Sam Raimi says he didn’t have Doctor Strange 2‘s ending until more than halfway through filming
In a Rolling Stone interview, Raimi also discusses the pressures of making a movie that's essentially a sequel to three different recent Marvel projects at once
Aux News Sam Raimi
Prior to signing on to take over Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, Sam Raimi hadn’t made a movie in 9 years—and hadn’t put his hand to a superhero film, the genre he helped establish as the modern blockbuster, in 15. It is, thus, fairly enlightening to hear Raimi talk frankly about the industry, and the challenges of settling in to the Marvel machine, which he did in a new in-depth interview today with Rolling Stone’s Brian Hiatt.
Raimi is unsurprisingly charming and humble throughout, but from a Marvel watcher’s point of view, the most interesting material in the profile probably comes early on—when the Evil Dead director confirms that, yes, his tenure on Multiverse (which began shortly after original Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson left the film over reported “creative differences” with Marvel) really was the desperate game of catch-up that it seemed like it might be, with screenwriter Michael Waldron racing to finish the movie’s script just days ahead of Raimi’s shooting schedule.
“I think the hardest part was the time deadlines,” Raimi says while talking up the challenges on the film. “Not having the story or the script [ready] … being halfway into it and not knowing what the ending was. Michael’s trying to stay a couple days ahead of us with the next page coming out of his computer printer, and it’s hard because you want to make sure that everything is supporting the whole—that the themes are running through the picture. But when you don’t quite know everything about the picture, it’s hard to do that job as effectively as possible.”
(Among other things, Raimi notes that the film’s tight timetable meant he was sometimes forced to settle for less ambitious shots than he might normally have gone with. “What I should be doing with every shot and every moment, thinking ‘What’s the best technique?’ Not simply ‘We’ve got to make the schedule, put it on a crane. I know it can work from there. It may not be the absolute best choice, but we’ve got to keep momentum going for this unit, because I’ve got to get off this stage by five o’clock today, and they’re going to tear it down.’”)
To be clear, Raimi is effusive with praise for Waldron, and Derrickson, and Benedict Cumberbatch, and Elizabeth Olsen, and Benedict Wong, and Kevin Fiege, and everyone involved in the making of the film. But it does sound like making a big-budget superhero movie that was behind schedule the moment he arrived on set that and which is also, as Hiatt notes, functionally a sequel to three different things at once, might have been a tad stressful.
Here’s Raimi talking about creative freedom, MCU style:
Marvel allowed me complete creative freedom. However, it had to follow so many things in Marvel lore, [so] even though I had complete freedom, the previous movies and where Marvel wants to go in the future really directed the path in an incredibly specific way. Within those parameters I have freedom, but I’ve got to tell the story of those characters in a way that ties in with all of the properties simultaneously. We had to make sure, for instance, that Doctor Strange didn’t know more than he had learned about the multiverse from No Way Home. And yet we had to make sure he wasn’t ignorant of things that he had already learned. So everything was dictated by what had become before.
All of which was compounded, as Hiatt notes, by the fact that both Spider-Man: No Way Home and WandaVision were originally slated to arrive after Multiverse Of Madness, thus necessitating even more hoop-jumping to keep track of who knows what about what when. In fact, re: WandaVision, Raimi notes that the show wasn’t even on his radar until “halfway, or maybe three-quarters of the way into our writing process, I’d first heard of this show they were doing and that we would have to follow it…I never even saw all of WandaVision; I’ve just seen key moments of some episodes that I was told directly impact our storyline.” So, yeah, it sounds like Chaos Magic was happening behind the scenes, too. (Raimi also credits Olsen with helping him to understand Wanda Maximoff as a character, noting that he happily deferred to her understanding of Wanda for the film.)
All of which is just a small part of a much longer interview, in which Raimi addresses his long-time relationship with the Coen brothers, the time he and Stan Lee went around Hollywood pitching a Thor movie, and whether he’d ever make a Spider-Man 4. (“‘Does Tobey want to do it? Is there an emotional arc for him? Is there a great conflict for this character? And is there a worthy villain that fits into the theme of the piece?’” There’s a lot of questions that would have to be answered. If those could be answered, then I’d love to.”)
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Welp, this movie sounds terrible.
A lot of the MCU from Iron Man – Endgame was thrown together and making pieces fit to get to an end point.But, something now feels like we’re seeing the seams of the sausage being made between Covid messing up the release order (and plot in some cases), feels like the MCU is really hitting speed bump after speed bump and whatever plan they have might not be good enough to be sustainable.
Also a lot of the MCU isn’t actually that good. They mostly fall into the ‘serviceable’ category
His description of the process makes it seem like an honest-to-God miracle that any of these movies aren’t complete shit, let alone a multi-decade success story.
Famously, Casablanca didn’t have an ending until they were almost ready to shoot it, and that turned out OK.
There’s no particular relationship between having a completed script and being a good movie. Turbulent productions can make good movies, and efficient productions can make bad ones. It’s not terribly likely that the nth MCU movie, a sequel to one that nobody particularly loved, is going to spin dross into gold. But it will make a lot of money off a built in audience and probably land near in the third quartile of fan rankings in a few years.
I have muted expectations for the movie. I thought the first Dr. Strange movie was enjoyable, and I’ll probably hit a matinee to see this one on the big screen, but with all the story shuffling that was forced on them by the pandemic and the rearrangement of shows and movies with interlocking stories, I’m willing to eat my popcorn and just enjoy it for what it is.
