how do famous directors preserve their style in Marvel productions?

Doctor Strange 2 tumbles onto French screens just four months after the box of the last Spiderman, seven million admissions in France. The film is directed by Sam Raimi, who had just signed the first trilogy Spiderman in the 2000s.

At the time, when it began its first period of adaptations of comic strips into big-budget feature films, the Marvel firm did not hesitate to entrust the reins to recognized filmmakers: Bryan Singer, director ofUsual Suspectsfor X-Menthe Taiwanese Ang Lee for Hulk and therefore Sam Raimi, author among others of the cult horror saga Evil Dead for Spiderman.

Twenty years later, Marvel has grown, been bought by Disney, and almost every new film makes big profits, but this policy of recruiting authors continues with Kenneth Brannagh or Chloé Zhao recently.

Do these authors really have carte blanche to make the film they want? It depends, says pop-culture videographer Vesper: “We find the touch of Chloé Zhao in what she did on The Eternals. There are nice outdoor environments, she tried to bring what she likes to do in her more ‘arty’ films. But it’s not always the case : Thor, by Kenneth Branagh, is one of the most underrated films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.”

In this context, we could have feared the worst when seeing Sam Raimi, whose Spiderman still refers today, arriving at the controls of this Doctor Strange 2, but it is rather a good surprise. We recognize his signature on formal choices, whether they are references to zombie films or rather successful more intimate scenes. “We thought that Sam Raimi would be crushed by the Marvel system, but I find that within the constraints of this system he managed to impose a visual and even sound pawis surprised Philippe Guedj, journalist at Point and co-author of the documentary Marvel Rebirth. There is quite an interesting game with the soundtrack throughout the film; he brought in his favorite composer Danny Elfman, whose style we also recognize, and there are quite extraordinary plans. So it’s quite a pleasant surprise.”

And if it seems certain that the character of Doctor Strange will return for a third installment, we do not yet know if Sam Raimi will return to directing.