Doctor Strange

A former neurosurgeon embarks on a journey of healing after suffering a horrific accident only to be drawn into the world of the mystic arts.

Doctor strange is the 14th marvel film and in terms of plot is very similar to the first Iron man and Thor. They all gifted men who let their egos get the best of them until a life changing event happens that set them on a path of self improvement. [criticisms] but I think this is where Scott Derrickson (Director) had to compromise, as Doctor Strange is a wonderfully weird film. In that regard I'm glad for the familiar approach because despite this Doctor Strange has a score of 90% on Rotten Tomatoes and has made 647.3 million. This means that the next Doctor Strange will be even more insane as it will take place in the nightmare realm.

On to the visual effects, they're out of this plane of existence. Most of the film was shot on green screen as there is no way they could have accomplished what they wanted to with out CG, but Scott Derrickson wanted as much as possible for it to be shot on location so that they wouldn't rely solely on CG.

In this scene we see Strange open a portal and travel to a store room in his hospital. They built the store room and used CG mats and walkway so that Benedict Cumberbatch walking into the scene would appear as fluid and as natural as possible. They used green screen for the background and an LED ring as a marker for the portal.

I was unable to find a non-CG version of this scene but they built platforms and a walkway to allow the actors to run around, by having cameras on rigs it allowed for smooth and fluid movement. Obviously this scene was shot entirely on green screen but what's interesting is that they used real photographs which then allowed them to digitally re-create new York so that they could turn it inside out.

For the final fight sequences Benedict Cumberbatch was on a harness to give the illusion of him flying though Dormammu's realm. They used animations for any long shots of Benedict, including his multiple deaths (sorry spoilers). Each "ball" was it own separate animation with its own personal design, this was done to give the scene more life and to make it feel less CG heavy.

In my option Doctor strange is the best comic to film adaption, there are scene that it looks like they scanned the pages into a computer and it just printed out the scenes it was an amazing experiences.

Fun fact: although Dormammu was fully CG, Benedict Cumberbatch did the motion capture and voice for his character.