The stardom of Tom Cruise has enjoyed the peak of the curve in almost every decade since the beginning of his career. Cruise has appeared in some box office-smashing movie roles in his early career including his action mega-hit Top Gun.
Cruise never faced the scarcity of movie roles, he has always been busy not just with showbiz but also performing his own stunts in his movies. But Cruise was almost set to debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a significantly successful franchise of the studio which saved Robert Downey Jr’s career.
MCU Almost Had A Different Iron Man
Iron Man is the MCU’s iconic comic book character that worked like a charm on the success of the studio’s hit franchise. Also, it is nearly impossible to imagine anyone else playing the titular hero Iron Man other than Robert Downey Jr. However, before Downey Jr., Tom Cruise was the studio’s priority. According to a 2005 interview with the Mission Impossible franchise actor, MCU was hard set on casting Cruise in the early 2000s.
“They came to me at a certain point and, when I do something, I wanna do it right,” he began. “If I commit to something, it has to be done in a way that I know it’s gonna be something special. And as it was lining up, it just didn’t feel to me like it was gonna work. I need to be able to make decisions and make the film as great as it can be, and it just didn’t go down that road that way,” Cruise once said.
Cruise believed the movie would not work but even one of the best in the industry could be wrong. Cruise has made a series of unbelievably great decisions but turning down the Iron Man role was not one of them. But it worked in favor of Sherlock Holmes and the MCU franchise went on to gross over $2.4 billion worldwide.
Tom Cruise’s Rejection Was A Blessing For Robert Downey Jr
Downey Jr. endured a pretty dark and bleak phase of life as he fell victim to alcoholism and drug abuse before Iron Man. It was a mess, the actor confessed to a judge in 1999 that “It’s like I have a shotgun in my mouth, and I’ve got my finger on the trigger, and I like the taste of the gunmetal.” However, the actor got his life back and embraced sobriety. On his enduring path, Iron Man has saved the actor’s life and career as he found a new direction. Thanks to his Tropic Thunder co-star, Cruise.
MCU’s first independent feature hired Jon Favreau to direct the first Iron Man movie. Favreau considered Seven Psychopaths and Moon actor Sam Rockwell for the role but Downey Jr’s screen test impressed him more. “I don’t want to call it an out-of-body experience,” Downey Jr. said recalling his Iron Man audition.
“But it was one of those rushes that I’m sure, like, somebody would feel if they were about to play a big sporting arena. It was just like, ‘Am I gonna pass out, or am I gonna nail this?”
Favreau saw right through the actor as the titular MCU character. Undoubtedly, the Oppenheimer star lived the very core of the character delivering his charm while building one of MCU’s early multi-billion-dollar franchises.
Source: Far Out Magazine
