20 Things That Almost Completely Changed The MCU

10. Tom Cruise & Nicolas Cage Could Have Been Iron Man (In A Movie Directed By Quentin Tarantino)

Cast your mind back to a time and a place where both Tom Cruise and Nicolas Cage showed interest in playing Iron Man on the big screen. At a time when Quentin Tarantino was asked to tackle the project - something that he genuinely considered doing. Whilst it's near impossible to imagine either actor in said role, both legitimately attempted to get an Iron Man movie going as far back as the late '90s when Universal Pictures held the rights to the character. Nothing came of their desires, of course, but had they pushed harder they could have changed the course of the future for the MCU. Seriously: if Cage or Cruise or Tarantino had made an Iron Man flick in the late '90s, the MCU would not exist in the same way as it does today. The rights wouldn't have reverted back to Marvel in the 2005, after all, and the Robert Downey Jr. Iron Man - the starting point for the MCU - would have ceased to exist. Also: Nicolas Cage as Tony Stark? Ew.