Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was already a dark enough movie… but apparently, Benedict Cumberbatch suggested making it even darker. During an interview with Prestige, the Marvel star revealed that he wrote some of the scenes featuring variants of Doctor Strange, and that he worked to make some of the scenes less “sugary.”
“I suggested that it had to be darker at one point,” he said. “There was a slightly sugarier version at one stage and I’m very happy with the way it evolved. Sam Raimi lent himself to it and Michael Waldron also supported me in writing.”
One of these versions could well have been “Marvellous Melvyn”, a rather bland version of Doctor Strange who existed on one of the infinite worlds of the multiverse, where he was little more than a stage magic artist.
“We turned what was a very small match between the two of us into a very weird and inventive kind of battle at the time,” Cumberbatch said. “I loved it. That was how the original was approached to me a long time ago, when Scott Derrickson was still working with us: Strange would meet versions of himself. It was something I wanted to lean into. We could have gone even further, and maybe let’s do it in the future. Who knows what other versions we might need in the MCU’s multiverse chapter? But it was really nice to play all the variants of myself.”
Cumberbatch also spoke of how much he enjoyed playing versions of himselfand even helped write some of the scenes.
“It was the funniest part,” he said of acting himself. “I loved it, and it sounds very selfish – but there it is, that’s the way actors are – but I loved doing the scenes with myself because of the challenge. And I was able to write some of those scenes.”
Unfortunately, it is unknown which scenes Cumberbatch wrote for himself…but those Strange variants sure were pretty dark. In addition to Zombie Strange and Strange Supreme (who was killed by the Illuminati when he became too powerful), we also saw Sinister Strange, with a third eye and delusions of grandeur.
See which Marvel character Scarlet Witch wants to ally with after Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and find out more about the scrapped post-credits scene starring the Fantastic Four.
