The Internet almost broke Saturday night after Marvel Studios’ panel at the San Diego Comic Con when Robert Downey, Jr revealed himself to be playing Doctor Doom. Videos circulated of the crowd going wild at the announcement. I’m sure a lot of Marvel Cinematic Universe doubters were rejoicing, thinking this was just what was needed to bring the franchise back to the highest heights.

I was a bit uneasy. Then my mind went back to when I saw Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in the theaters. A bunch of friends and acquaintances took the day off from work and saw the first showing the morning it opened.  When the showing was over, we were all ecstatic. We all went en masse to the Ground Round across the street to talk about how much we loved the film.

At first, we all gushed praise. This was the first Star Wars film released since we were kids, and we were all caught up in the emotion of the day. But over the course of the hour or so of the lunch, the thrill started to wear off. We started taking issue with the racially dubious accents of the aliens, Jake Lloyd’s wooden performance as Anakin, the introduction of midi-chlorians and everything to do with Jar Jar Binks. At the start of the meal, the film was absolutely perfect. At the end, after the adrenaline wore off, we saw it as an incredibly flawed film.

I’m getting a similar feeling about this casting. And it is all due one thing Robert Downey, Jr said: “New mask, same task.”

Why is Doctor Doom Important?

Before I get into my problems with the casting and the hoopla surrounding it, I should explain to you who Doctor Doom is and why he is so important. Simply put, Doctor Doom is the greatest villain Marvel Comics ever created. I usually throw an arguably in statements like this, but, while a case can be made for Magneto or Kingpin, no other villain even compares.

Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1962 in the pages of Fantastic Four #5. Doctor Doom is Victor Von Doom, a former college classmate of Reed Richards and Ben Grimm. He was working on a device that would allow people to communicate with the dead when Richards found an error in his calculations. Von Doom dismissed Richards and went through with the trial of the device anyway. The device exploded, leaving Von Doom’s face scarred. Blaming Richards for the explosion, Von Doom became Richards’ mortal enemy. Armored in a power suit he designed, and backed by his taking over his home country of Latveria, Doctor Doom dedicated his life to destroying Richards and the Fantastic Four, pursuing great power and world domination in his spare time.

Doctor Doom is a vain and arrogant character with a penchant for referring to himself in the third person. He is absolutely ruthless in his pursuit of power yet has a twisted sense of honor. And while his origin is inexorably linked to Reed Richards, he has fought everyone in the Marvel Universe at one point or another, from the Avengers to the X-Men, from Spider-Man to Squirrel Girl. He is an incredibly complex character, one that fans have been waiting to have a definitive version on the big screen.

Technically, the character made it to the big screen twice. First, in the 2005 Fantastic Four franchise, he was portrayed by Julian McMahon. He was interpreted in the film as a Eurotrash tech billionaire. Personally, I didn’t have much of a problem with this interpretation. It checked off a few boxes of what made the comic book version great–being from Latveria, the smug arrogance, the want for power, etc. But this version was sleazy not stoic, stuck up more than arrogant. A lot of fans did not like this version of Doom and wanted a better version of it. They didn’t get it.

Say what you want about the 2005 version of Doctor Doom, but at least it hewed closer to comic book version of the character that the 2015 reboot did. There was a lot wrong with the 2015 reboot, but the way the presented Doom might have been the worst. The only way this version resembled the comic book version was that they shared the same name. It was like they saw how hard it would be to do a proper adaptation of the character and didn’t even bother trying. This Doom was a rebellious computer hacker who got turned into an omnipowerful telekinetic after visiting an alternate dimension. The costume design was that of a crash test dummy that had been dragged through a sewer. It was pretty horrible.

Strangely enough, the most faithful adaptation of Doctor Doom on film was in a movie that not many people saw. The character in Roger Corman’s 1994 Fantastic Four film hewed closest to the comic book version in tone and back story. Even his costume was comic accurate. But the film was incredibly cheap and ultimately it was shelved to protect the license, never to be released other than in bootleg.

But Doom fans have been waiting a long time to see the character brought to the big screen. When the rights to the Fantastic Four reverted back to Marvel, these fans were hyped that the character would get the respect it deserved. Little did they know that Marvel would be bring us their Doom earlier that we thought.

Why are we getting a Doctor Doom now?

