Poll of the Day > I have this idea for a Dr Doom movie in the MCU (fake film SPOILERS)

(+) Yeah! (+)

The spoiler tags below are for Infinity War spoilers, just an FYI in case you havent seen that one yet

Let me nerd on this

its a mockumentary

basically it is the story of victor von doom but told primarily through interviews with main and supporting cast of the MCU, telling his whole origin story with occasional clips of footage of his battles against heroes some of them awesome and many of the funny

basically portray him as a villain that has been around for a long time and kinda give him the generic evil comic book villain personality

the reason for the interviews is that Doom is currently attempting to overthrow and conquer the country of Latveria so global news outlets are covering it in hopes that theyll be able to record the avengers kicking his butt

and while his origin is being told it could also explore Reed Richards and their rivalry, that way towards the end of the film they could have some cliche showdown where Reed does something ingenious to stop Doom but then Doom does something diabolical like sacrifice his love interest in order to gain demonic power and defeat Richards

So then news outlets would all be going crazy and asking where are the Avengers, why did they let this happen

but then it would show some newscasters start to dust away like in Infinity War and the viewers realize that Doom succeeded because its happening during that film and the Avengers were fighting Thanos and his goons so Doom didnt even show up on most of their radar

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Here's the thing people never really understand about Doom - even in the comics, he was technically around for years before anyone ever really paid attention to him.

First he was just a refugee being raised in secret. Then he was just another foreign student in NYU (or, sorry, ESU). Then he "dropped out" after an accident. For a while he was just a nomad wandering the world. Then he found a secret monastery of monks in Tibet and trained with them (which is where he got his armor). It's only at this point that he starts being in the public eye at all - as he returns to Latveria and overthrows the current dictator to establish himself as an enlightened overlord who has only the best interests of his people at heart. The rest of the world might consider him eccentric (though would he be eccentric, in a world where people like Iron Man exist?), but he's not that important, and he's just a minor figure in Eastern European politics, barely worth paying attention to at all.

He really only becomes a major public figure once "RIIIICHARDS!" becomes a public figure - the Fantastic Four gaining powers and going public with them is what brings Doom out of Europe and into conflict with them.

That would be very, very easy to translate into the films. You don't need to establish him as a huge presence or try to play out his "rise" in the wake of Infinity War/Endgame. Doom was always there. He just wasn't important to the plot of any of the earlier films, because none of their events concerned him in any meaningful way. He's just there, quietly running Latveria, helping them build themselves into a cutting-edge nation. And then his old college rival gets superpowers and Doom loses his fucking mind.

It's also worth noting that treating him like a one-dimensional villain is kind of wasting the entire character. What makes Doom interesting to a lot of people these days is his complexity. He's not really an "evil" villain (in the same way that Magneto isn't really an "evil" villain anymore). He's arrogant, he's vain, he's misguided, and he holds petty grudges. He's more than willing to kill to get his way. He's done some pretty morally dubious things from time-to-time. But he's also a man of ironclad honor who is more likely to keep his word than most heroes. He genuinely cares for his people, and doesn't rule over Latveria to sate his own ego as much as he does because he feels like it's his obligation to do so, to give them the best possible life (he's very much about noblisse oblige). He has a huge soft spot for Gyps - no, sorry, the Romani - because his mother was one (incidentally, this is also why you'd have a very hard time making him a full villain in the modern socio-political climate without having people scream about how racist you were being). He's a brilliant technological innovator, but he's also a skilled sorcerer, who has dedicated his life to freeing his mother's soul from the literal Devil. He's saved the world (and the universe) multiple times.

It's also implied in one comic that he loses a massive contest to determine the world's official Sorcerer Surpreme to Doctor Strange (meaning Doom is the 2nd most powerful sorcerer on Earth), but he loses it deliberately for reasons of his own (meaning Doom could literally be the Sorcerer Supreme and Protector of Earth if he wanted to). There've actually been a few What If? stories that explore that idea, where Doctor Doom is basically what you get if you combine Doctor Strange and Iron Man.

It's also worth noting that, in the comics, it's repeatedly established that, if he ever actually conquered the world, the world would be much better off. Doom actually does have the best-interests of his people at heart, and he's really efficient at solving problems. It's also been established in at least a couple stories that, if Reed Richards didn't exist (or, say, had died in the explosion that scarred Doom's face), Doom would have become a super-hero himself.

We can complain about how stupid Thanos' plans actually were ("Wait, why not just use your power to double the universe's resources?" "Wait, because of how population growth works, the 50% you snapped away will be completely replaced in a generation or two anyway, so at most you've murdered half the universe and gained about 100 extra years worth of time..."), but the point was more that HE clearly saw himself as the hero, doing what needed to be done, for reasons he firmly considered both necessary and distasteful ("I don't want to have to do this, but it needs to be done, and I'm the only one strong enough to do it"). That sort of ambiguity tends to make for more interesting villains.

Magneto as moustache-twirling evil mutant who tries to kill all humans "for the evulz" is kind of boring. Magneto as a Holocaust survivor who acts out of fear and a desire to protect "his people" from what he sees as another Holocaust, but whose methods slowly transform him into a mirror image of the very thing he hates is much more interesting (there was actually one comic where he sees a vision of Hitler congratulating him on his desire to kill all humans for the sake of a superior "Master Race").

