Hannibal being cancelled was a real shame, but 2016 still looks set to be a great year for Mads Mikkelsen as he takes of starring roles for both Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm. Talking to Yahoo Movies in a recent interview, the actor had nothing but good things to say about his experience with the former, and pointed to Doctor Strange as being a very unique and different sort of comic book movie.
"If you look at the comic books, the comic books are quite different [to other Marvel stories]," he explained. "I think that the film will be different from the other [Marvel] films that we’ve seen, but not as different as the books are, because that was basically the ‘60s and ‘70s – it was more like an acid trip. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the old comics but it’s quite a specific universe, with Kung Fu and Magic… so what’s not to love, really?" Mikkelsen then elaborated on how the Doctor Strange movie will be both similar and separate to the source material, and it definitely sounds like director Scott Derrickson has found the right balance. "We’ve taken that fascination of the time into something we can relate to today. So you still have the energy, you still have the colours, you still have the madness, but you also have something you can identify with. I think that was a necessity – if not, you would just make a crazy film. But you still have it there – you have all the action, all the good ingredients you get in a Marvel film, but it will have a different flavour, that’s for sure."
Now, many actors feel like the bad guys they're playing are actually the hero, and it seems Mikkelsen is no exception. However, his still very mysterious villain sounds a lot more complex than the majority of previous Marvel rogues. Could Zemo have been a turning point for the studio? "He’s not a villain in that way – he’s a man who believes in something else than the hero. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t want to make the planet look wonderful or he wants to save the world as well, but he has a different way of doing it. He is the antagonist, of course, but he’s not necessarily wrong."
Sounds pretty great, right? Stay tuned for more on Doctor Strange over the next few months.