Dr. Strange New Trailer (appeared at Comic-Con, 7/2016)

[Ramza00]

So I thought about bumping the old thread, but looking up the precise rules of this forum and it appears it is old enough that I should make a new thread.

Here is the earlier thread we were talking about Dr. Strange in April 2016 when the teaser trailer was released. This new thread is for stuff that has been released since comic con (July 2016)

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?484704-Dr-Strange-Teaser&highlight=strange

Below is the 2nd Trailer released just this week at Comic-Con


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSzx-zryEgM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSzx-zryEgM

So anybody have any thoughts?

[Ramza00]

And here is the older trailer the teaser for the people who missed it earlier


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt-U_t2pUHI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt-U_t2pUHI

-----

I really do not have much thoughts, just processing it so far. The only thing I can think right now is silly stuff involving power levels and how the already super powerful and sometimes silly MCU is about to get even more silly.

We now have a reality warper, and a person who can open up wormholes at will. Even though he is not usually connected to the avengers the MCU gets more silly. (We previously had the shrinking spinning darts which can defeat practically any villain by mere contact)

-----

Also as much as I like cumberbatch in most things, I want my sherlock season 4 right now :smallmad: even more so than I want another marvel mcu movie.

[huttj509]

I really really like the "how do I get to there from here" response line. "How did you become a doctor?" "Study and practice...years of it."

This is not Neo 'I know kung fu' style mastery.

[Ramza00]

I really really like the "how do I get to there from here" response line. "How did you become a doctor?" "Study and practice...years of it."

This is not Neo 'I know kung fu' style mastery.

It appears that with Doctor Strange they are going to go with the trope that you can reality warp by entering different stages of consciousness / aka different styles of thinking and in certain types of thinking you can bend reality.

In this post I am going to talk about how different styles of meditation take practice, lots of practice, and it is not something that you can download instantly into your brain. I am then going to speculate on the nature of the magic system they are going to introduce in Doctor Strange.











To many outsiders, there is a single type of meditation, or if they are familiar that there is more than 1 type of meditation, they are not aware of all the different styles let alone the different names for them (put another way they do not know where to start).

Well in reality there are many types of meditation, I do not claim to be an expert, but I am aware of some due to personal experience and practice.

Mindfulness meditation often called Zen Meditation is a different style of meditation than Guided Imagery Meditation. There are a lot of similarities but there are also some key differences with which I am not going to get into much detail here only touching on some of the differences.

That said in learning how to do mindfulness meditation many beginners are instructed by a more advance user / teacher / guide and they do not technically start with mindfulness meditation, but instead with Guided Imagery Meditation and they learn the difference between a meditative and non meditative state by a teacher using Guided Imagery Meditation to illustrate the difference via experience. (Technically there is a difference between Guided Meditation and Guided Imagery Meditation with one being a subset of each other but I am going to use the terms interchangeably in this post.)

One of the things you learn with both types of meditation (Mindfulness Meditation / Zen Meditation and Guided Meditation) the differences between sensory experiences in your mind vs sensory experiences in your body, yet you can experience both, and when you get in a more relaxed and reflective state your own body arousals and sensory data diminish, even if brain areas in your brain involving sensory imagery and visualization can actually become more active than normal. This is because these sensory imagery areas are used:


both when you sensory experience something,
but also when you mentally inside your imagination or
when you listen to someone else and you mentally visualize the experience.

Aka the body outside body experience in the teaser trailer where the ancient one, the female who is bald, played by Tilda Swinton (she also played Gabriel in Constantine). The Body outside body experience that the ancient one induces in Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to show him magic is real.






But the different types of meditative experiences also do different things involving the brain.

Now separate from meditative experiences, but also connected in many ways to it, we are now aware of different stages of sleep do different things with the brain. When I say different things I am saying that during different stages of sleep brain areas are more active and less active than when you are awake and in different types of sleep stages these areas that are lit up or diminsied are different with some areas in common but also different areas in each stage. In addiction the frequency of the electrical activity of certain brain areas are different during different stages of sleep. (Do understand our knowledge of this used to be very basic and some of our first data we learned turned out to be wrong / misleading but we due to advances in neuroimaging are now making very rapid progress with our understanding of what is happening in the brain during different stages of sleep)

We also know different types of meditative practices while not inducing sleep, have much in common with different stages of sleep.

Take for instance guided imagery meditation. This type of meditation it has a lot in common with hypnotic suggestion, which in turn has a lot in common with falling asleep where you may be very focused and alert in some things, but in other things your become less alert. The mind's eye in both guided imagery meditation and in hypnotic suggestion is actually very active, you visualize with such detail, but you also tune out lots of information, and you become less aware of what is happening to your body. At the same time you are changing the information of what is happening in your mind's eye based off what the guide is telling you to do / what the hypnotist is instructing, yet you do not engage areas of the brain that look at whether this is logical / rational possible. You do not do so for you are set in a trance like state and you been instructed before hand that its okay that you do not need to challenge what you are experiencing.

