“Through the mystic arts, we harness energy and shape reality. Who are you in this vast multiverse?” – The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) in Doctor Strange. 

In advance of this weekend’s US opening of Doctor Strange, the second film in Phase 3 of Marvel’s ever unfurling cinematic universe, the studio has teamed up with RealD, Google and three VR artists to create 3D paintings designed to place you in the Sanctum Sanctorum and explore the multiverse’s vast expanse of realities that exist over, between and throughout the one we are in.
 
In May, Google quietly introduced its own mystic art, the Tilt Brush, which allows artists to digitally paint the world around them using a VR headset. To bring the world of Doctor Strange to life, three Tilt Brush artists – Danny Bittman, Steve Teeple and Stuart Campbell – used the mind-boggling technology to create worlds based on the Sanctums in the film’s main locations, New York, London and Hong Kong. Each world, which you can explore in 3D on Youtube, pulls elements of the source material only to stretch and twist them in such a way that they are only partially recognizable in this “alternate reality.”
 
 
 
 

Through Bittman’s VR lens, New York becomes a explosion of itself frozen in a Minecraft-like Vaporwave dreamscape. Teeple’s London is a swirling vortex of deep, pulsing color. Campbell rounds out the offering with a version of Hong Kong that showcases a wispy neon mural of the Doctor Strange origin.

The focus on creating a visual world is in line with the film’s emphasis on introducing a new visual effects vocabulary to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While Marvel films are almost always eye-popping dazzlers, Doctor Strange’s extraordinary visuals are not only technically incredible, warranting the IMAX 3D tax at the theater, but aesthetically unique from all other films in the Marvel Universe; whereas The Avengers may alter the world on screen, Doctor Strange turns it inside out.
 
Doctor Strange opened to 33 international markets last week to a reported $87.7 million box office weekend, propelled by the star power of stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton and Chiwitel Ejiofor. Along with a unique, inventive visual style and initial critical acclaim the US release this Friday is expected to do big numbers, helping Disney to its biggest box office year ever.
 
Check the Doctor Strange trailer here, and contribute to the Disney Empire this Friday, November 4th.