8 Ways Doctor Strange Is Basically The New Iron Man

7. Both Played By Acclaimed Actors

Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock
BBC

Though he was tangled up in a drug scandal and prison time pre-Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr. was still very much a respected and acclaimed Hollywood actor. Roles in movies like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, David Fincher's Zodiac and even an Oscar-nominated turn in 1992's Chaplin cemented his position as a man with talent, regardless of the circumstances surrounding his personal life.

And the same can be said of Benedict Cumberbatch, too (minus the drugs).

He garnered a tonne of awards recognition for The Imitation Game, captivated pretty much anybody who watched an episode of Sherlock, and has proven his ability in everything from TV to drama to big-budget spectacle. Both Downey and Cumberbatch are great actors, and that's helped them both sell their respective B-list comic-book characters to a mainstream audience.

Look down a list of the current group of main MCU heroes (Paul Rudd, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pratt), and you'll notice that Cumberbatch and Downey are the only two lead actors who were widely renowned for their dramatic work before they appeared in their Marvel debuts - and that's not unintentional.

It's an indicator that Marvel wants to treat Doctor Strange in the same way they approached Iron Man - hiring a world class actor to carry their universe forward.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!