Fantastic Four Movie Reboot: Dr. Doom is a Blogger.

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Fantastic Four Movie Reboot: Dr. Doom is a Blogger.

Post by Nutso »

http://io9.com/why-does-fox-keep-fuckin ... 1657870520
For those of you who may have missed the news, there's been a rumor about a significant change to Doctor Doom in the upcoming FF reboot movie in that he's somewhat less a magic-wielding, armored, evil genius dictator of an entire country and more, well, an angry blogger, as Silas says. And the rumor is somewhat less a rumor and more words directly spoken by Toby Kebbell, the actor playing Doom. According to Kebbell, the character's name will be Victor Domashev, and his internet handle will be "Doom."

It… it doesn't look good. I can explain why Fox made this decision, although it's not going to make you feel any better.

Fox makes the first Fantastic Four movie; it does okay, but fans everywhere bitch about it not being comics accurate enough. So Fox makes the second FF movie, thinking they're appeasing comics fans by adding Silver Surfer and Galactus, although they turn Galactus into a cloud so mass audiences aren't turned off. The movie bombs, and they don't see the fact that it sucks, they only see that they tried to appease nerds and the movie failed. Obviously, that's the problem, they think.

Then Josh Trank comes around and makes a small, found-footage superhero movie called Chronicle; even though the budget is small, it's super-popular and makes a lot of money. Fox sees this and says: "This works. People like this. If we do Fantastic Four like this, people will like it."

Fox hires Trank to make a "grounded", "lo-fi" version of the Fantastic Four, never once considering if perhaps this take is actually suitable for the characters and the franchise. (Hint: It's not.) Obviously, Doctor Doom is the FF's main foe, but Doom is just too comic book-y for the more realistic movie Fox is supremely confident the public wants. Thus we get Doom, the angry blogger.

I'm sure some of you are thinking "But Fox makes the X-Men movies. The X-Movies are pretty comics accurate and they're good movies and they make a lot of money! Why don't they learn from that?"

The answer is because that's not how a Hollywood executive's brain works. Traditional movie executives can't associate things. While you or I can watch other superhero movies and extrapolate what the public enjoys based on a wide variety of data, execs can only assess one thing at a time, take one lesson from it, and never, ever build upon that knowledge because as soon as they "learn" something new, the old memory is lost forever. How the hell are they going to learn from Marvel Studios' successes when they can't even apply the shit they should have learned making the X-Men movies to their other superhero franchise? They're not, and they couldn't if they wanted to.

As for why Trank or Fox or whoever chosen to make Doom a blogger as opposed to, say, an angry grocery store clerk or something, I'm going to take a wild guess and say somebody is fucking sick and tired of nerds. Call it a hunch.
Could be a rumor. A really, really ugly rumor.

http://collider.com/doctor-doom-new-ori ... our-movie/
TOBY KEBBELL: I’m excited to see it too, and my nerves really…The only thing I can tease you about is what I worked on most was the voice because nobody—even in the cartoons, when I was watching them I was like, “So where’s he from?” There’s a mild change and I’ll tell you because of our history.

KEBBELL: 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”.
Or maybe not. :roll:
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Re: Fantastic Four Movie Reboot: Dr. Doom is a Blogger.

Post by Mikey »

I don't understand why Fox even still has this. Marvel has made a series of that rarest of rare things in filmdom: movies that are both really good AND really successful. They have done this by making movies with a particular studio - you guessed it, Marvel Studios. The Marvel cinematic universe films have been going so well that Marvel Studios will end up with a moderate hit with a small-market character like Doctor Strange, and I'd bet they'll even be in the black with a movie about fucking Ant-Man. So why do they keep farming out franchises to studios like Fox who keep screwing the pooch?
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Re: Fantastic Four Movie Reboot: Dr. Doom is a Blogger.

