In 2016, Mikkelsen was a member of the main competition jury of the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. In October 2016, he appeared as Kaecilius in the Marvel film Doctor Strange, alongside Benedict Cumberbatch and Tilda Swinton. Although his character was criticized for being underused and another "generic baddie" for Marvel, Mikkelsen's performance was a favorite of Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com: "Mikkelsen is a master at being in on the joke while still delivering every line with imagination and feeling.... he's often knowing and wry, even arch, a mix of performance traits that's often hard to combine with any success." In December 2016, Mikkelsen portrayed Galen Erso in the Star Wars spin-off film, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. In 2018, he starred in a survival thriller Arctic, directed by the Brazilian filmmaker Joe Penna. He played the villainous mayor in Doug Liman's adapted science fiction film Chaos Walking, based on Patrick Ness' trilogy novels of the same name.
