Doctor Strange Interview: Benedict Wong opens up about developing secondary characters in Marvel movies

When in contention for the role of Wong, Benedict Wong went through the source material and discovered the character’s less than sterling history. He wasn’t too excited of playing this character unless he was different, but luckily, director Scott Derrickson and Marvel President Kevin Feige agreed with him.

“When I got the job and I was reading the source material, I had one of my first meetings with Kevin [Feige]. I said, we’re not doing this, right?’ Feige immediately said no we’re not. I said great, cause neither am I. It was lovely to be singing from the same pen sheet. It’s a real credit to Scott [Derrickson] and Kevin [Feige] for what they’ve done with the character. We’re expanding and we’re exploring it.”

This was done when Doctor Strange was being developed. Scott Derrickson and Kevin Feige decided early than the character was going to be different from the comic books, but the particular details of the character still needed to be fleshed out and Benedict Wong brought a new element with his take on the character. The comic book Wong served more as a comic relief character but the movie take is more comically curt. For a while there, the audience doesn’t even know if Wong speaks words.

“I added that sardonic twist. That look, that stare. It’s [Wong’s] domain in Kamar-Taj. You’re following our hero (Doctor Strange) and he comes into [Wong’s] domain and [he’s] seen these people come and go. [He’s] seen the upstart, [he’s] seen the ego, the arrogance. It makes an interesting dynamic packing that ego,” retorts Benedict Wong.

Wong was my favorite character in the movie. Doctor Strange was a lesser version of Tony Stark and we’ve seen that character before. Wong was in less scenes but jumped off the screen way more. His character drew you in and demanded to be heard, respected and admired. These are the qualities that a secondary character should always have, but for some reason don’t in Marvel movies.

He is just one character in the Marvel universe and even at that, he still falls for the same mistakes past Marvel movies have fallen for. Wong not in many scenes and lacks dialogue, but he is a great step for Marvel. There have been great secondary characters in comic book movies. A few great examples are Harvey Dent, Alfred Pennyworth and Commissioner Gordon in The Dark Knight, and I feel Wong is one of the Marvel characters to have an impact like those character did for their respective story.

Secondary characters aren’t supposed to be the stars of the movie, but they should at least matter and have a purpose. Wong did in Doctor Strange. The process of receiving impressive Marvel secondary characters has been slow, but it’s improving. Now if only Marvel could do something about its villains and female lead characters, but that’s a discussion for another time.

The next time we’ll see Wong will be in Avengers: Infinity War due out next year.

Article source: https://www.technobuffalo.com/2017/03/26/doctor-strange-interview-benedict-wong-opens-up-about-developing-secondary-characters-in-marvel-movies/