Marvel fans heartbroken over MCU Doctor Doom casting we nearly got

Unless you've been living in an old boot in a cave deep within the mountains, you'll probably have heard by now that Robert Downey Jr. is returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe... as Doctor Doom.

It's proven to be a controversial bit of casting, to say the least. Marvel fans are seriously split on whether or not this is the kind of bold thinking the MCU needs, or a desperate step backwards.

Personally I find myself leaning to the latter opinion, but I'm attempting to stay open-minded. If Marvel can find a way to do this right and not just make the MCU's Doctor Doom a green Iron Man, I'm on board. I just hope everyone in charge remembers he's Reed Richards' greatest rival first and foremost.

While the RDJ casting is now obviously set in stone, a new rumour doing the rounds suggests we nearly got a very different Doctor Doom - one that the internet reaction seems to suggest would've gone down much better.

Over on Twitter, it's currently being rumoured that Mads Mikkelsen (Hannibal, Star Wars: Rogue One) was at one point in talks with Marvel to play Doom.

Take this with a huge pinch of salt, as the source is completely unverified. What's interesting, however, is just how much more popular a choice it seems Mikkelsen is/was with the fans.

"Almost unquantifiable how much better this would have been," Chase Mitchell wrote on Twitter in a post that's since gone viral with over 140k likes and 10k retweets.

Mikkelsen did of course appear in the MCU before as the villain Kaecilius in Doctor Strange. But if having appeared in a previous MCU instalment was really a barrier to playing Doom, I'm not certain RDJ would've gotten the gig.

"RDJ will do a good job and we know why they brought him back, but damn you are 100% right here," another fan agreed.

It's worth pointing out that Mikkelsen's casting would still have done nothing to address the criticisms that Marvel failed to cast an actual Romani actor in the role of Doom, but the overwhelming consensus seems to be it would have been better than RDJ. I guess we just have to wait and see how Marvel handles the iconic villain in The Avengers: Doomsday.