Summary
Doctor Doom is finally making hisMCUdebut in the titularAvengersmovie Doomsday, leading into the culmination of the multiverse storyline with Secret Wars. So far, it consists of Loki and Ant-Man beating Kang (who was meant to be the big bad), Spider-Man hanging out with Spider-Man and Spider-Man, Doctor Strange fighting Scarlet Witch, and Deadpool waving goodbye to the wishy washy Foxverse. It’s hardly the Infinity Saga.
Robert Downey Jr’s casting as Doom is clearly a shot in the dark to course correct and win fans back, but putting aside the $80 million marketing gimmick that is basically, ‘What if Iron Man wasevil?’, this entire announcement completely misunderstands Doom as a character.
The idea that he’s an overarching villain threatening to destroy the universe as we know it akin to Thanos is a total misconception. Doom is a looming presence, ruling over Latveria as a dictator in the background of every story. Heroes bump into him sporadically across their runs, whether it’sSpider-Man, Captain America, or his true rival The Fantastic Four—he is not a drip-fed tease that culminates in a world-ending threat, he’s an ideological crux to so many of the Marvel heroes. That means he works on a street levelanda cosmic level, something the Mad Titan can’t match.
Doctor Doom is much closer to Loki or Magneto. He’s a recurring threat who, when push comes to shove, may work with the heroes against a stronger foe. He’s the kind of villain who appears time and time again, never truly defeated, always recuperating his losses and learning for next time as he claws for power.RDJ as Doom is stunt casting that will only undermine that idea by chasing the coattails of Thanos, desperately clinging tothat excitement we all felt in 2019when the portals ripped open and an army of familiar faces walked out to pummel the big bad we’d been anticipating forten years.
Having Doctor Doom as the titular villain of a tentpole MCU movie, the first Avengers movie since Endgame no less, to tie the knot on an entire saga will only make it that much harder to fold Doom into whatever comes next. It’s the Kang problem flipped upside down—how do you take this villain seriously when Ant-Man and Loki defeated them single-handedly? How do you make this Thanos-level threat just as gripping against the Fantastic Four alone?
It’s a sign of where the MCU is right now. Kang was dropped because ofthe charges against Jonathan Majors, but because Marvel decided thateveryKang across the multiverse looks the same, they couldn’t recast him. So, they had to scramble to find another conclusion to this story which is already deeply unsatisfying given how convoluted and spread thin the MCU is. It’s juggling far too many disparate arcs at once, leaving behind myriad characters in its wake.
They easily could have recast Kang. That’s how movies work. See: Rhodey, Hulk, Red Skull, Cassie Lang, Mainframe…
Doom can’t be built up to because delaying the Avengers movies would leave the MCU flailing its arms as that fatigue sinks ever deeper. So, Marvel Studios has two options—throw Doom out and hope he sticks as a villain, or bank on nostalgia. Marvel chose both. Enter RDJ as Doom to make up for the lack of anticipation. It’s a desperate attempt to win fans over by making a beloved villain the centerpiece of its next blockbuster event while also bringing back an old favourite who so many thought would never return.
I doubt RDJ will come back as Doom after this, given that he costs $80 million and is a ‘variant’ of a character we’ve never met in the MCU. But that leaves whoever comes next, if Marvel decides to reintroduce Doom, with the daunting task of stepping into his shoes and trying to get out from under his enormous shadow. It’s the same problem Spider-Man will have to address after bringing back Willem Dafoe as Norman Osborn and the same bridge that the X-Men will have to cross after bringing back Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, a task made much harder by the marketing for Deadpool & Wolverine that highlighted Jackman as irreplaceable. The MCU keeps digging its own grave by relying so heavily on old actors rather than pushing forward with somethingfresh.
When introducing RDJ, the Russo Brothers even said that he is “the one person who could play Victor Von Doom”.
Doom should have never been a stunt to put people in seats or the next big bad to usher in another ten years of whatever scraps Marvel has left. He should have been their new Loki; up and coming talent, introduced in a solo movie as the villain, built up over the sequels, playing arolein the Avengers, and even one day enjoying his own standalone project. Instead, we’re wasting one of Marvel’s most iconic villains on a shallow Hail Mary that fundamentally misunderstands his character.
