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.)

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