The MCU shook San Diego Comic-Con with its latest mammoth announcement: franchise shepherd Robert Downey Jr. is finally returning to the fold.
Downey won’t be returning as the character that revitalized his career, though. It seems all but certain that Tony Stark will remain dead, and Downey will instead play Doctor Doom in Avengers: Doomsday.
It’s a bizarre twist that plays off the trappings of the growing MCU multiverse, but it’s also the latest in a 20-year trend that has plagued some of the best superhero movies ever made. Despite being one of Marvel’s most important villains, we have never actually gotten a “real” Doctor Doom in live-action.
Doomsday will feature the third character to be branded as Doctor Doom in the last 20 years, and yet he will likely be as different from his namesake as his predecessors. So, why is Hollywood seemingly so afraid of Doctor Doom?
The Fantastic Four’s Ultimate Dr. Doom
After years of seeing Doctor Doom in animated fare like 1994’s Fantastic Four cartoon or Spider-Man: The Animated Series’s take on Secret Wars, the first live-action version of Doom appeared in 2005’s Fantastic Four. (Well, it was the first official live-action version – we’ll get to that later.)
Played by Nip/Tuck star Julian McMahon, this Doom is no scheming Latverian dictator. He’s a New York-based CEO for Von Doom Industries who finds himself in space alongside the Fantastic Four. This version is based more on the Ultimate Fantastic Four’s take on Doom, with the accident that transforms the FF also giving Doom metal skin and bizarre technopathy powers.
It makes sense in the context of superhero movies at the time, but it’s also such a letdown. By 2005, Spider-Man and X-Men movies had set the standard for superhero films, and everyone else was just copying their homework. That meant updating origins for the sake of simplifying the plot.
Sending Victor into space isn’t that different from what Ultimate Comics did at the time, and it’s easier than setting up a college student-turned-dictator alongside the rest of the team’s origins. Still, it also robs Doctor Doom of the nuance that fans love and winds up feeling more like a cheap knock-off.
McMahon’s Doom would get two appearances and was contracted to appear in a canceled third film. Unfortunately, while these movies were received well enough, Fox’s next plans called for a reboot, which led to another, weirder Doom.
Herald of Doom
The struggle of just getting 2015’s Fantastic Four made is well-documented, as is the fallout from the film’s release. But there is perhaps no more notable victim of the film’s troubled production than Doctor Doom himself.
This version of Doom was snakebit before the movie could even premiere. In an interview, actor Toby Kebbell revealed his character was an isolated hacker named Victor Domashev, which prompted a massive wave of backlash. With filming nearing completion and the budget already blown out, the character was quickly renamed Victor Von Doom using a series of hamfisted cutaways and re-recorded dialogue.
The film yet again tries to combine Doom’s origin with that of the Fantastic Four. This time, Doom returns from being left in the Negative Zone with a bizarre new look and powers. This is reportedly due to more cuts to the story, which removed Galactus from the final film’s Negative Zone. The original plot would have seen Galactus turn Doom into his herald, effectively making this movie’s bizarre horror take on Victor closer to the Silver Surfer than Dr. Doom.
Unfortunately, the final cut of this film is a poorly handled Fantastic Four, let alone Doom. Reshoots, creative disputes, and an attempt to reign in the tone of what was intended to be a heady, character-driven body horror story resulted in an uneven mess. This, coupled with the two underwhelming X-Men movies that followed it, was the death knell for the various 20th Century Fox Marvel movies.
The only “real” Doctor Doom
What makes all this more depressing is that there was one singular attempt to bring a comics-accurate Doctor Doom to the big screen. The catch is that you never had a chance to see it.
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1994’s Fantastic Four featured Joseph Culp, best known today for his appearances on Mad Men, as Doctor Doom. For this film, Doom gets his traditional origin. He’s a college classmate of Reed Richards and is believed to have died following a lab explosion. In reality, the surviving Von Doom fashions a suit of armor and spends the next several years of his life becoming a dictator.
Culp’s portrayal of Doom is interesting. The cast’s passion for the film is clear, especially if you’ve seen their interviews in the 2015 documentary Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman’s The Fantastic Four. Culp based his performance on the physical mannerisms of Benito Mussolini, resulting in a Doom whose broad and exaggerated movements stood out even in the full armor and cloak.
You need that kind of exaggerated movement, too, because you can’t hear his Doom. The film was never intended to be released, and production was shuttered before Culp could record ADR. As a result, his Doom is incredibly difficult to understand, as his voice is muffled by the heavy mask he wore for the role. While Marvel denied the film’s existence until a leaked workprint found its way to convention circuits, there’s still no official release with finished audio or special effects.
Rober Doom-ey Jr.
And so here we sit again, on the cusp of yet another Doom who is not Doom. Robert Downey Jr.’s Doom is expected to be some kind of multiversal variant, the gimmick being that he looks like Tony Stark.
It makes sense when you consider where the MCU is right now. A series of missteps and flops in the post-Endgame era have led to a low point that has the once overwhelmingly dominant force chasing a win, and bringing back its most popular name seems like an easy one.
But, as fans have rightfully pointed out, it’s yet another mismanaged attempt at a beloved and important character. Doctor Doom has had the staying power to be one of Marvel’s most versatile and beloved characters, as a hero, a villain, and even something in between, for 60 years.
Doom is a cornerstone villain for Marvel who could fit in anywhere. Sure, he’s primarily a Fantastic Four foe, but the Avengers cross his path just as much. He was the one who offered safe harbor to the Scarlet Witch after House of M. He nearly defeated the X-Men, only being bested by his infatuation with Storm.
He’s even had run-ins with multiple street-level heroes, like Spider-Man and Luke Cage. And, as I am writing this, Doom is the current Sorcerer Supreme of the Marvel Universe, a title he has challenged Doctor Strange for multiple times over the last several decades.
I have high hopes for the Fantastic Four and the next Avengers films. Robert Downey Jr. almost certainly has an amazing Doctor Doom in him, and I have no qualms about the multiversal hijinks that could result from a Doom who happens to look like Tony Stark.
But to get our third consecutive Doctor Doom that ignores the source material is such a disappointment. I yet again find myself asking why we can’t just have an earnest, genuine attempt at this character, who seems way easier to adapt for an audience than an eight-foot-tall purple alien looking for magic space rocks.
Downey’s Doom will officially debut in 2026’s Avengers: Doomsday, though rumors indicate we may see him in The Fantastic Four: The First Steps as a teaser. While you wait for that, you can read all about the twists and turns of the Marvel timeline.
We’ve also got plenty of coverage on all the new movies Marvel Studios is currently working on, including Captain America 4, Thunderbolts, and Avengers Secret Wars.
