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Watch: Marvel’s trippy, stunning first trailer for Doctor Strange

by Alex Abad-Santos
Alex Abad-Santos
Alex Abad-Santos is a senior correspondent who explains what society obsesses over, from Marvel and movies to fitness and skin care. He came to Vox in 2014. Prior to that, he worked at The Atlantic.

Benedict Cumberbatch is Strange.

On Tuesday night, Marvel released the trailer for Doctor Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme of Marvel comics and the next Avenger to make the leap from the page to the big screen. The movie will tell the comic book story of Stephen Strange (Cumberbatch), a selfish, caustic surgeon who meets a magical being called the Ancient One (played by ethereal sylph Tilda Swinton) and clashes with a rival apprentice named Baron Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Mads Mikkelsen plays a villain in the film, but his character’s full identity hasn’t yet been revealed.

The trailer has a reality-bending feel to it — something along the lines of Inception and The Matrix. Worlds and cities fold in on one another. There’s some kind of astral projection. And Tilda Swinton is bald and weird and pretty much awesome:

Doctor Strange. (Marvel)

Doctor Strange — which comes out this fall — will be the next Marvel film to hit theaters after May’s Captain America: Civil War, and it couldn’t look any more different from Bucky Barnes’s latest adventure. Dealing with the weird world of magic, spells, and talismans like the Eye of Agamotto mark a transition into new territory for Marvel. And in that sense, Doctor Strange will function a lot like Guardians of the Galaxy did in opening up the cosmic Marvel universe.

This trailer is just the start.

Doctor Strange opens on November 4, 2016.

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