Comic Book Cinema
Downey Is Doom (Feat. Luke Vincent, Jay Light, & BoneBridger)
Disney Marvel dropped a bombshell at San Diego Comic Con this year. Not only did they confirm that they have washed their hands of Jonathan Majors and the King Dynasty, but they gave us comic book movie fans the massive news that Robert Downey Jr. is returning to the MCU as Dr. Doom. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Now Marvel could be paying Robert Downey Jr. $100 million per film. Is it worth the price of admission? Will fans accept Robert Downey Jr. as a villain? Let's talk about it, own comic book cinema, where we bring you the best comic book movie content. I, myself, am not a Dr. Doom expert. I'm a very casual fan. I consider myself to be relatively casual. When it comes to the films, I study them like homework and ninth grade math. That was a really bad joke. But when it comes to the books, I'm not as well versed as a lot maybe. Dr. Doom is a character that the fandom goes insane over. This character has to be done right. This is Marvel's best villain of all time, and the fans always complain that he's never been done the right way in the movies. Which is not hard to see if you've ever seen the 2005 Fantastic Four film or the 2015 Fantastic Four film. We've just recently got the announcement that Robert Downey Jr. is coming back to the MCU to play Dr. Doom. I heard this rumor about a week ago, and I can remember thinking then that's really a dumb idea. Robert Downey Jr. is an excellent actor. I loved him as Iron Man. I loved him in Oppenheimer. I loved him as what's the mustache guy in the 1992 film? This is confusing to the casual fan, to the hardcore fans. I mean, obviously we don't know how they're going to do this yet. It's just very strange. And mostly, I hate it. That's kind of where I'm at right now. What do you guys think about it? Desperate times call for desperate measures. The only problem here is if you're going to do Secret Wars, you have to have Dr. Doom. Without that storyline, you can't do Secret Wars. Dr. Doom is an important character, and it's the easiest to screw up. And I think they just said to themselves, well, who could we get that cost under a billion dollars, but maybe like a hundred million dollars a film? Okay, Robert Downey Jr. Maybe we'll get him. It's only a hundred million per role. So the budget of these movies is going to be 500 million minimum, just like Affinity War. And that's not a joke. That's real. That's probably what the real there will be. Yeah. The desperation could be very bad, though. He makes me wonder, though, you you brought up his because he was getting paid somewhere in the ballpark or 20 to 30 mill, maybe more on our 50 plus for Infinity War and almost a hundred ring game. Gosh, okay, that's so insane. But maybe since he's playing a different character, maybe they're getting to pay heads discount. He'll do 99 million. Yeah, he's getting the friends and family rates. Yeah, for a family discount for Faggy at this point. Yeah. I mean, he did. Okay, I guess the argument can be made. He went and did Oppenheimer. He proved that he is legit. He can win awards that if he wants to be the best, he can be the best. And this might be the fun he was missing out on. And it is the Russo brothers who also probably have a contract of it's our way to the highway. We'll do these two movies, but it's our story just like they got for Civil War and Infinity War and Endgame. Maybe it's just fun. Maybe that he likes the universe. Oppenheimer, he talks about how grueling it was like it's not a fun shoot. It's a great shoot. It's like 90 days of the same scene to get it right. So I get it as a fan though. This could go really bad because as an average viewer, they're going to have to really explain why Dr. Doom looks exactly like Tony Stark and is he Tony Stark, but just an evil doom in another universe? Because that's weird. It is weird. Yeah, hopefully they're not going to take a Deadpool lingo on it and just have the timelines and all the right it needs to be very serious. Yeah, I was talking about this with a friend of mine yesterday who is a big comic book fan. And he was he was very keyed up. And I was just like, okay, I'm here for moral support for you because I have no idea why this is like a traumatizing thing for you to be experiencing. And he was like, I got to figure out how they're going to do it. Is it going to be the Lazarus pits? Is it going to like mess up his brain and he's going to be Dr. and like whatever works, you know, I think that from an acting standpoint, I do get the appeal for bringing Robert Downey Jr. back to play somebody who I would imagine is very different than the way he was approaching playing Tony Stark. And also playing a different kind of villain than who he saw him play an Oppenheimer. I think there's going to be a lot of fun to be had there, but I saw this and I was like, oh, okay, he's got another bag. Cool. Nice work. Several more bags. I'm sure. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that could be part of it. He has a production company. This is funding all the movies he wants to make. I mean, you just it's just a funnel into his production company of, okay, I can throw another hundred million in capital in and do something I like doing anyway. And then continue to produce the movies I want to produce and become this big producer of Hollywood movies for the next 30, you know, you can do that forever. Like he's acting you can have to do different things, but producing you can be the guy that calls the movies and what you're going to do for a long time. And this guarantees his company has capital. Like you said, Jay, from an acting standpoint, it's very fascinating and he's going to kill it. He's a great actor. Robert Downey Jr. is great, but I don't know. You know, I feel for your friend and I feel the same way as your friend. I truly do. It's just something that doesn't quite compute in my marble nerd's brain. Let me ask you this, if there was somebody who you feel like would be a better choice to play this role, like who's who's your perfect dream, Dr. Doom? I'm not saying that he's as good of an actor, but Adam Driver, I thought would have been a great choice. There were several others, you know, taking older veteran actor like a Robert Downey Jr, but someone else, anyone else, it's just, it seemed so confusing. But yes, I do think Adam Driver would have been great in the role and still imposing and intimidating even when he takes the mask off, which I don't know if that's something that Dr. Doom does in the comics. I just don't think that this is a great