Film Theory: Doctor Strange Magic DEBUNKED by Science

dr. strange you think you know how the world works what have I told you the reality you know is one of many cool let's do it hello internet welcome to film theory debunking magic one fairy at a time there's a hole in the hat for the rabbit cards behind his hand duh there's two people in the box he's walking unpleasant glass I mean honestly the only magic trick I truly can't figure out is how Chris angel still has a career in short everything can be explained through science which brings us to the subject of the day dr. strange also known by its other titles now you see me three we promised jesse eisenberg isn't in this one or its other other title conceptions in the trailer we see a whole bunch of crazy images dr. strange shooting out rings of green lights from his hands manifesting crystal walls lassoing light whips weave it's the entire city shifting and protruding out of each other upside down sideways and diagonal seriously it's like Marvel watched inception and we're like what one upside down city tribe or that is the power of Disney here's the rub from the get-go Marvel has sold its more fantastical elements as pure science Captain America's the result of a science experiment gone wrong the Hulk is the product of gamma radiation ant-man reduces the empty space between atomic particles something we've already debunked even Thor complete with his rainbow bridges is explained away as highly advanced technology your ancestors called it magic and you call it science well I come from a place where they're one and the same thing in fact this focus on science over quote-unquote magic has been confirmed by none other than the head of Marvel Studios himself Kevin Feige whoa are you watching the Cosmo series that's magic it's unbelievable if somebody knew how to tap into that stuff what's the difference between that and magic sure in the comics Doctor Strange derives all his powers from magical and mystical entities but Feige has stated the film version will be a departure from the comics explaining the doctors powers not with magic but science again to quote Kevin Feige there are a couple lines in Thor basically saying that magic and science get to a point where what's the difference and we're continuing that in Doctor Strange so by coming down firmly on the side of science Feige has revealed that actually everything in Doctor Strange can be explained through reason and logic but wholly rusted Iron Man guys how do you explain away light shields and upside down cities even Feige acknowledges that dr. strange doesn't quite know himself to use one more quote from the guy particularly for a character like strange who goes for a man of science - a man of faith and who traverses both worlds and sometimes there won't be an answer sometimes he'll want an answer how is this happening and nothing well unlike Feige in the rest of Marvel Studios I matpat from film theory I'm not gonna be leaving you hanging anymore Benedict Cumberbatch explaining the strange magic of Doctor Strange is my challenge today believe it or not all of it is possible with the power of quantum mechanics so before we hop into analyzing the movie let's start with a quick quantum mechanics overview teaching you in a few seconds concepts that overturned centuries of established physics knowledge basically up until 1900 scientists believed the universe ran on a standard laws jump off an object and fall to ground push an object to the right and it moves to the right ask JJ Abrams to direct a movie and he'll fill it with a bunch of lens flares and some big twists in the final half-hour these are the fundamental laws of nature but at the beginning of the 1900 scientists discovered exceptions to the established rules specifically subatomic particles like electrons and neutrons the building blocks of atoms these particles often contradicted the physical world as we understood it one of the biggest developments came in 1909 basically this was the year when Albert Einstein proposed the wave particle duality of lights in order to explain some pretty funky results scientists were getting when testing light in the lab Einstein proposed that maybe light sometimes acted like a wave which is how everyone thought of it at the time but then also other times acted more like a particle just like an electron or a proton it's a bit confusing but it's important to understand for today's episode so let me quickly explain the difference imagine a calm pond with leaves on the surface when you drop a stone into the water it makes a series of circular waves which when they reach the leaves cause them to bob up and down but otherwise the leaves stay in the same position they don't actually follow the wave it's the same thing with the water particles the wave moves through them but doesn't actually carry the particles along with it this roughly illustrates the difference between waves and particles a particle has mass and other measurable properties like charge while waves don't waves typically but not always need to move through some other medium that's why for instance in space no one can hear you scream no sound because there's no air for the sound waves to move through but that brings us back to lights basically light has shown itself to possess energy and momentum which are properties of particles and not waves and yet light has no mass which is like rule number one for anything that behaves like a particle so basically Einstein said fine otball hit what is very obviously a bad rendition of a german accent which in turn prompted physics to turn on his head in 1929 Gilbert Lewis named these massless light particles photons and thus quantum mechanics was born so why do we need to cover all that