courtesy of Lashana Lynch's Maria Rambeau Variant, and the MCU debuts of Mister Fantastic and Black Bolt. Both characters looked like they'd just stepped straight out of the comic books, but we recently learned that their costumes were entirely VFX.

You might wonder, then, why we asked the sequel's Costume Designer, Graham Churchyard, about their suits. Well, we were curious how it felt to miss out on creating the costumes for two iconic characters, and he confirmed that both heroes were added to the movie very late in the day.

Expressing sympathy for the Doctor Strange sequel's VFX team, Churchyard confirms that there were lots of ideas about who to include in The Illuminati and reveals that the team's scenes were originally shot in London before reshoots took place in Los Angeles. 

He also talks about creating Captain Marvel's new suit and teases a lot of deleted scenes featuring Maria heading into action that, unfortunately, ended up on the cutting room floor! You can find out more about those by watching our full interview with Graham in the player below:
 


I’ve read that Mister Fantastic and Black Bolt’s costumes were fully VFX creations, so were you disappointed not to get to work on two big MCU debuts here?

"Yeah, I feel sorry for Janek Sirrs that he had to shoehorn those in at the last moment. We had designs for other characters, and then we didn't have casting and there were travel bans. When we were shooting the Illuminati in London, actors like Sir Patrick couldn't come to London because of travel. Richie Palmer and everyone had a big wish list of like who was going to be in the Illuminati. When it came down to those two characters being settled on, it was then even too late to make something locally in Los Angeles. Just way too late and too close.

"It was probably too close for comfort for visual effects to really do that because up to that point, everything else had been physically there. All of Wanda when she's flying around Kamar Taj on a very elaborate wire rig that's like a spider that goes six ways that can pull you in different directions. Where possible, pretty much everything is physical in the costumes unless they say, 'Hey, the skirt is getting in the way of the rig.' It just gives visual effects one less thing to do out of the million things that they have to do in to bring these characters and enhance them in the way you see them.

"Lashana Lynch as Captain Marvel...we built that entirely from scratch. We start with a 3D scan in a photogrammetry booth, and then we work out a form of the person and start building the costume on top of that and sculpt things in the computer. We're then printing those out, moulding them, and then get to the point where we say, 'Let's bring the actor in for a fitting' and fine-tune it until you get something like that. I was really happy with Lashana's costume. The fit and performance, and she was able to fight. All I'm saying is a lot was cut and it's a very quick end for the Illuminati. We shot a tonne more, but maybe it'll be on the Blu-ray."

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is now available on Digital and will be released on 4K, Blu-ray and DVD July 26.
 

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MCUKnight11
MCUKnight11 - 7/13/2022, 2:21 PM
The fact that they didn't delve into these 2 at all during the assembled documentary gives me hope that they have further plans for these 2.
bkmeijer1
bkmeijer1 - 7/13/2022, 2:34 PM
@MCUKnight11 - I kinda took that as a sign they were very late additions, like Churchyard says.

And speaking of the doc, thought the inclusion of Campbell was pretty fun
MCUKnight11
MCUKnight11 - 7/13/2022, 2:47 PM
@bkmeijer1 - Yes! That was so groovy to have him narrate.
Origame
Origame - 7/13/2022, 2:25 PM
I'd say it would've been better to have them actually made suits, but they died like asap, so it wouldn't have aided the film much. Just give those poor vfx artists a break marvel!
SonOfAGif
SonOfAGif - 7/13/2022, 2:39 PM
How about we interview the VFX staff and stop going to the higher ups?
MachinimaMan
MachinimaMan - 7/13/2022, 2:47 PM
*sigh*.........can I just watch what happened in THIS cinematic universe? I can't be the only one who wants to know more about Illuminati and their MCU beginnings.
MosquitoFarmer
MosquitoFarmer - 7/13/2022, 3:06 PM
They had to stretch their imagination and keep hush on it. *wink wink*
LSHF
LSHF - 7/13/2022, 3:19 PM
@MosquitoFarmer -

LSHF
LSHF - 7/13/2022, 3:19 PM
@LSHF - I wish the head would stop after one time.
SonOfAGif
SonOfAGif - 7/13/2022, 3:19 PM
I'm starting to see a trend lately with cut scenes and the over abundance of CGI. It seems like Marvel Studios now wants to rush out as much content as they can due to the pandemic halting life (I understand it). So instead of them taking their time and being 100% content with their finalized storyboards they opt to leave green screened body doubles and set pieces to allow alterations based on a movie that comes out before. If that film isn't well received or they do a last minute alteration they then give the VFX team a ridiculous deadline to suddenly change or add VFX to an upcoming show or movie. This now forces them to take on work for two projects at the same time without the monetary rewards for doing two jobs and working twice as hard.
RolandD
RolandD - 7/13/2022, 3:30 PM
One interview. Ten articles. Josh works it.
PartyKiller
PartyKiller - 7/13/2022, 5:12 PM
The whole Illuminati scene was a mistake created just to include fan-service driven cameos.
UGLYsonic
UGLYsonic - 7/13/2022, 5:22 PM
@PartyKiller - this whole film was a mistake. They shouldn't have made Wanda a villain right after WandaVision, they shouldn't have called it Multiverse of Madness when we only visit 1 other world, they shouldn't have included the Illuminati just to do basically nothing with them but pad the run time, they should have focused on Strange and America hoping through the Multiverse trying to solve some kind of mystery about the Multiverse fracturing. I love Sam Raimi and he did his best to polish this turd of a story but the film was just a misfire.
PartyKiller
PartyKiller - 7/13/2022, 6:10 PM
@UGLYsonic - Marvel movies have fallen so far that they are doing the same things the Arrowverse did with the multiverse and cameos. Anything to trend a few minutes on Twitter. Like when the Walking Dead had big ratings and they would kill off characters like Beth just to get attention.

Such decisions usually damage TV and movies. And Marvel has done severe damage to itself to take cheap, gimmick driven routes to make money and trend.

I recall when myself & others warned that Walking Dead was going to go into decline because of such decisions and others thought it was ridiculous because Walking Dead had around 20 million Nielsen viewers and was beating NFL ratings.

And people think Marvel is invincible too. But the terrible decisions they are making and throwing out bad product to milk their fans will eventually catch up to them. Just as it did Walking Dead and before that when in the early 90s, Marvel Comics oversaturated the comic book market with trash and they killed sales industry wide.
UGLYsonic
UGLYsonic - 7/13/2022, 6:25 PM
@PartyKiller - :mic drop:

Well said.
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