Marvel's next feature film, Doctor Strange, will be bringing the concept of magic front and center within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, considering what another Marvel hero has said about the relationship between science and magic, we already have an idea what we're going to see. Marvel President Kevin Feige talked to us about how the magic the lead character will learn, is really science from another point of view.
I don't know if it was written off in that single line in Thor. It was given another way of looking at it. There are a couple of lines in Thor basically saying that science and magic, it gets to a point where what's the difference. And I think we're continuing that. The Ancient One encounters Strange -- he's a scientist, he's learned Western Medicine; he believes very much in that. She starts using Eastern lingo in the way she's describing the world to him. He immediately writes it off -- he rolls his eyes, he doesn't buy it, and she goes okay, and she starts talking about it in Western terms to try and make him more comfortable. She says it's the same thing. Whether you're looking at the ancient study of acupuncture pressure points or you're looking an MRI -- she's trying to say we're talking about the same things here. And if you're not comfortable with the word spells, let's use the word program. It's all the same thing. And I think that's true to a certain extent -- I think for the audience and the way science is going. I'm not a scientist. I just read articles that are interesting and that capture my imagination, but I think there's a reason why there's so much faith placed in science.
In the original Thor, the god of thunder is explaining to Jane Foster, "Your ancestors called it magic, but you call it science. I come from a land where they are one and the same." The movie sets up the idea that "magic" as we would traditionally understand it, from a Harry Potter perspective, doesn't technically exist. Instead, magic is just science that we don't yet understand, a quote from Arther C. Clarke that is also referenced in Thor. What Kevin Feige told our own Sean O'Connell on the set of Doctor Strange doesn't just show that this idea is moving forward in the MCU, but that the idea is expanding to include alternative ideas of science as well.
It's an interesting idea that is referenced in one of the trailers. Stephen Strange says that he doesn't believe in chakras or energy or those sorts of things, but by the end of the first trailer he is ready to learn. It would seem that part of convincing him isn't simply done by showing him the reality, but by explaining it to him in a language that he understands, that of science.
There have also been some implications that the "quantum realm" which was introduced in Ant-Man might also play into Doctor Strange giving us another connection between the science of one, and the magic of the other.
While Doctor Strange may not be going all-in for magic in the traditional sense, it's clear from the trailers that, either way, we'll be getting a mind-bending, visually stunning, experience, that will widen the imagination. Doctor Strange will be in theaters November 4.