Amph "You think you're the only superhero in the world?" - The Marvel Cinematic Universe

Actually, think about it. You now have a Tony Stark who didn't have any of the character development. The one who was at the beginning of Iron Man 1? That guy would definitely have become a villain. It works. I think it's a good call, tbh.

I know we're conditioned to dislike every creative choice made here, but actually think about it before just throwing it out.

 

Yeah I actually like this line of thinking.. apparently there already is a version of Dr Doom that's Anthony Stark from a timeline where he never learned his lesson.

 

That's perfectly fine. I just...know a lot of people here very well (and they know me) so I wanted people to pause and take a deep breath before they proclaim they hate it. I think this is a creative choice that can be done well.

I'm imagining, think of what we already had with Tony who had character development. He was imagining an iron suit around the world after all the big stuff they had to deal with, including an alien invasion. Think of how beginning of Iron Man 1 Tony Stark might have dealt with this. An Iron Suit around the world could very well become Tyranny.

 

I feel like I watched a Tony Stark with no character development all the way from Iron Man 1 to Endgame.

 

You may as well make the best of this, Wocky, as this will be the only time you get likes in a debate against me.

But yes, he had character development. I'm not saying the MCU is Citizen Kane over here, but he had character development.

 

I don't see how Doctor Doom being literally Victor Von Doom from Latveria is necessary for it to be a proper Doctor Doom.

 

I'm sure they'll have fun whatever they decide to do(om.)

So cool to see Doom and Galactus get some love at SDCC. They are both such great villains.

And according to Favreau Downey Jr. auditioned to play Doom in the Fox FF movies, so this is a nice character loop for RDJ:

https://ew.com/movies/robert-downey-jr-almost-played-marvel-character-doctor-doom-before-iron-man/

 

Iron Man 1: Anthony Starks learns its not good to go it alone. He has to humble himself and think of others sometimes to save the day
Iron Man 2: Anthony Starks tries to go it alone. He ends up having to humble himself and think of others like Not Terrence Howard and Black Spider to save the day.
Iron Man 3: Anthony Starks is an arrogant successful hero who says on TV he can go it alone. After enemies respond by destroying his house, he has to humble himself and think of others like that Christmas kid or whatever to save the day.

We're really off to a great start here.

 

For me the issue is reducing Doom to “Tony Stark, but evil” is dull.

 

At least we'll definitely get the Infamous Iron Man Doom suit. That thing is fly.

 

I genuinely hate this so much, which is very unlike me. The stunt casting of this aside, my issue with this come down to the three possibilities for how this works, all of which are stupid in their own way:

1. RDJ is playing Victor von Doom. Presumably he's from the same universe as the Fantastic Four (why did they add that subtitle? whatever, doesn't matter) and he's the Doom we know and love-to-hate. He'll probably be introduced in the post-credits scene of that movie. Why have him look like Tony Stark? Why go the route of "Oh, in the Fantastic Four's universe, Doctor Doom looks and sounds exactly like Iron Man in the Sacred Timeline and much of the rest of the multiverse!" What does that narratively, thematically or emotionally accomplish? Is Peter Parker going to see his face in a battle and have some crisis of conscience? If I had a boss who was a total jerk, who happened to look and sound exactly like my grandfather, it wouldn't suddenly make me rethink my relationship with my grandfather or think of him differently or cause me to reconsider whether or not my boss was actually a jerk. I'd just think, "Wow, my boss looks like my grandpa. That's kinda weird. Anyway, the guy's a jerk, and I should give my grandpa a call." It's not profound. It means nothing.
   
2. RDJ is playing a variant of Tony Stark who goes evil, becoming Doctor Doom in his reality. I have a feeling this is the route they go. This is also the worst possible route they could take. Apart from the fact that there are evil, alternate versions of Iron Man you could go with if you wanted to bring RDJ back as the Final Boss of the Multiverse Saga in lieu of Kang (who is so wildly easy to recast by nature of the character oh my god), this means that the Doctor Doom they're giving us isn't really, you know, the actual Doctor Doom. Which is not only disappointing and confusing on its own, it's also a total waste of Marvel's best villain.
3. RDJ is simply voice acting Doctor Doom and we never see his face. This is the cop out route after going through the trouble of publicly revealing RDJ as Doom at SDCC of all possible venues. It's also, in my opinion, entirely unlikely. If you cast RDJ to voice Doom, you keep it a secret until the movie comes out, you let it be a big surprise after playing coy about who's portraying Doom. If you want to show his face, you do this. To say nothing of the fact that there's not a studio executive alive who will agree to pay RDJ $50M + a percentage of the box office gross to not even have him show his face on screen. And there's no way he signs on for less than his usual rate, because they need him more than he needs them right now. So, unless there's some other option I haven't considered, it has to be one of the first two... and I genuinely hate both.

 

What is Doctor Doom, otherwise?

(I'm not saying that it is actually reducing it to that, but what are you imagining that this will not allow for?)

 

Kang is gone, but Immortus is still around and could be pulling the strings. The set up would be in FF.

Victor is. Tony may have another vice.

Exactly. "What If...?" has conditioned us for this moment. Maybe Tony is Doom because of Reed. Maybe Doom transferred his conscious mind into Tony. Maybe Victor is the real threat.

This will screw with Peter, Bruce, Happy, Thor and Clint. They will intentionally hold back against him.

 

I think it depends if you’re coming at this as an adaptation of the comic books and their characters, or from the perspective of what works best for the narrative arc of the film franchise.

