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Doctor Doom is the best Marvel villain and one of the biggest bad guys in fiction, but he’s never had a good live-action adaptation. In the 1994 movie, he looked like someone in a cosplay outfit. In the 2000 movies, he was Elon Musk with lightning powers. Nobody even wants to remember Fan4stic. And in Avengers: Doomsday, he’s going to be connected to Iron Man, which only happened two times in the comics. How is it possible that such an iconic character with so many amazing stories has never been done right in the movies?
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It’s because he’s tough to pull off on the big screen. But today, I’m going to explain how Marvel can make him work in Doomsday, even without any build-up. The first thing the previous adaptations got wrong was his origin story, which is super interesting, but way too long to fit into a Fantastic Four or Avengers movie, so they always end up cutting it down. I know this sounds like an excuse, but let’s take a look at Doom’s full origin. In the comics, Victor was born in the fictional nation of Latveria.
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He’s Romani with a dad who was a doctor and a mom who was a witch, and he saw both of them die when he was a kid. Victor’s dad died while escaping from the corrupt Baron of Latveria’s soldiers. And his mom made a deal with the demon Mephisto, who trapped her soul in hell. Taking the best of both worlds, Victor combined his scientific genius with his mom’s arcane texts and swore to free the people of Latveria and get revenge for all the injustice he’d faced. Thanks to his smarts, he earned a
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scholarship to study in the US, where he met a young Reed Richards, who didn’t have powers yet. Obsessed with pushing the limits of science, Victor built a pretty complex device that was doomed to fail, since Reed warned him that his calculations were off. Victor ignored him. The thing blew up, and it left him with a tiny little scar that would haunt him forever. He got expelled and blamed Reed for it,
Reed is a name
NOTE
to think or say that sb/sth is responsible for sth bad 把…归咎于；责怪；指责
~ sb/sth (for sth)
She doesn’t blame anyone for her father’s death.
她没把她父亲的死归罪于任何人。
A dropped cigarette is being blamed for the fire.
一根乱扔的烟被认为是这场火灾的肇因。
kicking off one of the biggest rivalries in comic book history.
NOTE
ˌkick ˈoff (with sth)
(informal) to start 开始
What time shall we kick off?
我们什么时候开始？
Tom will kick off with a few comments.
汤姆讲话时要先发表几点意见
After that, Victor traveled the world.
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He forced some monks at a monastery in the Himalayas to build him a suit of armor, but because he was impatient and stubborn, he didn’t notice the armor was still hot. As soon as he put it on, the mask burned his face, and he chose never to take it off. He called himself Doctor Doom, mixing his dad’s title with his mom’s magical side, and went back to Latveria to keep his promise. He overthrew the Baron who had his dad killed and took over as the absolute kind but totalitarian ruler of the
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country. With all of Latveria’s resources behind him, he built advanced weapons and robots and tried to take over the world because he believed he was the only one capable enough to lead it. It’s only after all that when he becomes a villain for the Fantastic Four and later the Avengers. But that whole origin story could fill an entire movie on its own and there wouldn’t even be any superheroes in it. I know they don’t need to show all of this the first time Doom shows up in a movie. His full
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backstory wasn’t even told until Books of Doom came out in 2005, 43 years after his debut in the comics. Still, there’s no doubt Victor is way more interesting because of this background, kind of like Magneto. Maybe the best way to adapt him would be to take the Darth Vader route. Bring him in as a powerful villain in his first appearance, then slowly hint that he has this deep backstory and years later make a prequel about his origin. The problem is, aside from Star Wars, doing villain prequels wasn’t a
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trend in the 2000s. So Fox ended up chopping out Victor’s whole origin in the Tim Story movie. They erased his Romani heritage, his parents, Latveria, and his magical side. All they kept was his rivalry with Reed and turned him into a billionaire with an ego bigger than Mount Rushmore. That was something they could explain in 5 minutes and still give more screen time to the Fantastic Four. By 2015, telling villain stories was a trend thanks to Sony’s Spider-Man less universe. So we could
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have gotten a Doom prequel then. But Fan 4 6 strayed way too far from the comics, had tons of production issues, nobody liked it, and it flopped at the box office. Plus, I doubt anyone wanted to watch the childhood and teen years of that version of Doctor Doom. He wasn’t Romani either and had nothing to do with magic. They turned him into a spoiled hacker. That brings us to Doomsday, which has the impossible task of telling all this in 2 and 1/2 hours while also bringing the Avengers back together for
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a multiversal adventure. The best option would have been to make an entire Doom movie between First Steps and Doomsday so we could learn his full origin by adapting Books of Doom. But even so, the Russo brothers can still get a lot out of the character. The key is to present Victor as a misunderstood genius with a massive ego who suffered the loss of his loved ones. Sue Storm implies that this is the case in one of the teasers, which starts with her saying that Victor was kind and caring until something happened
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and left him broken. In that same teaser, we see Victor grieving in front of a mural depicting a woman and a little girl. These are most likely his wife and daughter, who we should see in flashbacks to develop Victor the same way they did with Thanos in Infinity War. Later, Doom says that the heroes have been living stolen lives and that they need to give them back. If we connect all the dots,
connect the dots
idiom (also mainly UK join the dots)
to understand the relationships between different facts or events so that you fully understand a situation:
All the information is there in the article — you just need to connect the dots.
