Baffling. So baffling in fact that I genuinely thought it was fake when a friend of mine showed me, and I'm still trying to cope after finding out it was true. It must be somekind of prank and a “tease” to the real Doom or something, because I cannot believe anyone in that room thought that adapting a character who is similar but fundamentally different of Iron Man as “well he's an evil Iron Man variant” would be a good idea.
On an ideal world, we would be watching Doom and Iron Man interacting, which makes it all the more frustrating that he could only be adapted now.
I'm not sure how suprirsing that might be to some, but Doom is a character that I happen to be very fond of. I grew up with the 2005 and 2007 movies and the 2006 cartoon, so I have some attachment to the team and their main baddie, Doom. I don't read their comics too consistently, but I've read more Doom stories than Fantastic Four ones, so suffice to say, I love the guy.
To anyone interested on learning about the character as quick as possible, read Brubaker's Books of Doom. It's essentially a biographical mini.
I see him as a decently complex character of his own right, and that's the keyword right there. I'm ultimately not against an actor being recast to play another character when done right. In fact, in my eyes, the one person who should play Doom is Madds Mikkelsen:
But that's precisely because he played what was ultimately a whatever character(Kaecilius) and plays the role of “elegant european villain” impeccably. RDJ probably won't be as convincing to me, not because he lacks the acting skills, but because he was the face of this franchise not too long ago through Iron Man, and so ultimately, Doom will never be able to fully flourish outside of the shadow imposed on him. The proof of this is that nobody is discussing Doom himself, but just the fact that he's played by RDJ, the guy who once played Iron Man, the MCU's first flagship character.
The fact that Marvel acknowledged this by making him an evil Iron Man variant makes it straightforward, yet not less lazy. It's a change that ultimately detracts from Doom’s character because as great of an actor as RDJ may be or as great of a writing team they might have, a portion of the audience, myself included, may never fully buy the idea because RDJ’s Iron Man was just too iconic, and the premise itself doesn't help since it acknowledges that on the story itself.
So it's just not ideal to me, because the immersion will be at best paper-thin. It's just too jarring.
Of course I ultimately hope to be wrong, but I honestly don't have that much hope.
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