Post by Nutso »

Marvel handed out Spiderman, Daredevil, Ghost Rider, X-Men, and Fantastic Four to various studios when they themselves were in dire financial straits. They didn't have a Marvel Studios back them either. They were their own company whereas DC was owned by Warner Bros, and Marvel's stocks were in a black hole. Their first foray with Marvel Studios was an ambitious Hulk movie directed by Ang Lee and starring Eric Bana. It just wasn't fun. It was hard to sit through.

Do you remember the Roger Corman Fantastic Four movie that was made but never released? That was only made because the studio with the movie license had to make a movie to keep the license, not necessarily release. Marvel got back Daredevil because no one remade that one and the movie license returned to Marvel. So Sony and Fox will keep churning out reboots for comic book properties to keep the movie rights especially in the wake of The Avengers monster take, and after Guardians of The Galaxy proved any comic property can be made into an extremely profitable enterprise.
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Re: Fantastic Four Movie Reboot: Dr. Doom is a Blogger.

Post by RK_Striker_JK_5 »

What Nutso said, basically. And this is a travesty. You know Marvel Studios would do this awesomely. This is just to keep the rights.
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Re: Fantastic Four Movie Reboot: Dr. Doom is a Blogger.

Post by Mikey »

RK_Striker_JK_5 wrote:What Nutso said, basically. And this is a travesty. You know Marvel Studios would do this awesomely. This is just to keep the rights.
I am not familiar with the legal intricacies, but surely Marvel must be able to rescind the license at some point?
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Re: Fantastic Four Movie Reboot: Dr. Doom is a Blogger.

Post by Nutso »

Mikey wrote:
RK_Striker_JK_5 wrote:What Nutso said, basically. And this is a travesty. You know Marvel Studios would do this awesomely. This is just to keep the rights.
I am not familiar with the legal intricacies, but surely Marvel must be able to rescind the license at some point?
The studios that have the movie rights to Marvel properties have to keep making movies or if a certain amount of time passes (how long, I have no idea) without movie production, the rights revert back to Marvel. I don't know how they would be able to force a studio to give up the rights.

I had the timeline wrong in regard to Fox and Sony rebooting their respective rights. When Disney bought Marvel, that's when the rebooting fever started particularly for Sony. Sony only has the Spiderman rights, while Fox had X-men/Wolverine and their story rich, character heavy background. Fox already had Wolverine stuff in recent years and with the advent of The Avengers, they got Bryan Singer back to direct amd reboot the stalled X-Men movies line. Sony seemed to act out of desperation although I appreciate their attempt to exploit the Spiderman universe. With a powerhouse like Disney now owning Marvel, Fox and Sony didn't want to give up those movie rights so Disney could have them, along with the very lucrative merchandising rights. What a coup for Disney to just suddenly own Marvel and then a year later, Lucafilms. The announcement from Disney after they bought Lucasfilms was all about the merchandising they would get from Star Wars. They didn't give a shit weren't so enthusiastic talking about Indiana Jones' merchandising potential but, I read a rumor that Harrison Ford agreed to do another Star Wars movie in return for another Indiana Jones movie.

(I kind of go off-topic here...)
With the monstrous success of Avengers, we saw how Warner Bros. sprung into action with Superman and Justice League and the rest of their properties. When Green Lantern failed, they were just happy to trudge out Batman movies, and a Superman movie. Currently DC plans to have Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) star in a Shazam movie. However Marvel had some balls when they released Iron Man, wherein they introduced the Marvel Universe through Sam Jackson's Nick Fury and the Avengers Initiative and turned a snowball into an avalanche; whereas Warner Bros. didn't give any sign of a connected universe with Man of Steel.

