Nicolas Cage was almost Doctor Doom in Fantastic Four, and he would have looked like a skinless bio-metal Marilyn Manson

Thanks to Blade and X-Men, comic book movies weren’t exactly in short supply in the early 2000s, long before Disney would rule over the cinematic landscape with a tight-fisted Infinity Gauntlet of billion-dollar blockbusters. Here’s the catch: Most of those films were downright forgettable paint-by-numbers projects, usually revolving around the exact same cinematic formula and dressing itself up in slightly different costumes.

If you had to make a list of comic book movies that you forgot about, taking the top spot from Bulletproof Monk and Sean Connery’s retirement motivation would be a quartet of cosmically-powered superheroes, Marvel’s first family of adventurers known as the Fantastic Four. Now to be fair, I still dig the film that director Tim Story made.

It has a decent production budget, the special effects crew was tasked with doing the impossible and the cast included a rebellious Chris Evans as Johnny Storm before he underwent the Super Box Office Draw Enhancement Program and was transformed into Captain America. Everything else about the flick? Naw dawg.

Michael Chiklis still looks like someone rolled him in glue and cheese Dorito chips, the dialogue is cringe and most damning of all, the Fantastic Four’s arch-nemesis Doctor Doom is lame. Instead of an overconfident head of state who wielded the power of diplomatic immunity in a bid to rule the world, we got Julian McMahon’s reserved jealous lover zapping holes in CEOs and running a business during his daylight hours.

He may have looked like Doom, but McMahon certainly didn’t convince anyone that he was playing a character with enough unchecked ambition and willpower to topple reality-destroying gods. Could someone else have done a better job? That’s debatable, but I’ll tell you this much: Had Nicolas Cage remained on the project when he was originally cast as Victor Von Doom, his mad monarch of Latveria would have been a lot more memorable.

That’s the revelation that came out of concept art for the Fantastic Four film via CinemaBlend, when Cage was briefly cast as the villain. Concept art for the project was created, resulting in a maquette being designed which was partly inspired by industrial metal rock god Marilyn Manson and featured skinless bio-metal arms:

Cage missed out on nabbing the role of Doom once again Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four reboot, although even by Cage’s current film standards, he dodged a bullet right there. There’s still some hope though that the Doctor Cage could finally step into the Latverian tunic of one of Marvel’s most charismatic characters though! Marvel has detailed that plans are underway to bring the Fantastic Four back to the big screen for a fourth incarnation (Poetic!), and Cage himself has gone on record saying that he’d like to play Doom if given a chance.

When he’s not battling alien invader warriors with non-Jiu Jutsu that is. Cage has the right amount of crazy to make this work, and I’d sell everything I have to see him menace the imaginauts of tomorrow while blaming Reed Richards for everything. Richards! RICHARDS!

Last Updated: October 19, 2020