Januar Meme: The Return of RDJ and the pivot from Kang to Doom: opinions

[selenak]

lightofdaye asked me for my opinion(s) on the impending return of RDJ (as Dr. Doom, not Tony Stark) to the MCU and the pivot from Kang to Doom in terms of main antagonist to be in the future movies. I see these as two different issues, so I'll deal with the later ones first.

Now, even folks like yours truly who tries her best to avoid spoilers did hear that essentially, Kang the character was dropped because of the actor's behaviour. While they could have recast - after all, there's precedent, see also: Rhodey - , I wouldn't be surprised if this was a welcome opportunity to drop the character as well as the actor. Because honestly, in the two cases where I've seen Kang - Loki season 1 (I didn't watch more than the opening episode of s2, not because the show got bad but because I never really connected to it to begin with, and the day has only so many hours) and Ant-Man: Quantummania - he didn't exactly wow me as a character. IMO as always.

One can endlessly argue about what makes and doesn't make a good villain/antagonist (not always the same thing). I think it depends on the type of story you want to tell. Often (not always), it helps with the villain/antagonist has a personal connection to the hero, or is a plausible "What if?" version of him/her. For example, I would say the Marvel cinematic franchise which managed to pick exactly the right villain(s) in all their installments so far were the three Tom Holland Spider-Man movies. The Vulture being a) a small time crook about to go larger whose original economic damage was Stark-related, and b) the father of Peter's first serious crush fitted with all of Peter's issues at the time. The fact that said villain wasn't killed off, that Peter (successfully) chose to save him, and the villain kept Peter's identity secret were all important character points. In the second movie, Mysterio while also having Stark backstory issues more importantly worked as a villain as a kind of Tony-as-supervillain figure whom a grieving Peter would latch on to and believe at first. The third movie made "saving all the Spider-man villains from themselves" Peter's key challenge and motivation, and he was the only cinematic Marvel hero for whom this would work. But said villains also needed to be memorable characters for the audience to along with it, and this was accomplished not just with the two who in their original outings had already been great (i.e. Otto Octavius and Norman Osborne) but by fleshing out and writing better the ones who weren't, like Electro. Both Black Panther movies have done well, too, though I'm a bit atypical for the general audience in that I actually prefer Namor in the second to Killmonger in the first. Either way, though, both antagonists were given interesting backstories and (some) good arguments while also showing themselves so callous that it was clear why they were the antagonists and not the heroes. Both had a certain degree of mirroring and contrasting/paralleling with the heroes going on.

Now, in a big ensemble movie - i.e. the Avengers movies - it's harder to do that, because you don't have a single protagonist. Still, I will say Thanos worked for me to the degree he did (again, ymmv) because of Nebula and Gamora and the backstory built up in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies that came home to roost in both Infinity War and End Game. What I saw of Kang in both Loki the show and Quantummania made me suspect they were going for something similar - but without the crucial Nebula and Gamora element. And a super powerful antagonist by themselves doesn't have the same emotional hook. I mean, Quantummania tried to make it personal by giving Kang backstory with Jan, but... nah, didn't work for me. And honestly, I was almost dreading more endless action sequences focused on various versions of Kang when I didn't care about any that I'd seen so far.

Doom, otoh, has the comicverse intimate connection required (with Reed Richards), a tragic backstory (even a lay person such as myself who mainly knows of Doom via a very memorable version played at theatrical_muse where I was decades ago is aware), the "what if?" factor with not just Richards but also Tony Stark (didn't they have to team up in some comics issues as well?), and a larger than life personality. So far, so good: introducing Doom to the MCU and making him a main antagonist instead of Kang isn't a bad idea, though it would have made more sense introducing a new version of the Fantastic Four first, surely.

However: casting RDJ as Doom not only smacks of desperation but on a symbolic level is the exact opposite of what Marvel did when casting RDJ as Tony Stark for the first Iron Man movie all those years ago, and that's depressing. Because back then, it was a decision that showed a willingness to risk and be creative on so many levels. Iron Man wasn't a Marvel character well known outside of comics circles, and in fact, his popularity in said circles, such as it was, had just tanked because of the Civil War storyline, which was really really recent back then. And RDJ had started to rebuild his reputation as an actor, but he still was known as the guy very publicly an addict who'd fallen of the wagon twice before and was not even insurable. Making him the lead in a movie that was anything but a guaranteed money maker, wasn't even guaranteed to bring back production costs, was an incredible gamble.

Whereas now, he's one of the world's most popular actors, an almost guaranteed money maker, and casting him isn't just a shameless nostalgia ploy for disaffected MCU watchers but the least inventive and courageous casting decision they would have made. It's not that I think he'll be bad in the part, absolutely not. But casting him shows TPTB want to play it safe instead of going for interesting and challenging options. Many of the most memorable characters were created by actors who weren't, at that point, beloved stars (including of course MCU Tony Stark). Think Bryan Cranston spending decades as a character actor, which included a memorable creepy one episode guest spot in one X-Files episode and a longer term gig in comedy in Malcolm in the Middle, in between paying the bills via not memorable guest appearances like playing a Ranger in s4 of Babylon 5, before Vince Gilligan cast him as Walter White in Breaking Bad. I don't mean that the MCU should have cast an acting newbie in a multi million movie - they absolutely should have cast someone with experience. But without super stardom, never mind specifically super stardom reached within the MMCU. There are any number of talented and experienced actors who'd be bound to enjoy themselves and doing their all playing a Marvel supervillain - not choosing one of them is a pity.