idea. That's where I'm at. I think you're super average film person who's like seeing like me, like seeing superhero movies every once in a while, but is not like trying to see all of them all the time. They're gonna be even dumber, right? Like we're gonna see this and we're gonna be like, oh, it's, he's in a different metal mask? Okay. New mask, same task. We'll just go along with it because they'll explain to us in the movie how it's going down. We know that we're gonna get the exposition of like why this thing is happening and we'll just be like, oh, yeah. Okay. Cool. Different metal guy now. Same person. Different metal guy. Got it. And then just go back to eating our nachos and hot dogs. Yeah, more some friends of mine that have been on my show and bone bridge or show. The nerd champs, one of them commented that it reeks of desperation. It truly does. It feels like this is just, we know that we've lost you guys, a lot of you guys after in game, you know, but we really killed it here with Deadpool and Wolverine and see, see, we can, we can still make really good movies. Now we're gonna bring Robert Downey, Jr. in. This feels like I just don't like it. It's things that I have guys. It's like when Michael Jordan went back to play for the Washington Wizards. It's your bringing in your ringer again to try and save the franchise. And hey, maybe he'll be fine or maybe he's gonna have to play injured and everybody's gonna give him an obligatory standing ovation, even though they know his best years behind him when it comes to the Marvel universe. To go down that logic, why not just bring back Iron Man? If they're trying to soak the last little bit of loyalty, religion, then why not just bring back Iron Man? And maybe they are. Maybe they're doing both. Maybe he's playing two roles. Wouldn't be surprised. Dr. Doom being in the mask would make sense. You could, you could do a weird multi universe thing where you could say Tony Stark had a twin in one of the timelines. And that's Dr. Doom. And I mean, because you can do whatever they just need to make it for average viewers. Very easy to jump in though. They can't make it so deep because some of the some of the comic book stuff, some people reference, you can't do that. You can't do that for the average. I'm going to eat the popcorn fan or you'll lose it. It's like this Deadpool movie. There's some stuff that was like purely for like all the different Wolverines we saw were Wolverines from comics. And that was for the fans. Like, yeah, Henry Cavill was like for the general fan. But the different Wolverines were for like, Oh, like, Oh, there's the, you know, the comic book accurate one. There's the apocalypse one. You just got to make it for everyone. If you want to be successful again, though, you can't make it so focused. Can't be so narrow that like, Oh, this is actually Tony Stark. Well, not really. Dr. Doom has his skull and brain and he's using him like a puppet. Like you can't do that. I mean, you you could, but that's not going to work. I don't think I think it's going to ultimately come down to as, you know, great films often do. It's going to come down to the story and whether or not they can execute a really, really great story again, because that to me is what worked so well about the the back to back of Infinity War and end game, where it's like we're going we're transcending your average comic book or superhero movie. We're getting some like Shakespearean level tragedy happening in this and sure, it's the culmination of everything that they had done over the course of the first couple phases of the MCU. But the way that those stories were told also really amplified the level of success that they were able to achieve from like beyond a box office perspective, from a critical and an audience perspective. I don't think I know a single person who saw those movies and walked away not having enjoyed them. Right. So we'll see if they can pull it off in the in the next phase. I wish that I could say something positive about it, but I that's where I'm at right now. I just don't like the decision to do that. We have the Russo brothers back, which, yes, I think that they work great in the Marvel machine when Feige has got those reigns and he's yeah, he pulls them reigns back a little bit every once in a while, but you know, see, see you given Feige all this respected love. I think Feige sits over there and eats his popcorn and sometimes people do things and sometimes dumb people do things because the same guy that, you know, hired the attorney's director and she hulk. But also the same guy that had the vision to hire the Russo brothers for the winter soldier before they were known for anything else other than arrested development. He did make a lot of out of the box great decisions in the early phases, but I will give you that recently. He did some good stuff too. But I get what you're saying. But if you count on Kevin Feige to save things, what did he do the last five years? Black girl magic. I think that a lot of that was due to Bob Schapak, but that's a whole another argument. I really do. I think that their their fall guy that they put in that power position for a couple years is, you know, that a lot of this stuff like the eternals and Black Widow and some of these others, I blame on shape. At least that's what I like to do in my own little brain. You got to do it. Hey, you got to do what you got to do. Right. And a coke. However, you're going to cope. Yeah, you got to cope. Are you going to cope? You can probably use that Wolverine head you got on their shelf right there. Yeah, court bucket. Trust. Later on, after this podcast is over, I will be crying into that bucket and maybe using it for other things too, Luke. So you're going to have to narrow it somehow. Yeah, I thought about that already and I got a game plan. So terrifying. I hope you get the love that you'd need today. It's a tough day for you, John. And I hope you I hope somebody gives you a hug. And I hope that Wolverine mug behind you gives you a hug in some places that you might need an extra extra bit 11. Even if I don't get a hug today, I still got Wolverine here. Things are going to go. Robert Downer Jr. is a bad person. So they'll either do this right or do it wrong, and it'll either land or it won't. There's no way to predict what they're going to do. We'll see how it goes. Maybe I'll eat my words in a couple of years and maybe even actually use this as a popcorn bucket and eat some popcorn. Guys, thanks so much for joining me. Check everyone out on their socials. Check us out on the other socials. And until next time, have a good one.