One of the potential big impacts of Guardians of the Galaxy is that it while it is a team coming together story, it’s not truly an origin story. What we got in that film were a lot of characters that had their own established lives that came onto the screen, managed to charm and audience, and moved forward to tell the story it wanted to tell. With most Marvel franchises that have kicked off so far, it’s been about an origin story film of some sort and the moving forward with the larger narrative in follow-ups and appearances in other films. But with Guardians of the Galaxy doing so well, it appears that the first film to benefit from its approach will be Doctor Strange. In a recent podcast with Devin Farci of Badass Digest, he revealed that things have shifted from the original script by Joshua Oppneheimer that was kicking around in 2010 to the new one that Jonathan Spaihts is involved in now that director Scott Derrickson has been brought on board:
“So, for Dr. Strange they’ve had a script in-house forever. It is a pretty standard origin story for Doctor Strange. It’s got Baron Mordo as the bad guy. That’s all gone. Marvel’s new thing is no more origin stories. So, Dr. Strange movie no longer has an origin. It begins in medias res. It has Dr. Strange already established as the Sorcerer Supreme. It is a totally new script. Jon Spaihts is working totally new, On his own, without any of the previous stuff. Not even touching the previous script.”
Skipping the origin story is an important step because as we pull back more of the curtain of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it can’t all have happened for the most part since Iron Man burst onto the scene. With backstory filled in by Captain America and then more with flashbacks and the upcoming Agent Carter series, having more hidden around the fringes character existing for some time and masters of their powers and legends in their own right definitely helps to tell a bigger story without bogging us down with origin material for the whole film.
[Source: ComicBookMovie]