well because photons and their crazy properties are the basis of dr. Strange's magical powers throughout the film dr. strange uses light both as an offensive weapon as well as a defensive tool manifesting Mondelez of light as a shield to move and repel objects it's crazy rights though maybe not so much you can in fact move objects using only lights you know the wind blows into a sail and pushes it forward well you can actually do something similar with light because as we just discussed light has momentum so let me introduce you to solar sails large light weight mirrored surfaces currently being used in space to move objects long distances basically the light hits one side of the sail which has a mirrored surface that mirror reflects away the photons coming from the Sun but in the process the momentum of the photons is transferred to the sail just like wind on a boat and in space where there's no friction to slow you down those small bits of momentum start to build up and that's only one way that light can move objects there's also what's known as the photo phoresis effect when an atom is heated on one side by photons the gas molecules on that side of the particle get super excited we're in the sunlight we're gonna get a great tan that causes them to move faster and as a result they bounce off that side of the particle surface at a higher velocity creating a force that pushes that atom away from the light and this isn't just speculation scientists have recently tested the photo freeze this effect on tiny objects moving nails beads and even blocks with nothing but the power of lights so how does this apply to eggs benedict well throughout dr. strange we see this on a massive scale for instance in this moment from the trailer we see the villain castelia Sehorne as the ball of light that essentially pushes the particles of dr. strange and the rest of the building outward in other words the front half of Benedict heats up really quickly from the intense light and the photo phoresis effect does the rest causing a ripple effect as objects repel outward towards lower illuminated areas what's happening on the atomic level is that the gases around the Benedict's cumberbund face particles are getting so excited with this intense light energy that they start hitting him with an intense amount of velocity so much velocity in fact that he gets sent flying against the wall but photons aren't just limited to moving matter they can also create matter that's right objects made from massless light particles seems like it makes no physical sense and yet in a recent study Harvard and MIT students managed to coax photons to binding together into molecules per scientist Mikhail Lucan quotes they created a special medium in which photons interacted so strongly that they began to act as though they had mass and banded together end quotes the end results like creating three-dimensional structures like crystals sound familiar well it should because dr. strange is filled with crystal imagery for instance when dr. strange first meets the ancient one the first thing he sees is light coming from a crystal like pattern theirs doesn't make any sense well actually dr. it makes perfect sense the photonic light tangles itself up with the atoms in the air so much so that the properties of the atom get passed on to the photons at that point the photons basically become an atom creating solidified light a light crystal what you're walking through is a light crystal that is being shattered and if that just sounds like a weird theory a weird scientific theory it's actually happened in real life as a group of scientists back in 2013 already created solidified crystals made purely of light forget Swarovski and it's silver crystals I want my light crystals and mind you this isn't the only crystal image that we see in dr. strange either with strange practicing alone in this chamber the first thing he magically forms is you guessed it a crystal wall no accident Marvel did their homework on this one I don't know about you but knowing a little bit more about the science behind these seemingly magical moments makes me appreciate the scenes in the movie a whole lot more it's just commendable filming guys hold on and that finally brings us to the moment that we've all been waiting for how do they get those cities to topple over one another in a strictly scientific way the key here is to listen to what the ancient one tells Doctor Strange when they first meet me honish Fuji she claims that there are two keys to their powers harnessing energy which they do via photons and then secondly shaping reality this is a very careful choice of words the ancient one doesn't say that she changes reality just that she's shaping it thus reality doesn't change only your perception of it does it's the essence of a magic trick from the vantage point of the audience the bunny really does come out of the Hat the car disappears in midair and the woman is cut into Criss Angel gets paid to do whatever Criss Angel does the magician has shaped reality so the audience is led to believe and the impossible so how do you shape reality to create upside down in sideways cities the key here is in the Marvel logo which for dr. strange looks like a pattern you'd see in a kaleidoscope right well you are right the patterns you see in a kaleidoscope are one version of water known as fractal fractals are basically geometric patterns that infinitely repeat themselves at smaller and smaller sizes think of a snowflake and how the same shape is repeated over and over in every section of the flake well marvel is dropping hints all over the place that fractals power the universe of Doctor Strange popping up all over the movies trailer when Doctor Strange enters the Ancient