But it's not essential, if the story is told right. Tim Burton's Batman had some flashbacks to his parents' death, but that's not how the movie started. The Brian Singer X-Men movies didn't start with how Professor X called together his original heroes. Yeah, we got Peter Quill as a kid, but we didn't actually see how he became Star-Lord. And we didn't have to see Li'l Thor to understand who he was or where he came from. Indiana Jones didn't get an origin story until the third movie.
The Origin Story is a classic super-hero trope, and understanding how protagonists arrive on screen (or in the initial written tale) is perfectly natural. But you can handle learning where a character came from in a variety of different ways, and learning as one goes along is a perfectly legitimate way to tell the story. Indeed, hinting at origins and letting the mystery unfold (to some degree) as you go along is sometimes even more effective (see: Black Widow).
So, yeah, do we need a Doctor Strange movie to tell how Stephen became the Sorcerer Supreme? Do we need to see the Tony Stark-esque arc from false arrogance to legitimate arrogance? Do we need the Ancient One, and rival Mordo? No. It would be a fine story. But it can also be dispensed with, or referenced to in passing, or flashed back upon, or … whatever.
Find a story. Tell the story. Don't feel like you need to begin with the Prolog.
Reshared post from +Curt Thompson
I am so behind this idea. If the character/concept is strong enough, people who don't follow comics will pick it up and run with it. And Doctor Strange isn't about his beginnings. It's about his funky life sealing off threats from the outer planes and training his apprentices.
Then again, I'm still holding out for the adventures of Wong (Dr. Strange's manservant, which isn't nearly as dirty as it sounds), Jarvis (the Avengers butler) and Danger (the X-Mansion's AI), so I may not be the best one to ask.
Rumor Has It Doctor Strange Won’t Be an Origin Story | Tor.com
Will the Doctor Strange movie not bother with telling his origin story?
I find it rather amusing that they'll throw us into the more obscure characters without any kind of history or origin, yet think that we'll somehow be confused about Batman/Superman/Spider-Man, even though just about every human on the planet can tell you their basic origin story by this point.
The interesting thing is that some characters (I'm looking at you, Superman) didn't get an origin until they'd been around decades. Nobody cared where the awesome came from. They just wanted the awesome.