No super hero movie in recent years has garnered as much pre-release hate as Josh Trank’s reboot of ‘Fantastic Four.’ News of changes to the classic comic mythos has had fanboys sharpening their pitchforks for months. That certainly pertained to the film’s take on Doctor Doom… or should I say Victor Domashev? Turns out, I shouldn’t.
Toby Kebbell, the actor portraying the FF’s archenemy ruffled fan feathers last year, while the movie was filming, when he stated:
“He’s Victor Domashev, not Victor Von Doom in our story. And I’m sure I’ll be sent to jail for telling you that. The Doom in ours—I’m a programmer. Very anti-social programmer. And on blogging sites I’m “Doom.” “
Now Kebbell is making a complete turn around, claiming that his character is indeed Victor Von Doom and negating the idea that he is a “hacker.” He also established his connection to the heroes in the story, particularly the Storm siblings:
“There’s no conversation about [Doom’s origins] in the film. We don’t have time to talk about me- I would love it, but we don’t have real time. Yeah, he’s still from the same place, his mother is still a gypsy and done her deals, his father still perished from exposure looking after me. He’s angry. He’s an angry dude. But now he’s in Baxter. He’s bright and he’s trying to make people proud. He found a new father in Dr. Storm, the father of Johnny and adoptive father of Sue. I kind of get adopted as well, in a fantastic performance by Reg E. Cathey. And that’s Doom as we see him. He’s a computer technician, a computer scientist. There were rumors he was a hacker or something, but no. Victor Von Doom is who we hope he will be.”
To be fair, in his previous statement, Kebbell referred to his character as a “programmer” not a hacker as has been reported. It was perhaps his mention of blogs and using the screen name “Doom” that gave people the impression that he was a more malicious computer ace. But Kebbell did flat out state that his character was not named Von Doom, which has been changed, most likely following negative fan reaction.
To be fair, in Fox’s prior two films, Doctor Doom also bore little resemblance to the comic book character. The American of Latverian descent was basically a stock bad guy with little of the comic version’s gravitas. He also had lightning powers and an origin more heavily tied to that of the Fantastic Four.
Despite Doctor Doom arguably being Marvel’s most famous and iconic villain, filmmakers don’t seem to know how to transfer him to the big screen as is.
Is making him more like the comic character a move to make the movie more appealing to fans? Are you going to give this movie a chance or is it Doomed?
Source: Comic Book Movie
