Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four has already promised a more “gritty, grounded” approach to fantasticness, a tone Fox’s comic-book movie hopes to achieve by staying away from the sort of outlandish stories one might find in comic books. In keeping with that, certain adjustments must be made to the characters themselves, giving them new origin stories, making them younger and hotter—and therefore more believable as scientists—and, in the case of villain Doctor Doom, updating them to a more contemporary version of evil.
For example, the old Doctor Doom was the gypsy son of a witch and medicine man who wielded sorcery and science as the ruler of the fictional nation of Latveria. He was a man of unparalleled arrogance who used his skills only to threaten the world. So obviously, in the modern parallel, he’s an asshole on the Internet.
Doctor Doom (evil medical license pending) will be played by Toby Kebbell, who discussed his character’s new backstory in an interview with Collider. In it, he revealed the “minor change” of Doom’s name, lineage, and occupation:
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…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 antisocial programmer. And on blogging sites I’m ‘Doom.’”
Kebbell did not specify which “blogging sites” face the godlike wrath of Doom, stoked by his daily, white-hot irritation at others’ sloppy coding and lukewarm sodas, and expunged in a series of progressively nastier subreddits. Nor did he mention Doom’s surely vast army of merciless Twitter Doombots, just waiting to clog up the mentions of any who would stand in his way.
Still, it’s clear that this Doom will have his dangerous pride reinforced by something even more insidious than his vast wealth, scientific genius, or mysticism: the echo chamber of the Internet. Indeed, the new Doom firmly believes it’s about ethics in fantasticness.
However, the character’s first name will still be “Victor.” You don’t want to lose the important things.