(BTW, none of this means I think the MCU in totem has run its course. If anything, Jac Schaeffer's latest outing was another case in point that if you give someone the chance to go creative within a corner of it, they can deliver something amazing.)


The other days

Comments

[lightofdaye]

First, apologies I hadn't thought about potential spoilers for people not following the news and second thanks for taking my question!

casting RDJ as Doom not only smacks of desperation but on a symbolic level is the exact opposite of what Marvel did when casting RDJ as Tony Stark

I think you hit the nail on the head for this section. Even apart from wondering why there are two RDJ in the MCU (and yeah actors play multiple roles in franchises but not usually the lynchpin character of the first decade of something. It's like if William Shatner was recast as a TNG Villain) it just smacks of playing it safe, given they've also got the directors/writers of IW/Endgame back to go with him. Phase 4/5 might not be all hits but it was trying new things.

I expect you're right that RDJ will do a good job and Doom will be better than Kang. (I've never seen RDJ go outside his standard thing but I've only seen his Tony Stark, Holmes and... US Marshals, not his real big performances. I hope they know Doom <> Tony Stark) but it's still a form of playing it safe. People didn't like Kang, oh well we'll go with a big name villain then, rather than trying to fix Kang.

It's like them doing the same thing on Stargate Atlantis and then that show never having the same main cast season to season. I've more respect if they tried to fix and work with what they had than chop and change all the time!

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts. :)

[selenak]

Re: RDJ‘s acting ability, I saw him most recently in Oppenheimer where his character is a petty bureaucrat, as unflamboyant as they come, and the first time I‘d ever seen him was of course as Charlie Chaplin (in the Attenborough directed bio pic), and then as Anthony Woodville in the Ian McKellen Richard III, so yes, he can play characters entirely different than variations of Tony Stark. But we agree on the larger problem of casting him, specifically, in this role at this point. (William Shatner as a TNG villain isn‘t a bad comparison, though of course there‘s always the example of Walter Koenig going from Chekov in TOS to Bester in B5 - but then different franchises are a different matter, and Chekov while a series regular had not been the lead.)

[kore]

Yeah, IIRC even with Kiss Kiss and Sherlock the studio didn't want RDJ, and Favreau threatened to walk, and then just leaked the casting news (which I don't think was joyously received). And even then a lot of it was improvised and that's how we got the famous "I am Iron Man" reveal. Arguably, not only no RDJ, no Iron Man, but also no MCU. (The Hulk movie didn't bomb, but neither did it blow up like IM did.)

Another big problem with Kang --at least for me -- is that unlike MCU Thanos, he was unkillable. Feige was saying stuff like what would it mean to fight an opponent who couldn't lose, who was existentially always winning, whatever. Which just seems to exponentially multiply the depression and defeat in IW/EG and also drain a lot of suspense. As long as the MCU has events from the comics like the Snap but treats them realistically, that will generate weird narrative problems.

And just as you say, the choice of RDJ -- who is now a globally famous wildly wealthy star who IS Tiny Stark to the public, and who has essentially been cieriting the MCU as long as he's been in it -- is craven, and unimaginative, and a terrible nostalgia-driven cash grab. If RDJ and the Russos and M&M team gave us the giant payday, surely they can pull it off again! seems to be the only thinking behind this.

(And apparently more and more MCU stars are now being signed up for the new two Avengers movies. It looks like the multiverse might be just another way to sell toyetic variants in the end.)

[kore]

"cieriting"

CO-WRITING, autocarrot

[machiavellijr]

Replacing Kang with a villain who has some emotional connection to any of the characters we recognize is a good decision. Casting RDJ is utter cowardice; he's a really good actor and I'm sure will deliver a good performance but so would thousands of other actors. I do have somewhere in the back of my brain a comics plot from way back about Doom being an AU version of someone though, not Tony Stark probably, but they might mean to go for that as a big reveal with all the multiverse stuff.

[shadowkat]

Hmm, I agree with your analysis above. I watched S1 of Loki, but not S2. (The series didn't grab me enough to continue with it.) Having seen all of S1 and Quantummania - I agree - Kang doesn't work that well as a villain. May work better in the comics - I wouldn't know since I didn't read the comics that featured him. (Convoluted villain story lines tend to work better in comics and television serials than they do in movies.) But on-screen - he's a bit too convoluted, and he doesn't have an emotional connection with any of the main characters. Nor does he have a back story that can be quickly and easily explained. I got the back story in Loki, and can't remember it and found it to be confusing.

Doom, on the other hand, is like Namor and Killmonger - pretty straight forward. Also, he has connections to the two main tent-poles of the Marvel Verse - the X-men and the Fantastic Four, along with the Avengers. And is less associated with Tony Stark.

I did not know until I stumbled upon your post this morning - that they'd cast RDJ in the role. I don't think RDJ works? Although we never see Doom's face and RDJ is used to being behind a mask, and can do accents, RDJ is too familiar to the audience. And the audience loved him as Tony Stark. I'd rather they found someone else? A little more obscure? Maybe Alexander Skarsdale, or the guy who played Jaime Lannister in Game of Thrones? I may be wrong, I hope I am? But I think RDJ may be a mistake. He's been in too many Marvel films as Tony Stark.

[scintilla10]

I'm out of the loop on most MCU things, but definitely had a "huh?" moment when I heard this casting news. You hit the nail on the head with your discussion of how this casting is symbolically opposite to the initial casting of RDJ. Phew.