Raimi’s “Doctor Strange” Lost An Entire World
Filmmaker Sam Raimi is back in cinemas with “Send Help” this weekend, a return to his horror comedy roots and away from some of his more recent big-budget studio fare such as Marvel’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”.
One thing he did bring along with him from that last job was Rachel McAdams, the beloved actress teaming again with Raimi after their successful work together on that MCU feature.
It was there that Raimi learned just how capable McAdams is as an actress as she had to play versions of her character from different universes – the regular Earth-616 of the MCU, the Illuminati-dominated Earth-838, and an incursion-battered universe.
McAdams had to bring in subtle variations to the same role, and she did it so well that it convinced Raimi she’d be great for “Send Help”. He tells The Playlist:
“I learned who she was and what she was capable of. Rachel had created the character from the first ‘Doctor Strange’ movie, and she did a great job. She knew who she was, and in ‘Doctor Strange 2,’ which I got a chance to direct, the story by Michael Waldron, introduces the multiverse.
In the multiverse, she not only played the character she created in ‘Doctor Strange,’ but she also played three versions in the multiverse that had a slightly different background, and I saw her manifest the same character with subliminal tweaks, and that would be the result of those background changes. And I thought, she’s fascinating. It’s like a musical instrument – watching it play.
It turns out though there was a fourth universe in the film, one that didn’t make the final cut, that saw McAdams changing things up yet again:
“And then reshoots that we do for Marvel sometimes, Michael Walton created [another] universe. So now she had a different backstory. I saw her take those notes from the script and recreate the character yet another time with a proper re-tunement based on that background and how it would be reflected in the modern moment. And then I thought, ‘Holy smokes, nobody knows what she’s doing, but me,’ and it’s incredibly layered and complex. Maybe I’m only aware of it because one of her performances, one of the worlds, got cut out.”
He adds in the reshoots he added a “little bit of cheesy fights, which I like to do” with her character fighting “demons from the netherworld” in what even he admits was silly and potentially lame scenes, but the actress wasn’t phased one bit:
“It’s like, ‘Oh man, she’s so willing not to think ‘That’s silly,’ but instead, ‘How can I make this great?’ She’s a pro. She took the material and made it sing. And I thought, ‘She’s not saying it’s lame. She’s going to make it great.’
And it is a little lame, but her attitude was ‘Make it real and great.’ She made an exciting little action scene out of it that was really as believable as you can when you’re fighting ghosts and demons, which is my hobby, by the way [laughs].
When I saw her do that, I thought, ‘I need to work with this actress again.’ She brings so much to creating character, driving the story and the plot, so aware of the audience’s intelligence and playing up to it.”
It’s not clear the actual nature of this fourth univers that we didn’t see, but McAdams is getting a lot of love for her work in “Send Help” which could lead to more Raimi and McAdams collaborations in the future.