I regret that we didn’t connect the dots quickly enough on terrorism.
It is a compliment to an audience to leave some things to their imagination and trust them to connect the dots.
If I was able to join the dots and discover your true identity then I am sure that, in time, others will too.
There was a basic failure to just join the dots and realize what was really going on.it looks like Victor was an ally of the Fantastic Four until his family died in an incursion or an experiment gone wrong. And that’s
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when he became a villain seeking revenge. I’m willing to bet that he resents Steve Rogers, who apparently stayed in the Fantastic Four’s universe after the events of Endgame and caused an incursion. Sure, they change the characters from the comics, but Victor’s backstory is going to be the same. Someone who lost his loved ones and believes his actions are justified as revenge. Except instead of going after the Baron of Latveria, he’s going to go after Steve Rogers. That’s much more
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interesting than him being an evil billionaire who’s mad at Reed because he wants his girlfriend. Of course, there’s the Robert Downey Jr. problem. The actor isn’t Romani and we’re all going to associate him with Tony Stark. But in the teasers, he’s doing a Romani accent instead of speaking like Iron Man. And the more we see of Doomsday, the more convinced I am that he won’t be playing an Iron Man variant, but instead will use magic to copy Tony Stark’s face and trick the Avengers. And speaking of
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magic, that’s the second reason why this guy is so difficult to adapt. His powers. Doom doesn’t follow the villain with the same powers as the hero rule, like Abomination or Iron Monger.
And he doesn’t have easy-to-explain powers like super strength, super speed, magnetism, or magic stones that do whatever the plot needs. Anyone can get those right away. You see someone punching hard, you know what their powers are and how they work. But Doom is a mix of two worlds and two different genres. He’s a tech
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genius who can build dimensional portals and robot armies. But at the same time, he’s a master of magic. He survived a trip to hell thanks to magic spells, sacrificed his childhood love to turn her into magical armor, communicated with the supernatural, and he became the Sorcerer Supreme not long ago, taking over for Stephen Strange. No other Marvel villain has that combo and it’s tough to bring to the big screen. If it’s not handled carefully, mixing those powers can mess up the tone of the
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movie. The 2000s movies only kept the tech part since the tone was light sci-fi. Giving him magic powers would have made no sense, especially without his backstory, since they never even mentioned that magic exists in that universe. But, to give him something more than just a bazooka and a metal mask, they made him shoot lightning. That was super easy to understand, felt kind of sci-fi, and was similar enough to what the Fantastic Four could do. The same thing happened in Fan 4-Stick, which was trying to be realistic and
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serious. In the mind of director Josh Trank, the idea of someone casting spells just didn’t fit. But, somehow it was totally grounded to show a guy shooting lightning and making people’s heads explode from a distance. Luckily, the MCU shouldn’t have this problem. Marvel’s already introduced tech geniuses like Tony Stark and Hank Pym, so super advanced futuristic technology is an everyday thing. And thanks to Loki, Wanda, and Doctor Strange, we know that magic exists and we’re used to it
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by now. In Phase 3, they made an entire movie explaining the fundamentals of magic. In Multiverse of Madness, they showed us the difference between magic and sorcery. And in 2024, they made a whole series about witches with all kinds of spells and flying broomsticks. So, this new Doctor Doom can have the same powers as in the comics because no one needs an explanation for how nanotech or magic works. We just need to see him leading an army of Doom Bots and making green spell circles like Strange
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does, and everyone will get what his powers are about. And that’s exactly what they’re doing. In the trailers, we’ve already seen that Doom has various magical abilities that allow him to change his suit in midair, stop Thor’s Stormbreaker, and enchant the Sentinels to attack the X-Men. This is the perfect combo we’ve never seen on the big screen before. Doom using magic to command an army of killing machines. No one had tried this before because it needed a universe where magic and tech could
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exist side by side, like in the comics. The third thing they never get right is Doctor Doom’s motivations. This is what makes him so compelling in the comics. He doesn’t laugh like a maniac or enjoy hurting people. He truly believes he’s doing what’s best for the world. In his mind, he thinks he’s saving and helping people. That’s why he defeated Red Skull and prevented him from taking over the world, stopped several alien invasions, and helped defeat Onslaught when the planet was in danger. But, at the same
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time, Doom’s a walking contradiction. He knows there are innocent victims when he fights the Fantastic Four, and he won’t work with the heroes to actually make the world a better place. Plus, all his plans to save the world always have a dark twist. In the 2015 Secret Wars, the entire multiverse is about to be destroyed because of the incursions, and everyone is going to die. The heroes can’t do anything, so Doom steps in at the last minute to bring together the remains of several worlds and create
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Battleworld, a new planet where everyone lives in peace and harmony. Doom saves the day, but the dark twist is that he crowns himself emperor and brainwashes everyone. He steals Reed Richards’ wife and children, turns the Thor Corps into his police force, and lobotomizes Galactus so he can guard his castle. More recently, in One World Under Doom, Victor convinces the United Nations to give him absolute control over Earth to create United Latveria. In a single day, he puts an end to every war across the
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planet, eradicates Hydra, and establishes free universal health care and college education. On the second day, he cures the Thing by turning him human again, and opens the borders of every country in the world. He allows free trade, lets everyone move to whatever country they want, and doubles the global GDP. The only ones who oppose his peaceful reign are the Avengers, who seem completely irrational until they discover that Doom gained unlimited power by feeding on the souls of Latveria’s citizens, like the machines
feed on
(often disapproving) to become stronger because of sth else 因…而壮大；从…中得到滋养
Racism feeds on fear.