Why? Because Jonathan Majors broke his girlfriend’s finger. In March of 2023, Majors was arrested on charges of strangulation, assault and harassment after a confrontation with his girlfriend. In December, he was found guilty of these charges. Marvel fired him the same day.

This would be a problem because Marvel Studios had cast him as Kang, the big bad guy of the next several phases of the MCU. They had introduced him in Loki in 2021, built him up in Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania and set the stage for him to be facing off against our heroes in at least one of the next two Avengers films. Firing Majors was the right thing to do, but it left a Thanos-shaped hole in the MCU’s future plans.

Rumors all the way back in November of last year suggested that the MCU brass were considering replacing Kang as the ongoing big villain with Doctor Doom instead of simply recasting. I would have preferred a new actor, but Marvel Studios had an idea in mind (and perhaps a commitment from RDJ as well), so Doctor Doom is stepping in.

Who is RDJ playing: Victor Von Doom or Tony Stark?

This is the crux of my concerns about the casting. If RDJ is playing Victor Von Doom, as they specifically said at SDCC, I’d have very little problem with it. Playing a megalomaniacal Eastern European dictator who speaks like Frasier but with a better vocabulary? RDJ would knock that out of the park. You could even keep him in the mainstream MCU. Von Doom in the comics is hideously scarred underneath his mask, so RDJ could play him without wags joking about the two characters looking the same.

However, that “different mask, same task” comment makes me think that RDJ will be playing an alternate reality Tony Stark as Doctor Doom. And if that is the case, it would be a mistake of immense proportions, and one that might make me give up on the MCU forever. It would be awful on so many levels. Let me count the ways.

First off, Tony Stark as Doctor Doom isn’t Doctor Doom. It is evil Iron Man. And there are plenty examples of an evil Iron Man from the comics that they could use instead. Superior Iron Man comes to mind.  The only reason they’d make Stark Doom is because of the reasons mentioned above. They want their cake and eat it to. They want the excitement of bringing Doom into the MCU, but they want the safety of having a known quantity in RDJ/Tony Stark to make introducing Doom into the franchise a bit easier on their end.

And if it is Tony Stark is Doctor Doom in Doomsday, this means fans will not see the classic, comic book version of Doom for years, if at all. Recall what happened with Mandarin, another classic Marvel villain. A fake version of the character was introduced in Iron Man 3, but a more comic accurate version of Mandarin made his debut years later in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (and then was promptly killed off). Could they have two, different Doctor Dooms up and running at the same time? Yes, but this does not seem to be the plan going forward. So, it looks like the RDJ version, be it Stark or Von Doom, will be the one we will be getting for the foreseeable future. Expect a lot of grumbling for the Internet over this one if it is Stark.

And if it is a version of Tony Stark coming back to fight his former allies, it will be a story of great drama and pathos. It will also be a story we have already seen, albeit on a much smaller scale, back in 2022. We already got a good guy gone bad with the Scarlet Witch in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Going back to the well again after just 2 to 4 years is a bad look, no matter who the actor is that is starring in the film.

I’m sure that there are a lot of people who think I am crazy about having these concerns. They believe Marvel Studios would never think to bring a non-comic book accurate version of Doctor Doom in, especially after all the criticisms earlier film versions of Doom got. And if this was 2013, I wouldn’t have these concerns either. But ever since Marvel Studios moved away from their Marvel Creative Committee, they have been getting away from what made them so great, offering us heroes that stay true to their comic book origins.

It was never a one-for-one match with their comics counterparts, but the MCU characters kept the major aspects of the characters the same. Then the Creative Committee goes away, and instead of getting existing characters that would fit in the stories they tell, the comic book characters change to fit in with the narrative they are making. Agatha Harkness in Wandavision. Taskmaster in Black Widow. ClanDestine in Ms. Marvel. Modok in Quantumania. And many more. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this change corresponds with Marvel’s decline at the box office and with reviewers.

Listen, I hope that RDJ is playing Victor Von Doom, telling us what Doom will do or what Doom will not do, in the most pompous voice he could imagine. I just don’t trust Marvel Studios anymore. The remind me a bit of Warner Brothers after the failure of Green Lantern. They don’t have a firm grasp on why their fortunes are failing and are struggling to give fans what they think they want instead of what they really want. I hope I am wrong, but something tells me I might not be.