Doctor Strange’s “Magical Mystery Tour” into the multiverse was originally more of a deep dive than a brief glance. As it turns out, it was actually going to be over seven minutes long, and they filmed all of it too.
In an interview, Visual Effects Supervisor Stef Ceretti said the montage where the Ancient One sends Doctor Strange into the vast insanity that is the multiverse got majorly cut down from its original version. Ceretti said it was because it ended up being “too much” and took away from the overall flow of the movie. While the theatrical version clocks in at about two minutes, the one they filmed was over three times that length and went into strange places that Ceretti couldn’t even begin to describe.
“You can’t describe it with words. And that’s been the problem all along, there was no way to write it in the script. It was a visual script that we did. I put together a reel, and then we put it together with concept art, the pre-vis guys put it together with concepts I’d taken, and made a story out of it,” Ceretti said.
There are already rumors that Doctor Strange could be the first Marvel movie to win an Oscar thanks to its amazing visual effects, so it’s astounding to think some of its craziest visuals were left on the cutting room floor. Since they filmed the entire thing, it’s incredibly likely that the completed scene will end up on the Blu-ray release. So even if we only got a taste of the multiverse in the theatrical version, at least we can take a good long look in the future.