恐惧心理会助长种族主义
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in the Matrix with their human farms. Doom fixed the world by sacrificing an entire country because he believes the ends justify the means. He is clearly a villain, a jealous [ __ ] and a power-hungry bastard, but he doesn’t want to watch the world burn like the Joker. He almost wants to help people, but on his own terms. In the movies, he’s just the villain of the week. In the 2000s films, he’s a businessman who wants power and recognition at any cost. He enjoys hurting Reed. He wants to
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steal Sue away, and we never see him trying to improve the world in any way. In the second movie, they briefly show Latveria, but Doom doesn’t seem to care about anyone there. In the comics, that country isn’t exactly democratic because Doom is the ruler, and that’s it. But the cool part is that no one in Latveria wants to overthrow him because they all live well under his rule, at least until the events of One World Under Doom. Everyone loves him and sees him as a fair leader. That makes you question and
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the system the superheroes are defending is really the best one. It makes you realize Doom might be the hero in his own story. Stripping away all that is like removing the mutant rights struggle from the X-Men or turning Magneto into an international terrorist instead of showing him as a tragic figure who lived through humanity’s worst horrors. That would be lazy writing. In order to make him easier to understand as the bad guy, they’ve only focused on his hunger for power. In the 2005 movie, he wants to
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kill the Fantastic Four because he’s mad at them and loses control of his company after the accident. In the second movie, he wants to steal Silver Surfer’s board to get more powerful, but it’s not really clear why. They don’t even hint that he wants to use that power to fix the world in his own way. He’s just running around like a kid with a new toy. Now, don’t get me wrong. Stealing the board is a very Doom thing to do. In the comics, he’s stolen powers from the Beyonder, Galactus, Dormammu, Doctor
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Strange, and Thor. But the real issue is his motivation. What does he want to do with all that power? It’s even worse in Fan Four-Stick. Victor travels to a wrecked dimension and wants to stay there or maybe destroy Earth so no one bothers him. I don’t even think the writers knew what he was doing. The good news is that Marvel has a chance to fix this in Doom’s Day. The premise of the movie is that the multiverse is going to explode because of the incursions and the X-Men’s universe is about to collide
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with the Avengers universe. Doom says that the heroes will have to face an impossible choice. Save one universe by destroying the other or let both universes die. He will probably act as a manipulator to get both sides to fight each other. But in the end, he should obtain the power of someone like Loki to save the multiverse at the last minute and create Battleworld just like in the comics. This would establish him as a villain who manipulates the heroes for his own ends. Someone who wants to be
NOTE
an aim or a purpose 目的；目标
They are prepared to use violence in pursuit of their ends.
他们准备使用暴力来达到目的。
She is exploiting the current situation for her own ends.
她在利用目前的形势来达到自己的目的。
With this end in view (= in order to achieve this) they employed 50 new staff.
为了达到这个目标他们雇用了 50 名新职员。
We are willing to make any concessions necessary to this end (= in order to achieve this).
为达到此目的我们愿作出任何必要的让步
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the most powerful being in the universe and who is incredibly jealous of Reed Richards if he ends up stealing his wife and son. But at the same time, we’d see him as a more complex villain than in the previous movies. He wouldn’t just crown himself God Emperor Doom and call it a day. His goal would be to build a world that’s better than the old one. But if you’re still not convinced that Marvel can do Doctor Doom justice, in this video, I’ll explain why casting RDJ was a genius move.