RDJ's Doctor Doom Casting Would've Killed His Career Revival

Robert Downey Jr’s Marvel career could have been very different had he been cast as Doctor Doom, and that role would have killed his career revival. Robert Downey Jr. is now one of the most respected and popular actors in the entertainment industry, but his road to success hasn’t been easy at all. Personal struggles got in the way of his acting career in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but he got a second chance when he was cast as Tony Stark in Jon Favreau’s Iron Man, the movie that kicked off what’s now known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Iron Man was a critical and commercial success, with most praise going for Downey’s performance as the playboy-turned-superhero, and it was the movie that made the MCU possible. Robert Downey Jr. reprised his role as Tony Stark in two more Iron Man movies, four Avengers movies, and showed up in The Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man: Homecoming. His arc came to an end in Avengers: Endgame, where Tony sacrificed himself to save the world from Thanos and his armies, bringing his journey from narcissistic billionaire and genius to a real hero to a satisfying end.

Robert Downey Jr’s performance as Tony Stark has been praised since Iron Man came out and many have pointed out how perfect he was for the role, even joking that they don’t know when Tony ends and RDJ begins. But as it turns out, Tony Stark wasn’t the only Marvel role RDJ was considered for, and he could have been cast as a very different character: Doctor Doom. In the book The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s revealed by Jon Favreau that, prior to being cast as Tony Stark/Iron Man, Marvel had already met with RDJ to play Doctor Doom, which would have most likely been for the not-so-popular 2005 Fantastic Four movie.

The Fantastic Four, as well as the X-Men and other characters, are now under Disney’s umbrella thanks to the Fox merger, but back in the 2000s, they were separate worlds. In 2005, the Fantastic Four made their big-screen debut (though this was the second movie to be filmed) in Tim Story’s Fantastic Four, starring Ioan Gruffudd as Reed Richards, Jessica Alba as Sue Storm, Chris Evans as Johnny Storm, and Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm, with Julian McMahon playing villain Victor Von Doom. Fantastic Four was a commercial success but a critical mess, and it took its stars a while to shake this and the failure of the sequel off. At the time of the release of Fantastic Four, Robert Downey Jr’s career was starting to come back with roles in movies like Gothika and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and not even his talent could have saved Fantastic Four if he had been cast as Doctor Doom.

The main problem with Fantastic Four was its story, with critics finding the movie to be more based on character than plot, and it failed to tell an engaging story. Fantastic Four, then, was destined to be a failure no matter who played who, and with RDJ’s career starting to get back on track at the time, a big flop like this would have been detrimental to his career and could have been an obstacle in getting bigger and better roles, such as Paul Avery in David Fincher’s Zodiac and, of course, Tony Stark in the MCU. Iron Man was the project that cemented RDJ’s return and made him one of the biggest stars in the industry, and had he played Doctor Doom, he probably wouldn’t have played Tony Stark and the MCU would have been very different from what it now is. Ultimately, it all fell into place and while Fantastic Four failed, the success of Iron Man and the MCU not only boosted Robert Downey Jr’s career but is also allowing the Fantastic Four to get a new chance now as part of this connected universe.

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