Ones layer he steps across a platform modeled after a t-square one of the most famous recurring fractal patterns in history the light month allow the ancient one first shows dr. strange yet another fractal repeating circular images even the roof above Strange's head in the scene where he wields his light whip is a fractal and it's these images that serve as the biggest clue as to how dr. strange pulls off his greatest trick because you know what else creates naturally occurring fractals crystals we already know that strange crystals create repeating images as we see in this scene look closely and you see that there's not just one but multiple benedict cumberbatch mmm be still my nerdy Sherlock loving heart the upside down and sideways cities are the exact same only at a much larger scale these cities aren't actually upside down or sideways they only appear that way through a refracted repeating image within a crystal it's important to note that the upside down and sideways cities aren't any different from each other their exact replicas of one another the same buildings the same cars the same landmarks can be found in each city that's because there's actually only one city only our perception has been altered so we see multitudes of intermingling cities this also explains why the cities start to distort at the edges of the image these distortions prove that what we're looking at aren't actual cities on top of each other but merely reflected images of one city reality hasn't changed only its perception has that being said how dr. strange can interact and battle in a crystal refraction is perhaps a theory best save for another day who knows maybe they explain that one in the movie full disclosure this is being written and edited edited edited edited the week before the movie comes out so I haven't seen it yet lastly if this scene is explained in the movie and this is all redundant information then screw you screw you marble thanks for not inviting me to an early showing of the movie you invited markiplier does he have a film channel no who has a film channel and is talking about your movie me giving you lots of promotion for your movie for free me but new the sign fight matpat who has to rewatch Andrey watch again the trailer a bunch of times in order to analyze the science of the movie it's fine not bitter hopefully they don't explain this in the movie otherwise this whole episode might be a moot point could be super embarrassing for me alright I digress let's wrap this thing up long story long if there's one thing this video has shown is that Kevin Feige 'aa Ridge '''l statement is a hundred percent correct that even though we can explain away the magic of dr. strange using crazy quantum theories the science behind it all is in magical and impressive whoever the science researcher is at Marvel props to you man in fact you know what here actually let me look it up I just went on a rant about being overlooked so I'm not gonna overlook you science consultant for Marvel Studios Adam Frank astrophysics professor at University of Rochester hue sir your name may be overlooked by the millions of moviegoers waiting for that post-credits warm a joke Adam but today the millions who hopefully watch this episode will come to know the true magician behind the scenes and that is you so thank you Adam Frank for bringing accurate science to some of the world's biggest films for that it might not win the Oscar like my boy leo but instead let me give you the next best thing the theorists seal of profound work hashtag thank Frank we're with pride Adam as you've done your part in making the world a slightly smarter place with science and that is pretty darn magical but hey that's just a theory of film theory and cut congratulations you're now smarter about quantum mechanics in the Marvel Universe impress your friends with those knowledge bombs why don't you now if you watch this long it means you probably like the Marvel movies and if that's the case then you've probably really liked the Deadpool movie based on the number of views it got you may have even seen my Deadpool video about how to kill the guy in case you missed it I'm gonna leave a link to it right here but you know what you probably haven't seen yet wisecracks video on the philosophy of Deadpool which not only has one of the most click Beatty thumbnails in the history of youtube I mean I love you guys but seriously bright-yellow and click me you've done me so proud but also has some awesome analysis of the movie tying it to classical literature and dissecting what it means not just for the Marvel Universe but what Deadpool means for the entire movie industry these days it's incredible I was watching this video and I'm like yeah that is awesome that makes so much sense which is usually a good reaction to have when you're watching a video and that's why I really like sharing their stuff with you guys because I love their videos and I think if you like this channel you're gonna like their videos too these are guys that deserve way more love on their videos so please click right here on Deadpool's left buttcheek to check them out Deadpool will thank you for it he'll also enjoy you rubbing your mouse over his left butt cheek it will be very pleasurable to him he'll probably make some sort of sexual innuendo anyway with that I'm done next week we move away from Marvel and move on to Pixar for a wall-e theory that will decimate you I'm excited about it I will never watch that movie the same way again and honestly it was my favorite Pixar movie to begin with so I'm excited about that one hopefully we'll see you next week post-credits shwarma joke i don't know what the joke is i once again was not invited to the early showing so there you go