That’s true. I also remember the director of Casablanca complaining how difficult it was to keep within the plot constraints of the broader Warner Brothers universe, juggle characters and prequels from a half-dozen tie-in intellectual properties, and hack together whatever shots he could manage to get in before his sets got torn down.The lack of an ending isn’t the issue. Raimi sounds like he has Stockholm Syndrome when he says, “Marvel allowed me complete creative freedom. However, it had to follow so many things in Marvel lore, [so] even though I had complete freedom, the previous movies and where Marvel wants to go in the future really directed the path in an incredibly specific way.” What freedom!Add in the fact that most Marvel stuff has kind of sucked for a while a now, and I full expect this movie to suck.
Nah, I have faith in Sam. No matter how much of a mess Spider-Man 3 MIGHT have been, I still find it more entertaining than the a couple of the Tom Holland installments. And Bruce has a part in it!
Bite a dick, get outta here with that armchair pilot bullshit. At least wait til you’ve seen it.
I keep forgetting Sam Raimi directed the New Doctor Strange movie, which means it’s going to be absolutely bonkers! lol
Those questions he poses about a possible ‘Spider-Man 4′ are questions he should’ve asked before making ‘Spider-Man 3.’
Oh, I don’t know. I think he probably DID ask them and Sony’s answer to each one was “Whatever, make sure Venom is in it.”
That still puts 75% of the movie’s faults on Raimi.
He’d possibly agree with you. Raimi knows, arguably better than anyone, the problems with Spider-Man 3.
It’s reasonable to think he’d never want to go through, or put anyone else though something like that again.
I think being forced to shove Venom in where he wasn’t wanted and didn’t fit affected a lot of subsequent decisions. Like I personally think the dance sequence is hilarious but it gets a lot of hate. Well that scene only happened because Peter was affected by the symbiote.Raimi would probably never admit it because he’s a professional but I think some of what’s not great about the movie is Raimi deliberately screwing with the movie.
He was famously under contract to deliver a movie with Venom by a certain date. It feels like a compromised piece of mercenary filmmaking because it was.
He did ask those questions. The studio asked “Can we sell merch?”
Did they sell a lot of Butler Finally Reveals a Secret figures?
Sounds like Raimi had complete creative freedom the same way a guy thrown into an already moving semi-truck that’s traveling down a narrow road with high barriers to a very specific destination has freedom to drive wherever he wants.
This is a sequel to What If and Loki too. I mean, good or bad, this is the realization of Feige’s vision (not a pun) of an actualized “comic book” movie universe. I want them to put in the corner of one frame: “*See Uncanny X-Men #349. – Ed.”
I kinda doubt Loki, Kang or Sylvia will show up in this movie though, The Watcher would be the most likely based on how messy it all looks…I can’t freakin’ wait!
The writer of this movie is the showrunner of Loki. I would bet a dollar there’s going to be some Loki (the TV show, maybe not Loki him/herself) stuff in there.
you’ve got a good point actually – sam raimi said he was v helpful with keeping up with the current mcu continuity
I didn’t add it to my pre-Doctor Strange re-watch list, I get a feeling the TVA will get a passing mention but Loki himself is sort of stuck in a cliffhanger him showing up would blow it up. Although maybe Loki will show up in Thor.
Also, the multiverse exists (again) because of what happens in Loki, so even if there aren’t any characters from the show (and you don’t necessarily need to know anything that happened in the show), it’s still a continuation of that.
I understood that reference.
honestly having an ‘annotations’ option on disney+ or whatever is a great idea.
Looks like someone’s sending Sam Raimi to the Phantom Zone in that photo.
Oh, Raimi directing a Super Friends movie. That could be fun.
I was going to be surprised because not knowing where the script is going meant how could you have sets built…but when 90% of the film is green-screened, I guess that’s less of an issue.
I was watching a video on The Batman about the digital tools they used to create so many of that film’s backdrops, even the car chase stuff, and it was shockingly good. Watching that film, it seemed so flawless. Technology really has advanced, but the gap between those examples of the very best and the cheapest effects still used in a lot of films seems massive.
Especially for things like static backgrounds, the technology has been mature for a long time. The CGI in the Matrix movies has aged, but the backgrounds in the bullet time sequences look photorealistic. Ditto Lord of the Rings. Even in Titanic, one of the dining rooms was all CGI and while it doesn’t look perfect, it doesn’t call attention to itself.
Hard not to read that Raimi quote about creative freedom as, “I had total creative freedom to follow Marvel’s plan.” That feels reductive, though; it does sound like he enjoyed the overall process despite the stress. I get the feeling Marvel’s just really not able to stick the landing on their serialization. Endgame was fun, but it’s also kind of a mess, and the constant need to have each film set up other properties or instalments does mean everything’s pulling double-duty (or triple, in this case) at all times. I would truly, truly love some deeper dives into these characters—and that doesn’t mean “more team ups, more multiverse.” …is Marvel just going to say “lol the multiverse” to introduce every new character? God, I hope not.
it’s also clear the pandemic definitely really screwed up whatever 5-10 year plan they had and the issues are still compounding.
I really, really, really hope that this movie, despite the production being way behind schedule, would be a major success. Given that the premise of Multiverse is so far the most critical point of the current saga after Loki and Spiderman: No Way Home and What If… making it the next big thing, Marvel Studio has to make this film one of more important stories on their slate like how some Avengers, Captain America, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Thor films helped further expand the MCU.I mean, The Eternals did tried, though it fell way short of its lofty potentials despite the great casts and interesting premises, Marvel wouldn’t want this to happen again.
Of course Raimi took the best photo in front of that mirror back drop.
Blank Check (podcast) is doing a wonderful retrospective on Raimi. Highly recommended.
I was hoping this would be more horror than action but it looks like we won’t be getting that. Makes me kinda sad.
I’m really looking forward to seeing this on Thursday evening, and it sounds like it’ll be an absolute miracle if it works at all.