I almost kind of hope that, if they introduce Doom at all, he winds up being more of an anti-villain character who isn't all that overly antagonistic to anyone who isn't Reed Richards. One where he doesn't necessarily want to KILL Richards (which really hasn't been his motivation in the comics for decades), as much as he wants to prove he's BETTER than Richards. And there are a lot of ways you can play with that sort of idea.

One premise that's cropped up at least a couple times in the comics is that Doom really gets off on being able to save people that Reed can't. When Doom plays the hero and succeeds where Reed fails, it's better than simply killing him - because Reed has to live with the knowledge that Doom is better.

The irony, of course, being that Reed doesn't care.

In some ways, it's sort of parallel to the relationship between Lex Luthor and Superman. It's kind of been implied that Lex would be off curing cancer and solving all the world's problems to fuel his own ego if he didn't spend all his time trying to think up ways to kill Superman out of petty jealousy. The rivalry is almost entirely in the mind of the villain, and the hero would happily put aside all differences and work together to make the world a better place.
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Damn PO

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Look, it's been in my sig for like 15 years. You can't pretend you don't know by now.
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lmao

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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Magneto as moustache-twirling evil mutant who tries to kill all humans "for the evulz" is kind of boring. Magneto as a Holocaust survivor who acts out of fear and a desire to protect "his people" from what he sees as another Holocaust, but whose methods slowly transform him into a mirror image of the very thing he hates is much more interesting (there was actually one comic where he sees a vision of Hitler congratulating him on his desire to kill all humans for the sake of a superior "Master Race").

Ultimate really made the younger Magneto work. Being a descendant of survivors, instead of a survivor, really plays with the politics, psychology and morals.

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Nichtcrawler X posted...

Ultimate really made the younger Magneto work. Being a descendant of survivors, instead of a survivor, really plays with the politics, psychology and morals.

Ultimate in general was an attempt to make characters who were created in the 60s work in the 2000s. Which is part of why the MCU movies draw on a lot of inspiration from the Ultimate comics.

It's why there's such a huge shift for Captain America - in the original comics he was only really in suspended animation for about 18 years, so he's coming back to a world he still mostly understands, and where most of the people he knew are still alive (if a bit older). But in modern versions of the story he winds up having been in suspended animation for 70+ years, so he's stepping into a radically different world and almost everyone he's ever known is either dead or pretty close to dying of old age. It makes that sense of alienation and of being a "man out of time" far, far worse - which sort of changes your perspective of the character.

The sad part is, where there are good ideas in the Ultimate versions of characters, there's SO MUCH CRAP. So you kind of have to consciously try to sift the good ideas out from the bad ones, and come up with something that balances elements of the original version with the good ideas from the newer version. Kevin Feige makes it work because he's a huge nerd, but it would be very easy to completely screw it up (like the new Star Wars films arguably did).
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

The sad part is, where there are good ideas in the Ultimate versions of characters, there's SO MUCH CRAP. So you kind of have to consciously try to sift the good ideas out from the bad ones, and come up with something that balances elements of the original version with the good ideas from the newer version. Kevin Feige makes it work because he's a huge nerd, but it would be very easy to completely screw it up (like the new Star Wars films arguably did).

I read all of it Ultimate, so I am very aware of the fluctuations in quality. But I would assume 616 is no different. From the sheer quantity, I would expect both good and terrible comics.

Although I must admit, some of my favourite Marvel villains are still 1610 reinterpretations, exclusives and or at the very least originated there.

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Nichtcrawler X posted...

I read all of it Ultimate, so I am very aware of the fluctuations in quality. But I would assume 616 is no different. From the sheer quantity, I would expect both good and terrible comics.

True, but the main difference is that with the mainline universe you're mostly dealing with bad comics now and then, whereas with Ultimate you're often dealing with terrible ideas baked right into the core of the character.

It's because in a lot of ways the original universe is self-correcting. If I release a terrible character in the main universe it doesn't become popular, other writers stop using it, and it vanishes until someone else eventually brings it up again to be ironic or to just kill them off. By definition the characters who tend to become the most popular are the ones who are organically built up and that can shake off bad stories. The characters become popular because they're good.

But with the Ultimate universe, you're trying to rebuild the most popular characters from the ground up, to fit your own interpretation of them. But if your interpretation is kind of crap, then you've essentially built your own flaws into the characters that future writers may never be able to fix, and which lead to those versions being far less popular than their original counterparts. You're not making good characters who become popular by virtue of their quality, you're taking popular characters and trying to remake them into something else. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.

The Ultimate version of any given character isn't necessarily automatically going to be terrible, but it can easily wind up far, far worse than the original.
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Yes, I can see how "new characters" bearing the name of "old characters" sets up expectations. But between the cartoons, movies, shows, games and obviously the comics, I came to accept that a long time ago.

Main thing I remember was that Ultimate Days of Future Past was a mess, but overall I liked most storylines (or more importantly I actually liked some the internet seems highly dismissive of).

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I kinda like Mead's idea more for a show like Wandavision, rather than a full movie with a set-up like the Office

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