From DOCTOR STRANGE Manservant to Master: How Wong Was Adapted into a Bigger Role For the MCU



Nobody is talking about this right now and instead most are still too focused on the Ancient One casting talk. So here at DailySuperHero.com we are bringing this story to headline because Wong is now a big player in this game of sorcery in the MCU; and surely his character in the comics will reflect this change very soon.

If you're not a comic book reader then let us catch you up on the Doctor Strange character Wong. This is a character who, in Marvel comics, has been a manservant for Dr. Stephen Strange when he became the Sorcerer Supreme. He took care of things around Doctor Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum and was the right hand man without any powers. Instead, Wong was a martial artist who would protect Strange's physical body while he journeyed to the Astral plane exploring other dimensions outside of his physical body.

In Marvel's DOCTOR STRANGE movie, director Scott Derrickson has been taking a lot of crap for recasting the Ancient One as a white female (Tilda Swinton) instead of an Asian male. This has taken up lots of headlines since early 2016, but what nobody is talking about is that Derrickson took the character Wong and made him a bigger and much more important role for Asian actor Benedict Wong.

Derrickson spoke with the Los Angeles Daily News and disclosed how he adapted Wong from being just a manservant in the comics to having a more important role in the film. The LA Daily News wrote:

"Derrickson admitted he knew Swinton’s casting was 'erasing a significant potential Asian role,' but added that it led to his decision to change Benedict Wong’s character Wong from his subservient role in the comics. 
“'I was going to leave Wong out of the movie at first; he was an Asian sidekick manservant, what was I supposed to do with that?' he said. 'Unlike the Ancient One, he could be completely subverted as a character and reworked into something that didn’t fall into any of the stereotypes of the comics.'”

This is so very important because this changes the dynamic between Doctor Strange and Wong in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Not only is Wong no longer a manservant, but he's now "one of the masters of sorcery" that will be fully revealed in the film. Here's Benedict Wong revealing his larger role last June:

“I’m certainly not going to be the tea-making manservant. We’re heading in a different direction... There isn’t any martial arts for Wong in Doctor Strange actually, he’s more of a drill sergeant to Kamar-Taj. He’s one of the masters of sorcery.”