Man of Steel had no end credit scenes which were all the rage with these comic book movies. They just announced out of the blue, Superman vs Batman, then announced it's a Justice League movie. Shazam was going to be in this movie, now he has his own movie. Green Lantern was recast with The Rock, then the Rock was Black Adam, now the Rock is Shazam. So what happened to Green Lantern? They had tremendous success with Batman because a visionary, mind bending director like Christopher Nolan was in charge. Now Zach Snyder is certainly a visionary and a comic book fan but, I feel like he is all fluff, beautiful looking fluff though it be, but little substance. In the meantime Marvel has Kevin Fiege as the head guy behind all this current success, and Joss Whedon who is a comic book fan and writer, and is known for substance in his work. Buffy, Firefly, Cabin in The Woods. His first major directing job and he steered The Avengers to over $600 million. Zach Snyder's Man of Steel was quite the financial boon but, I don't want to experience that again. In the meantime James Gunn turned a movie with a talking rocket blasting racoon, and a talking walking tree, into the Summer's biggest movie. Warner Bros. couldn't even make a major property like Green Lantern enjoyable. They made it funny, brought in good actors like Peter Saarsgard and Mark Strong. But it was just wasn't exciting. In the meantime two brothers who are mostly known for directing episodes of a canceled comedy show on NBC, directed a Captain America movie that has people thinking Academy Award Nomination?! Wish I was on the Marvel gravy train.

Now Marvel isn't perfect. They are kind of missing the mark on villains. Tom Hiddleston's Loki is the only one of note. Loki was never my favorite in the comics. Hugo Weaving, I liked him as he Red Skull but only if he stayed as Hugo Weaving. Hugo Weaving much scarier than Red Skull. Unfortunately he doesn't want to come back. Back to ranting, two of Marvel's marquee villains are Doctor Doom and Magneto, and so they are owned by outside studios. Doom in particular is an enemy to all heroes, from Spiderman, the X-Men, the Avengers, and of course the Fantastic Four. He's worked side by side with Doctor Strange, he's outwitted Thanos, he once stole the Power Cosmic so Galactus probably hates his guts. By the time those studios are ready to give up the character rights, the comic book movie boon will be long over and Doom will be nothing more than the guy from Nip/Tuck.

Final thing I want to say is regarding Doctor Doom. Doom is Earth's second most powerful sorcerer behind Doctor Strange, his suit can match Iron Man, his intelligence may exceed Reed Richards' own considerable intellect, he is a gypsy through his mother, yet the most interesting aspect of Doctor Doom to me is that when he travels to America as Dictator/Ambassador of Latveria to the United Nations, no super-hero nor government can touch him. He has diplomatic immunity. How insane and cool is that? How I wish Joss Whedon could write for Victor Von Doom and give Doom some rich dialogue and hear Doom doing a monologue in the third person? Or Whedon writing for the Invisible Woman. He would make her kick ass like Buffy instead of being used for an invisible nude scene. With Marvel behind him, Doom would be a egomanical, megalomaniacal super villain with mommy issues and control issues as well as a superiority complex. The Hydra story arc would end with, "Now Baron von Strucker, there is no more Hail Hydra. Now ALL HAIL DOOM!" I guess Fox thinks "blogger" is a perfect equivalent.
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Re: Fantastic Four Movie Reboot: Dr. Doom is a Blogger.

Post by Mikey »

It seems that you are more familiar with the intellectual property niceties than I am, so I'll just take you at your word.

As to the other, I'll reply more generally. It is my firm belief that the success of Marvel Studios' MCU films - and their ability to have a cohesive, multi-media connected universe - compared to DC properties is simply the difference between DC and Marvel writ small. That is, Marvel is adaptable and forward-thinking while DC tends to stand by their tried-and-true property platforms. First black superhero? He appeared in Marvel. Gay marriage? Marvel said, "Fine," DC hasn't touched it. Turned one of their most steadfastly-male traditional heroes into a woman? Yeah, Marvel gave it a shot. First since the Golden Age to publish a topical comic book without the approval of the Comics Code Authority? Certainly not DC. Put a brash new writer on a failing comic and be the first comic book ever to publish three pages of textless panels for artistic reasons? Marvel again.

Don't ge me wrong, DC (specifically the Vertigo imprint) has pushed some boundaries - mostly with Moore and Ennis and titles like Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, Bloody Mary, etc. But even their imprint got pigeonholed and a bit stale. By the same token, Marvel sure as hell hasn't done everything right. Todd McFarlane seems to have sold a book or two after completely revolutionizing the look and feel of a franchise no less loved and historical than Spider-Man. They left comic demigod Jim Steranko to rot on an armpit of a book like "Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D."

