(left to right) - Craig Kyle, Marvel Senior VP Creative Development, Animation, Frank Paur, Supervising Director/Producer and Greg Johnson, the writer of Dr. Strange. Image Copyright(C) Movie Jungle International, INC. This image may not
be used or duplicated elsewhere without express written permission.
Breaking away for just a brief moment from the chaos of San Diego's ComicCon 2007, we cherished a moment to chat with the creative minds behind the eagerly anticipated release of Marvel Animation Features' "Doctor Strange" which Lionsgate is distributing on August 14th this year.
We had a chance to sit down with Craig Kyle, Marvel Senior VP Creative Development, Animation, Frank Paur, Supervising Director/Producer and Greg Johnson, the writer of Dr. Strange.
This interview took place prior to the screening.
Question:
They're asked about whether it was always their intention to have this on a high definition disc.
Craig Kyle:
"Yeah, HD was always what we wanted to do because we knew that's where everything's headed, I mean from television up and I mean although Blu-ray wasn't on the plans at that stage, we wanted the option down the road. Especially since this was going to air on television; you want them to look the best so that was always the plan that's why it was 16x9 as well, because these are movies, they're not supposed to be television shows. We get a lot of resistance because most people still don't have HD sets although that's shifting a lot but they say people find it annoying. It's like well, go out to Best Buy you know? Because TV's are really cheap now. This past Christmas I think, was it this year or last year where actually HD sets surpassed..."
Greg Johnson:
"It's actually very inexpensive for very large screen TVs."
Craig Kyle:
"So yeah, Blu-ray wasn's specifically planned but we knew we wanted to do HD."
Question to Greg Johnson:
He's asked about 'modernizing' this for today's audience.
Greg Johnson:
"Well basically the story itself, I mean we just boiled it down to the very basics of an egocentric doctor who is full of himself, get into an accident, hits rock-bottom and how he climbs back up, that's the story of Doctor Strange and that's the one that we focused on telling; his origin. So as far as the classic story elements; that's what we took from it but we didn't borrow anything necessarily from a specific era. That would have dated it.”
Question:
I ask him about supporting characters? Who do we see?
Greg Johnson:
“Well, of course there’s Wong but we found kind of an exciting way…we found a very cool way of bringing him into this and I still think it strikes to who the original character was as far as being somebody who helps to facilitate things for others but he’s very much his own character.”
(front to back) - Frank Paur, Supervising Director/Producer, Craig Kyle, Marvel Senior VP Creative Development, Animation and Greg Johnson, the writer of Dr. Strange. Image Copyright(C) Movie Jungle International, INC. This image may not
be used or duplicated elsewhere without express written permission.
Craig Kyle:
“Yeah then again part of what we need to here is how Frank then took the world of sorcery and its individual characters and re-imagined them without taking them to a place where you couldn’t recognize them anymore. [Wong] is a character that you can lose respect for if he’s treated as someone who wants to wash your feet and I know that can be very sweet but he shouldn’t be Alfred. He shouldn’t be you know ‘here’s your slippers master.” So I think for us we kind of found that approach of yes he is in that role where he takes care of strange, but he’s one that can fight right alongside of him.”
Frank Paur:
‘He’s more of a mentor to Strange than a servant. He’s very much very strong in his own right.”
Craig Kyle:
“But he’s incredibly humble. He doesn’t need to show what he can do, he’s very confident in his ability and his role in the world of sorcery is to train those who come into this world and guide them. He knows his place in the order of sorcery and is very comfortable with it. He doesn’t need to show off like a character like Mordo does to prove himself.”
Frank Paur:
“You know when we were designing these characters, we tried very hard to avoid the temptation to go direct from the original 1962 designs. We tried to avoid anything that was stereotype. We felt that the character was strong enough that we could address Strange on Strange’s own his own plain basically. And Mordo, Wong, you know, in coming up with these things, with these designs, you almost have to imagine the back story of each of these characters to come up with a design and where they’re coming from. Mordo, for instance in my mind is very Slavic, he has that…he’s descended from The Huns and he still feels that way about himself, he’s the ultimate warrior. Whereas Wong again is very different, he is a teacher, he is a master at what he does and he is very comfortable in teaching others to come to their potential. He knows his place in the universe and is at peace with that. Whereas Mordo definitely is not; he is somebody that wants everything.
So yeah each of these characters, even when you watch this film we have a number of different characters and some of them are on the screen just fleetingly but we try to come up with a design that says something about each of the individuals so that just by looking at them you can almost get a feel of who they are and from where they’re from so that they feel real to a degree; as real as we can make them in a cartoon. We tried to come up with designs for these guys and update them to a more modern setting in terms of fashion, what’s acceptable what is not and just things that aren’t borderline.”
(left to right) - Craig Kyle, Marvel Senior VP Creative Development, Animation, Frank Paur, Supervising Director/Producer and Greg Johnson, the writer of Dr. Strange. Image Copyright(C) Movie Jungle International, INC. This image may not
be used or duplicated elsewhere without express written permission.
Question:
In the process of updating them, don’t you think you’ll put off the hardcore Doctor Strange fans?
Frank Paur:
“Well, I don’t think so. There’s always bound to be a few people that are very die hard that are upset you know ‘It doesn’t have the points coming out of this’ or this or that. Also, we have enough of that in there, we tried to remain so pure to the essentials of the original Lee/Ditko stories that they’ll be happy and also it’s updated enough for…we want to bring in a whole new slew of fans for this character. By staying completely consistent with the old stuff you have a tendency where you can put off some of the newer fans. So we definitely put a lot of thought into it.”
Greg Johnson:
“And the Ancient One is another character, I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned that…” He moves on to say that viewers also are in store for Mordo and Dormammu. “It’s really Doctor Strange’s story, everybody plays a part in it, he dictates where the story goes. In a movie this scale we just have to be careful how many other great fan-favorite characters we put in it or you start having to divide your focus and we want to make sure we’re following his story.”
Craig Kyle:
“If we do our job, this should be the beginning of a journey for these characters. This should be issue one, it should be movie 1. If it does well and people love it then we can come back and we bring these characters when we can do them well. To put them all in right now, would jeopardize everything we’ve worked towards. I think this one takes the best advantage of the time and space we were given to tell the story. I think if a film’s got a shot at a sequel, this is definitely the one.”
Question:
I ask about all the hype with comic book adaptations filling the theatrical market today if they think this has potential for a live-action adaptation.
Craig Kyle:
“Oh I think so! But you know, we don’t look at these as stepping stones for anything. When we come to the office we think we’re doing the best work that can be put out there. You know there’s time and money and all kinds of limitations put on us, something that the live-action guys don’t have, what they do is much more luxurious but you know, we put in our time to bring the best film and project to the table. I think a piece like this could definitely inspire those who may love Marvel but don’t know this character, to do something in live-action.
So yeah, we look at them as things that definitely will inspire everybody but it’s not like this is second to anything that will come after it. I think it’s easy to think of it this way and animation has done a lot for Marvel in the past – the X-Men series the 90 was so successful, that’s what made the live-action films possible. So for Marvel and its history, animation has a lot of power and I have a couple of people that I really am excited to work with and this is one of the best creative teams I’ve had the pleasure to work with. This speaks to how talented these two guys are.”
Doctor Strange finally gets his due on DVD.