If you’re invested in this being an adaption, then I understand why not having the ‘real’ / ‘original’ Doctor Doom would be disappointing, instead having him replaced by Tony Stark, likely never to be properly introduced or utilised on screen.

But I think from the perspective of the film franchise, it works if the main villain is tied into the previous arc of films, being Infinity Saga. It works better than having a new villain introduced completely fresh with no previous connection to the characters of the original phases. Having this being Doctor Doom is probably more interesting than another option, which is to just have it be ‘Tony Stark but evil,’ being able to use the iconography and characterisation associated with Doctor Doom.

Having said that, I think they’re just trying to limp home after the overall failure of the Multiverse Saga, and are probably more interested in getting to the next ‘Saga’ with the X-Men, which is sure to be a greater success. I think this probably salvages the current story arc after the multiple missteps and the jettisoning of the Kang stuff.

 

If the point is to connect this to the Infinity Saga by having the final villain of the Multiverse Saga be an evil Tony Stark... then there are multiple examples of an evil Iron Man to pull from. I don't see how amalgamating the character with Doctor Doom makes sense if that's the intention behind it. That's doing something that could theoretically work, i.e. an evil, alternate Tony Stark, and pointlessly wasting an entirely unrelated character, who is Marvel's best villain, to achieve the exact same result. The imagery associated with Doom doesn't make sense if this is "Tony Stark, but evil", and if you're going to give Tony the elements of Doom's backstory that would justify those things... then why not just use actual Victor von Doom?

 

IMO for me, the thing that distinguishes Doom from the likes of Obeidah Stane or Darren Cross is that he’s not just an evil scientist/rich guy, he’s a legitimate head of state with all the concerns and responsibilities that entails. There’s nothing in Tony’s character that fits that.

(Also I said this before, but I hope they use Jack Kirby’s idea that Doom’s “deformity” was really just a minor scar that drove him insane because it clashed with his superiority complex.)

 

Wocky- that's....not it at all.

Iron Man 1: Tony is forced to reconcile with the human cost of his weapons falling into the wrong hands after years of convincing himself he was the "good guy"- Merchant of Death was fine as long as it was the bad guys killed. Tony then decides to stop hurting people and start helping- by taking out the weapons and stopping those responsible.

Iron Man 2: Tony believes he has done such a great job that he alone can fix it by "privatizing world peace". He also struggles with his mortality but believes know one is smart enough to save him except himself. The humbling you refer to is when Fury gives him his father's work. He does learn he can't go it alone which leads us to Avengers

Tony thinks that he can simply punch his way out of this: "I have a plan. Attack." But Loki's arrival introduces threats he cannot prepare for. Threats he has never conceived of. He realizes to beat them, he needs others who can match their strength. Hence joining the Avengers.

Iron Man 3 is literally PTSD from Avengers. He is terrified of losing Pepper because he did lose someone he cared about in Avengers- Coulson. A man far more capable of taking care of himself from threats than Pepper at that time. So he builds armor and tries to protect her. He doesn't get involved with the whole Mandarin thing until Happy is attacked. Iron Man 3 is about confronting his demons and going back to basics. It's about realizing what he's capable of instead of fearing the worst.

Avengers 2 builds on this. It's Tony starting to plan for a future where he can move on. He sees a suit of armor around the world to protect the world (basically iron man 2 except he's not in the suit). At the end, he realizes tech is flawed but they still need a future plan so he moves the Avengers to a compound and trusts Steve to train the future heroes.

Civil War is Tony seeing the cost of that heroism. Seeing how many people died because he and the team acted like gods. The whole argument boils down to Tony feeling like the Avengers must have oversight to prevent the chance of collatoral damage.

That brings us to Infinity War. Tony is once again planning for the future - his future with Pepper now that they are engaged. However, a threat to the world forces him to take action and confront the threat to save those he cares about-even if he doesn't return.

And finally, Endgame is Tony sacrificing everything he loves for the good of the world. He is the only one capable of solving the time travel issue. He agrees to help knowing that he could fail. And he sacrifices his life to save the world and his world (Morgan and Pepper).

Each film shows Tony moving from being a selfish self centered jerk who would never throw himself on the bomb to doing just that and sacrificing his life for the world.

 

Well the obvious answer is that they want the impact of it being Tony Stark, whilst also having the interesting elements of the Doom character. It may be a waste of the Doom character, but I see the logic of it.

I think they got scared by the fact that the actor was charged with a crime, combining that with the fact the reviews of the Ant-Man weren’t good, they felt it better to just jettison the whole idea and bring in something more likely to connect with audiences.

Generally I’m not excited by the whole Multiverse Saga in the first place, so I’m mostly waiting for us to eventually get to the X-Men, but I think there’s a logic to this move.

 

If you have to waste what is arguably Marvel's best villain to achieve that result, inherently stripping away the things that make the character independently interesting, just to tack the iconography and name onto an entirely different concept, then I genuinely do not see the logic in it.

 

Look, I’m not a massive comic fan, so admittedly I’m not fully aware of what cannot be inherently carried over to a Tony Stark-version of Doom, but I think combining them makes sense from the perspective of improving upon Kang. That’s why I said purely from the film franchise point of view this makes sense and there is a logic to it. It’s probably not going to be received well from people who want Doom faithfully adapted and feel that this is wasting that character.

 

I mean there’s literally infinite variants of every character, aren’t there?

In any case as I said, it was probably two things which brought about the change. They needed to recast and (I assume this was the reaction to Ant-Man, because I haven’t seen it, I’ve only read reviews) the character wasn’t connecting with audiences. They probably should have considered an evil of a beloved character earlier to be honest: it makes much more sense for a story about the multiverse.