Channel: The Film Theorists

Views: 9,787,335

Rating: 4.8376908 out of 5

Keywords: doctor strange, dr strange, dr. strange, doctor strange review, doctor strange movie, dr strange movie, marvel, marvel comics, marvel movies, magic, science, film theory, film theorists, matpat film theory, matpat, dr strange theory, marvel theory, comic theory

Id: drXGJ3ZZdvc

Length: 16min 23sec (983 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 16 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Shawken]

It seems weird that this theory was made before watching the movie. That's placing a lot of faith in trailers...

[u/TheSpartanWolf]

/u/MatPatGT, you can explain how fractals work and how light can push objects, and that's all fine and dandy, but you forgot the small detail of how they're literally able to manipulate photons at will by just waving their hands and training their minds. You can't apply the laws of physics to something that bends the laws of physics (like moving your hands a bit and then manipulating photons to move objects on the fly).

You don't need to watch the movie to figure that one out.

[u/_The_Bomb]

MatPat would it kill you to ask an expert before you release the video. You do plenty of research but you often leave massive falsehoods plainly obvious for people who have an in depth knowledge of the topic. (Please note that this is a complaint, not an overall review on your character)

If you want, however, I can point you to a video detailing how light works. So you won't make the same mistake twice. Not to mention it's a really cool channel. https://youtu.be/IXxZRZxafEQ

Sincerely, an annoyed (but still loyal) fan.

[u/NintendoGamer1997]

Another instance of MatPat doing a theory just because the topic is relevant.

[u/shit_tier]

... What?

You mean the movie that has him talking to someone using actual magic and is based on comics and other forms of media that show him using magic? You mean the guy who can make things happen with his will? The one that has a literal god of magic? The guy with a flaming head and hands and he makes spells happen? The guy who can break dimensions and nightmares? The guy who can teleport people easily? The guy who makes anti-magic shields? The guy who can speed up, reverse, and slow down time? The guy who manipulates matter to solidify oxygen? The guy who can make a shield to protect himself from a planet exploding?

Noooooooooooo, that has to be technology.

Give me a fucking break.

[u/pejmany]

The light crystals is where I turned it off. It's annoying seeing him interpret science wrong.

He specifically even said That in a special medium light interacted as if it had mass then ignored that medium was needed.

The photophoresis explanation ignores that it's acting on suspensions in a gas or liquid, not the gas particles themselves. Having a different refractive index is pretty key to getting momentum from light, and a cursory reading of the Wikipedia article can get you enough.

And even if he was using radiation pressure, now we get into the issue that for the micro movements to translate into wall destroying force means huge heat. Huge. Insane. It's fucking weird to not look into that.

And more so, their manipulation of light in this way has no apparent energy source but fuck it. Ignore that much huh?

And then overreliance on the crystal and fractals. Idek. A basic look could just as easily say that the mirror dimension is a 4 dimensional crystal moving through our 3 dimensional world, and thereby not directly interacting with the real world. This actually let's him keep the medium, because the reflected light acts like molecules inside the medium of the crystal, or some shit.

Astral projection is ignored, obviously. The spacetime look from the above point gives credence to the wormholes they use, putting them as either further mirror dimension manipulation or using something else.

Weak effort overall. Even the light particle duality wasn't greatly explained.