Marvel's Doctor Strange had a lot of fun playing around with spatial reality by staging many of its biggest battles in the Mirror Dimension, a place where wizards can literally bend space at a whim. This led to all sorts of awesome Inception-like visuals, and became a big selling-point for the movie before it came out last November. Early trailers wowed audiences with scenes of whole cities being warped and distorted like so much folding paper; in the movie things got even more spectacular and, at times, downright psychedelic.
Ahead of the Blu-ray release, Disney and Marvel are going a different route, playing up the movie's time-bending elements more than the visuals. The time-bending doesn't play a big part until the film's climax when it becomes central to how Doctor Strange ultimately conquers the movie's big baddie. Those late scenes are arguably more effective than the earlier city-bending scenes.
For the Doctor Strange Blu-ray trailer, visual wizardry takes a backseat to time-trickery, and it makes for an unusual and clever promo. We Got This Covered shares the trailer which not only features reversed footage, but also uses backward dialog to create a weird, unsettling atmosphere. As trailers go, this one is very inventive and makes the movie look pretty intriguing.
In the movie, Doctor Strange pokes around in The Ancient One's forbidden books and discovers the power to wind time back and forth at will. That power comes in handy when Strange finds himself in the Dark Dimension doing battle with Dormammu. The film's climactic battle is less about the usual Marvel Cinematic Universe spectacle and more about trickery, as Strange frustrates Dormammu by trapping both of them in an endless time loop. The Blu-ray trailer itself becomes an endless loop, beginning and ending with the same images.
Audiences may have been drawn in by the visual spectacle, and by the presence of Benedict Cumberbatch as the title hero, but Doctor Strange had more up its sleeve than just amazing-looking battle scenes and a charismatic lead. Focusing on the time-bending elements for the Blu-ray release is an acknowledgement of how effective those parts of the movie were. Looking back, one almost wishes there had been more of that in the middle sections of the film.
Fans will get another chance to enjoy all the visual and temporal wizardry of Doctor Strange when the Blu-ray debuts late in February. Remember to fast-forward through the credits and enjoy both the humorous mid-credit sequence, which teases Doctor Strange's appearance in Thor: Ragnarok, and the post-credits scene which sets up a possible adversary for Doctor Strange in a future film.
Next: How Doctor Strange Should Have Ended
Doctor Strange releases on digital HD Tuesday, February 14, 2017, and Blu-ray on Tuesday, February 28.
Source: We Got This Covered