And in doing so you are both able to relax yourself, but also be able to see things in new ways than before, and in some ways be more creative than you were before. But you are also more susceptible to new ideas or thoughts being introduced.




Now there is another stage of dreaming called REM sleep. Now you have dreams in both REM and NREM sleep but during REM sleeps the dreams are more vivid and more real in your mind eye. During REM sleep three big things are happening. Your brain shuts off much of the lower body areas preventing you from sending signals and such to move your legs and such. Certain brain areas critical for logical thinking are decreased, you are not putting the rules of reality onto your mental construct. Last your eyes move alot even though this is not involved with seeing. (Thus the term REM for rapid eye movements)




But there is another stage of sleep and dreaming which some people experience and some people do not. Note this experience does not occur during every night in the people that do experience it, and also in the people who do not experience it. And this other type of dream is called Lucid Dreaming. In Lucid Dreaming you are aware you are dreaming, and yet not aware you are completely in a dream yet. In this stage you can modify the dream contents, change it inside of your mind, yet you have to be careful for too much change and your body will try to awake.

This stage of sleep and lucid dream has a lot in common with mindfulness meditation yet some key differences. We also know that people who practice mindfulness meditation often report more lucid dreams compared to the greater population but also compared to their previous self reports. This is seen as a good thing in multiple meditative practices / philosophies.









Well one does not instantly learn mindfulness meditation, it takes a lot of practice and people who are no at this do not have the same type of experience after lots and lots of practice. It is something that has to be studied, and there is no true mastery of it if you were to use the mastery of something to mean conquering as a definition. Instead it is something where it is a continous journey that you do throughout the rest of your life, and as much as you master it, it also masters you, and changes the very nature of thinking and some will argue deepens the understanding of your soul in some ways.






In fact a precursor of Zen Buddhism is the works of Zhuang Zhou. In his text Zhuangzi he has a passage called the butterfly dream. In it he dreams he is a butterfly and in that dream that is all he ever known. Then he has a false awakening (or did he) and suddenly he was very much Zhuang Zhou. Well was he always a butterfly dreaming to be human, or was he a human who dreamt he was a butterfly. Is now he now dreaming or did he awake.

This is known as the transformation of things. And that there is no real distinction between dreaming and waking up for you can't really tell which is which and this is a false creation of the mind. (We pulling the shade behind our eyes with our need to know things, and thus we blind ourselves without even realizing it.)

Well Zhuang Zhou is one of the key works in daoism/taoism (aka yin yang to most people) but it is also one of the key aspects of Zen Buddhism which is a tradition that combined many aspects of Buddhism and of Taoism.





I hope Doctor Strange turns out to be a good comic book movie, but I also hope they do a good job with all the mystical stuff. :smallwink:

[Eldan]

It looks fantastic and I'm hyped. One thing I'm worried about, though. There's still jumping and punching the ground. So far, every movie they've made has ended with that. They took every power they had and reduced it to either energy blasts or super punching. I do hope they take a chance here and don't go down that path for the final fight.

[Beleriphon]

That trailer makes the movie look awesome, I can't wait to see it. In 3D I think this will be one of the few superhero movies that will be really, truly mind blowingly amazing.


It looks fantastic and I'm hyped. One thing I'm worried about, though. There's still jumping and punching the ground. So far, every movie they've made has ended with that. They took every power they had and reduced it to either energy blasts or super punching. I do hope they take a chance here and don't go down that path for the final fight.


At one point it looks like the good doctor uses a magical fire whip to defend himself from something.

[Blackhawk748]

At one point it looks like the good doctor uses a magical fire whip to defend himself from something.


Im hoping they take some cues from the Lionsgate Animated Dr Strange movie and have him use a sword made of magic, that was a fun fight scene. Also, does anyone know who the villain is? I know it isn't Mordo (as hes on Strange's team yet) and that better not be Dormammu, cuz there is a distinct lack of Flaming Head.

I do gotta say, Strange's costume transitioned well to live action.

[Legato Endless]

Apparently the new antagonist is Kaecilius. Bit of a surprise, but not a bad one as this keeps Strange more grounded for future cross overs and lends some interesting speculation for Baron Mordo.

[Kato]

I really really like the "how do I get to there from here" response line. "How did you become a doctor?" "Study and practice...years of it."

This is not Neo 'I know kung fu' style mastery.

So... I really like the line and the fact that Strange is not a miracle child (though, iirc wasn't he quite a prodigy surgeon?) but... is it really well placed in a trailer? Are we to assume the story will focus on his learning? Will this not be a story of Strange fighting evil but a Potter-style story of a magic school? :smallconfused: I know I'm nitpicking but even if the line is good... I feel it might give a wrong impression of the movie.

