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Why Is It Impossible To Get Doctor Doom Right?
Mar 31, 2025
Doctor Doom has been a mainstay in the Marvel canon for decades. He is one of the best villains ever put to the page, and has had several attempts at adapting him to the big screen. Though it has turned out adapting Doctor Doom to a feature film is a lot harder than expected. Will we get to see a new Doctor Doom before Marvel Studios releases it's Fantastic Four movie?
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How romantic
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Victor, please. Call me Doom. The Fantastic Four are the founding members of the Marvel
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Universe, and their chief antagonist, Doctor Doom, is arguably the biggest enemy of Marvel's entire publishing line
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And yet, everyone's favorite Latverian has struggled to be accurately adapted to the big screen
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First appearing in Fantastic Four number 5, Victor Von Doom, the scientist, magician
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and politician fits many of the classic tropes of pulp villains. He's an aristocrat ne'er-do-well
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who grew over a 70-year publishing career into being one of the most fearsome antagonists ever
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to appear on the printed page. Originally from the fictional nation-state of Latveria
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Von Doom was depicted in his early four-color appearances as a classmate of Reed Richards
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While working on a science experiment, things took a turn for the worse. Von Doom was horrifically
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scarred. This instilled in him a goal of revenge against Mr. Fantastic and gives him the idea to
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create a suit of armor that will serve as his greatest asset in his war on the residence of
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the Baxter Building. Doom's first appearance outside the printed page was on the episode
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Dr. Doomsday in a segment of the 1966 animated program The Marvel Superheroes. Since then
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he's appeared countless times across roughly a dozen animated programs. However, his first
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live-action debut came in the form of the 1994 Roger Corman-produced Fantastic Four feature film
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Regrettably, it was never released to the public due to rights issues. Subsequently, when Tim Story's 2005 film Fantastic Four finally got off the ground
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it introduced the villain in question, played by rising star Julian McMahon to audiences and
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legions of fans who were eagerly anticipating seeing a big rendition of the quintessential nemesis Only problem being they got generic business tycoon Electro in a weird green coat with metal skin None of Doom regality his super genius
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or even his motivations beyond, just like, third-rate Lex Luthor manifested in the finished film
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Did things get a little better in 2007's Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer
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Come and get it, Richard. Marginally. The story shows Silver Surfer's cosmic energy freeing Doom from his metal bio-skin
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and restoring him to his human form. Only, he's now horribly scarred
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Sure, it's close enough, but then, of course, the movie has to do this
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They do away with Doom by just knocking him into the ocean. Neither of these Tim Story films do any of the characters justice
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but the way they handle Dr. Doom hurts most of all. This is what a man looks like who embraces his destiny
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And then we have Josh Trank's 2015 film Fantastic Four, which had Toby Kebbell playing our favorite once and future dictator
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Would this version be better? No, this is probably the worst of the bunch. I'm going to fix this
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You can't fix this. In this version, he's an astronaut scientist who gets marooned on planet Zero
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hit with crazy cosmic radiation, and his body merges with his suit
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and then gains telekinetic powers. The reason that Doom works in the comics and is arguably the best big bad of all time
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is the fact that the character's internal trauma fuels his external mastery of multiple disciplines
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He's studied with Tibetan monks in order to be a dark warlock. He's gone to school in order to be a super genius level scientist
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He's willed himself into being a freedom fighter that has staged a rebellion
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and then set himself up as a de facto ruler of an impoverished Eastern European country
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He's even conned Doctor Strange into helping him on a sojourn into the bowels of hell
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to attempt to free the soul of his mother If that not commitment to an idea I don know what is And yet when he makes the jump to the big screen all of those elements are discarded over and over
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and over again they can't even commit to the idea that his name is dr doom there is no victor
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there is only doom he's arguably the greatest villain in comics history and he's been adapted
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into live action on four separate occasions and they're all terrible they all pale in comparison
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into the character's potential scope of what Lee and Kirby established and what the armies of
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creators since have developed. Doom is a character that's an amalgamation. He's Dr. Frankenstein
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Merlin, Dr. Moreau, and countless other iconic villains rolled into one. Doom works so well
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because he's the polar opposite of the Fantastic Four. They're a family. They need each other
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They all have glaring flaws and weaknesses that the other members of the team compensate for
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However, Doom's ego and self-centeredness prevents him from finding a family to solve his own weaknesses and pain
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which leads to the symbiotic relationship between Doom and the Fantastic Four. Doom literally wants to be Reed, and he hates Reed at the same time
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I hate you. All of you. During Secret War, Doom pulled in the various members of the Fantastic Four and made them his family
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adopting Valeria and Franklin and taking Sue as his wife. This version of Doom's unchecked ego is grounded in emotional vulnerability while still being operatic and Shakespearean
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Perfect material for the big screen. This is exactly the type of thematic throughline that all of these film adaptations miss
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Doom and the Fantastic Four are a part of a single organism. They need to be connected thematically and literally
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Doom is all of the competency and skill of four people instilled into a single individual
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Doom is Reed intellect Johnny Storm charisma and theatrical personality the strength of the Thing and passion of Sue Storm These elements are all represented by his autodidactic approach to skill accrual and undiluted willpower
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But Doom is alone. He has no one to check him and therefore his ego is out of control. He's
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adrift in a sea of self-aggrandizement and this is always his undoing. Doom's complexity is what
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makes him interesting. His love for Sue Storm and his hatred for Reed Richards, his constant feuding
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with the Thing, his objective brilliance, and the Achilles heel of his ego. This is why Doom's
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upcoming inclusion into the MCU feels so perfect. It's been confirmed that Doom is going to appear
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in the MCU at some point, and it would stand to reason that he's going to be the primary antagonist
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in the Fantastic Four film that's going to open Phase 6. My friend, I have prepared well for this day
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Additionally, it's been confirmed that Secret Wars is going to be the final film of Phase 6
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In short, Doom steals the power of the Beyonders, forges a dimension made from shards of the Marvel multiverse
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and anoints himself as a god. It's one of the best things Marvel has published, maybe ever
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The fact that they're doing an adaptation of Secret Wars means they're inherently on the right path
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This means they're setting Doom up as a threat with real stakes. They obviously get the fact that to do Doom right, you can't think small
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You can't have a business tycoon mindset or a scientist marooned on another dimension approach to the character
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Doom is a big swing. He doesn't work any other way. There's no grounded, low-stakes version of the character
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They've tried those approaches to the character, and they just don't have legs. I didn't think I was about to share my life with you
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Dr. Doom is a man that is arguably the antagonist of an entire universe
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and if done correctly, he could give Marvel the greatest second act any franchise has ever seen
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