The main point is, I guess, that the comparative success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films over DC property films isn't necessarily simply because Marvel Studios only makes superior films - the difference is that the existence of Marvel Studios allows for filmmaking that is true to the intent and spirit of Marvel Comics.
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Re: Fantastic Four Movie Reboot: Dr. Doom is a Blogger.

Post by McAvoy »

Excellent post.

Marvel was always more open to issues. My favorite character is Iron Man from when I was a kid. The biggest point for Iron Man was when Stark became and then recognized he was a hard core alcoholic.
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Re: Fantastic Four Movie Reboot: Dr. Doom is a Blogger.

Post by Jim »

Why is it so difficult for people to understand... these properties, these characters are popular for a reason. Their history. Why would you take that property and make a movie out of it because of its popularity... and then change a lot of things about it? You are purposely altering what makes the property popular and therefor undermining the exact reason that you are making a movie out of it.

Updating a story from the 60's or 70's to fit into 2014 is one thing... changing the fundamentals is another.
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Re: Fantastic Four Movie Reboot: Dr. Doom is a Blogger.

Post by Mikey »

Jim wrote:Why is it so difficult for people to understand... these properties, these characters are popular for a reason. Their history. Why would you take that property and make a movie out of it because of its popularity... and then change a lot of things about it? You are purposely altering what makes the property popular and therefor undermining the exact reason that you are making a movie out of it.

Updating a story from the 60's or 70's to fit into 2014 is one thing... changing the fundamentals is another.
Good point. Except for the decade and the venue of the war, the intro story in the film Iron Man was in essence identical to that of the comic from 40+ years earlier. Change the costumes, change the places, anything cosmetic - the reason Marvel characters are beloved is because of person, not the superhero. Spider-Man is a great franchise not because of Spider-Man, but because of Peter Parker. Likewise Iron Man, etc., etc., ad nauseum. Would Wolverine ever have been so popular an anti-hero if he always knew from where he came, or if his love interest were a simple suburban girl from a blue-collar family instead of a conflicted and fractured Yakuza princess? Of course not - his abilities are cool, but that's not the character.
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Re: Fantastic Four Movie Reboot: Dr. Doom is a Blogger.

Post by RK_Striker_JK_5 »

Because 'they' know better, that's why. The execs, the writers and whatnot. They think the origin or powers or even the entire character's gotta be 'updated' because modern audiences won't like it.

That is, of course, complete bullshit.
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Re: Fantastic Four Movie Reboot: Dr. Doom is a Blogger.

Post by Mikey »

RK_Striker_JK_5 wrote:Because 'they' know better, that's why. The execs, the writers and whatnot. They think the origin or powers or even the entire character's gotta be 'updated' because modern audiences won't like it.

That is, of course, complete bullshit.
This perfectly summates the reason why Marvel Studios films are superior to other superhero films. Marvel, as is to be expected, intimately understands what makes a Marvel character better than any other entity can.
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Re: Fantastic Four Movie Reboot: Dr. Doom is a Blogger.

Post by Atekimogus »

What was wrong with the first two Fantastic Four movies by the way? I admit I am not a comic book reader but iirc they weren't that bad. True..the thing looked a bit goofy but I actually prever goofy to cgi....

Now granted....they weren't masterpieces.....just harmless entertaining superhero-flicks. But I wouldn't call them "bad".
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Re: Fantastic Four Movie Reboot: Dr. Doom is a Blogger.

Post by Mikey »

That's it exactly - they weren't... anything, really. For a big chunk of media - as a feature film is - to be completely forgettable is, I think, the worst sort of failure. The problem as I see it is that teh MCU films ended up being not just great superhero movies, but pretty decent movies - full stop Other superhero movies have ended up being decent genre films, but haven't really rated compared with filmdom in general.
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