[Blackhawk748]

Apparently the new antagonist is Kaecilius. Bit of a surprise, but not a bad one as this keeps Strange more grounded for future cross overs and lends some interesting speculation for Baron Mordo.

Huh, way to use an obscure person, its also probably a good idea. Mostly because Dormammu has a tendency to break, well, everything.


So... I really like the line and the fact that Strange is not a miracle child (though, iirc wasn't he quite a prodigy surgeon?) but... is it really well placed in a trailer? Are we to assume the story will focus on his learning? Will this not be a story of Strange fighting evil but a Potter-style story of a magic school? :smallconfused: I know I'm nitpicking but even if the line is good... I feel it might give a wrong impression of the movie.

Well its his origin movie, so its gonna have a bit of that anyway. Mostly i see this as hes training and Kaecillius will be causing problems that the others (Wong and Mordo most likely) will go solve on occasion while Strange is learning. Then somewhere towards the end of the movie the **** will hit the fan.

Basically im seeing Dr Strange: Sorcerer Supreme (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0910865/)live action edition, and this is not a bad thing.

[SlyGuyMcFly]

This looks. So. Friggin'. AWESOME! :smallbiggrin:

[Ramza00]

On the doctor strange villain (spoilers)



It is hard to make out, but the seal between Kaecillius eye is this seal

http://www.joblo.com/newsimages1/strange-image-2-4-4.jpg

It is the seal of the Vishanti

https://66.media.tumblr.com/ab53b156d63aff0a53ac4c88ff5fe9f8/tumblr_o0ghrwFeCh1trs5foo1_500.jpg

The vishanti are a trio of mystical beings / gods that are usually associated with Light / Protective / Order principles. One of the 3 is known as Agamotto. Note Dr Strange uses and collects many magical artifacts but he is famous for having 3 artifacts always on him, his cloak of levitation, his yellow sash (handy rescue magic item), and his amulet called the Eye of Agamotto.

Other related commonly used magic items is the Orb of Agamotto (used as a crystal ball and other things) and the Book of the Vishanti which is a grimoire of magic spells of white magic origin.

Note in the first thor movie we see Odin's trophy room and several mystical artifacts are in here

One of which was the Orb of Agamotto

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/marvelmovies/images/a/af/Eye_of_Agamotto.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130722141904

Another was the right handed version of the infinity gauntlet

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/marvelmovies/images/f/f9/Infinity_Gauntlet.png/revision/latest?cb=20140102055208

Note that Thanos already has the left handed version and we saw the cameo where he says he is now going to get off his ass and do the assembling work himself.

Here is a link to some of the other treasures in odin's vault.

http://marvel-movies.wikia.com/wiki/Odin%27s_Trophy_Room

So this is not all the upcoming marvel MCU movies but Dr. Stephen Strange comes out in winter 2016. Guardian of the Galaxy 2 comes out in May / Early Early Summer 2016. Thor 3 Ragnarok comes out in Winter 2017. Infinity War Part 1 comes out in Summer 2018.

I am willing to bet some money that Odin's treasure house is going to get raided sometime during the Thor 3 movie.

Oh they are definately keeping the Vishnatti in the mythos for Doctor Strange see here for movie posters.

http://cdn1-www.comingsoon.net/assets/uploads/gallery/doctor-strange-1403135280/cf5nqhcxiae59i9-jpg-large.jpg

http://cdn3-www.comingsoon.net/assets/uploads/gallery/doctor-strange-1403135280/12984033_10154013195382488_6227575399854132650_o.j pg

[Thrudd]

And here is the older trailer the teaser for the people who missed it earlier


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt-U_t2pUHI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt-U_t2pUHI

-----

I really do not have much thoughts, just processing it so far. The only thing I can think right now is silly stuff involving power levels and how the already super powerful and sometimes silly MCU is about to get even more silly.

We now have a reality warper, and a person who can open up wormholes at will. Even though he is not usually connected to the avengers the MCU gets more silly. (We previously had the shrinking spinning darts which can defeat practically any villain by mere contact)

-----

Also as much as I like cumberbatch in most things, I want my sherlock season 4 right now :smallmad: even more so than I want another marvel mcu movie.

Dr Strange's magic can only "warp reality" in very specific ways prescribed by the spells he knows (mainly from the book of Vishanti). He can astral travel and sense mystical energies. Also, using magic like that always has a cost, energy used must be drawn from somewhere, often the life force of the wielder (I hope they keep that element).

So he is really not an infinite/omega level mutant style reality warper than can just do anything. He's a lot more like a D&D style magic user that makes use of magic items and spells with specific functions.

[gomipile]

I like that they gave Chiwetel Ejiofor at least one funny line. His comedic delivery is excellent. It contrasts well to the seriousness he often projects.

[Ramza00]

New 60 second long tv commerical for Dr. Strange is effectively a mini trailer.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xoxeCWpZyU