When I was 10 years old, I was taken out of school early to see The Avengers in IMAX 3D. My entire family went, including my mother, who hated the movie theater more than anything. My stepdad read Marvel Comics as a kid, and I’ve heard countless stories of how he looked up to characters like Peter Parker and Reed Richards. Those stories impacted him to the point where every single one of us had to be in a theater to witness the Avengers take back the Tesseract from Loki.
I exited that theater as a very different 10-year-old. A few months later, my friend and I begged her parents to buy us a DVD of Iron Man while on a road trip. The second the credits scene ended, we would immediately restart the movie. These two events began a love of Marvel Studios that has known little bounds since then.
Kevin Feige’s MCU Has Hit a Few Obstacles Recently
These past few years, the MCU has been navigating its toughest waters yet. A lot of their projects post-Avengers: Endgame have been met with mixed reviews and middling box office success, and general interest in the franchise at large has seemed to dwindle, with WandaVision, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Deadpool & Wolverine being the few projects that have broken through to general audiences.
Additionally, Marvel let go of Jonathan Majors, the actor portraying their next major villain, Kang the Conqueror, after he was involved in a high-profile domestic abuse case. As the lights went up at 2024’s San Diego Comic-Con Hall H panel, Marvel and Kevin Feige knew they had to deliver.
Expectations were high. How was Marvel going to show the world their comeback strategy? Well, they had an answer. With one swipe of a plastic Dr. Doom mask, Marvel reignited the hopes of many fans around the world. Robert Downey Jr., Tony Stark himself, is returning to play Marvel’s most infamous villain, Dr. Doom, in the newly retitled Avengers: Doomsday and beyond. Not only that, Joe and Anthony Russo will return to helm the next two Avengers films, further putting Marvel’s chips in the nostalgia pile.
As I watched videos of the audience roaring with applause, I felt hollow. Marvel is turning to nostalgia to win back their audience. It feels so cheap. Marvel Studios doesn’t seem to trust the stories they began with, nor do they trust their ability to continue those stories. My worst fears for this franchise are coming true, right before my eyes.
The MCU’s “Flop Era”
After Avengers: Endgame, Marvel began releasing more projects that had less to do with the overarching story, a departure from the Infinity Saga. While projects like Eternals, Moon Knight, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Hawkeye, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and Thor: Love and Thunder all set up something new, their stories are largely self-contained. Some even took risks!
However, Eternals was responsible for Marvel’s first “rotten” Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes and was considered a box office flop for the studio. Once it hit Disney+ though, it gained a cult following, with the film racking up 4.236 billion minutes of streaming in 2022.
While the risk did not pay off at the box office, there were still people who saw potential in the group. However, with Kevin Feige saying that there are currently “no immediate plans” for a sequel, that potential may never be fully realized. Despite its streaming success, Eternals‘ low box office numbers (in comparison to the rest of the MCU) surely contributed to the decision to bring RDJ back.
Marvel Studios Parts Ways With Its Kang the Conqueror
The projects in Phases 4 and 5, no matter how large their contribution to the MCU lexicon, were all inching towards Avengers: Kang Dynasty, the all-out multiversal war against Kang the Conqueror and the Multiverse Saga’s version of Avengers: Infinity War. The journey to Kang Dynasty was a slow one, but it was a journey I was willing to embark on nonetheless. However, after letting go of Majors, Marvel decided to…seemingly abandon the story completely? He exists as an omnipotent presence in every facet of the multiverse!
With that said, a recast of Kang would have been an easy retcon to pull off in-universe, since there are infinite versions of the character. It also would be far from the first time the MCU has recast a character with a different actor. With Doomsday now on the horizon, are projects like Loki and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania devalued in terms of their contributions to MCU lore?
The decision to pivot away from Kang and subsequently bring back RDJ is not only logistically odd, but it feels like a slight to the fans that stuck with the MCU during its most tumultuous era yet. What has been keeping the MCU afloat is potential and promise, both of which were front and center in a multitude of projects. It was a potential I (and many others) believed in. Instead of realizing this potential, Marvel Studios has taken the easy route.
The MCU Is Taking the Easy Way Out
Despite this, there are many who see potential in this casting. For example, Robert Downey Jr. can show a side of his acting abilities not yet seen in his MCU appearances. Additionally, a Dr. Doom who shares the same face as Tony Stark might make for some interesting character dynamics, particularly with Peter Parker (Tom Holland). While Dr. Doom is typically known for keeping his mask on around others, casting a face as recognizable as RDJ’s will almost guarantee that Dr. Doom will show his face on screen, which would remove a very core part of Dr. Doom’s character.
All of those talking points rely on the audience’s previous attachment to Tony Stark to be effective, and thus, Dr. Doom becomes a character that will always be associated with Stark. It robs the character of Dr. Doom to exist on his own, and it robs fans who aren’t familiar with Doom the chance to get to know a new character.
This choice is especially disappointing given the erasure of Dr. Doom’s Romani heritage — an integral part of his upbringing in the comics, and a backdrop to his motivations as a villain. While this isn’t the first time Marvel has ignored their characters’ Romani roots (the Maximoff twins are both played by white actors in the MCU), many fans hoped the cycle would’ve been broken with Dr. Doom, considering the character’s deep cultural roots. A Romani actor could have stepped into the role, made it their own, and created a memorable and accurate representation of Victor von Doom. Instead, Dr. Doom seemingly becomes another hollow, whitewashed vessel, this time built on over a decade’s worth of nostalgia (unrelated to him).
How the MCU Are Victims of Their Own Nostalgia
Nostalgia plays a very interesting role in modern pop culture, as it is now largely a determining factor of what movies get made and who stars in them. Nostalgia also seems to be the guiding emotion of moviegoers everywhere, as sequels, reboots, and remakes tend to bring in the most consistent financial gain (Inside Out 2 just became the highest-grossing animated film of all time because of this). While Marvel spent a good portion of the last 15 years creating fond moviegoing memories for many people — myself included — they have now become victims to the nostalgia they’ve created.
When the MCU first began, Marvel Studios did not have the rights to A-list heroes like Spider-Man, the X-Men, or the Fantastic Four, as they were sold to other studios when Marvel went bankrupt in the ’90s. They did, however, have the rights to The Avengers, a group of heroes who had somewhat fallen out of the public consciousness by the early 2000s. This meant that Kevin Feige had to put in extra work to make audiences care about these characters, and in doing so, The Avengers became some of the most prominent figures in modern pop culture.
Robert Downey Jr. and his turn as Tony Stark were instrumental in the MCU’s success, becoming a clear highlight of the franchise throughout the Infinity Saga. Marvel began setting up a variety of character arcs, which all came to a head in Avengers: Endgame. This led to moments such as all of The Avengers returning for the final battle or Captain America finally becoming worthy of lifting Thor’s hammer.
The stadium-like reactions that these moments created in theaters felt earned, as they served as a culmination of the work Marvel Studios did to get their audience to care about their stories and characters. Now, major moments in a film like Avengers: Doomsday will likely bank on the good faith that RDJ built during his tenure as the tentpole of the franchise.
The MCU’s Path Forward Is a Little Hazy
Despite the stark division among fans’ thoughts on the casting, Robert Downey Jr.’s MCU return as Dr. Doom is a reflection of something Marvel has appeared to know all along: At this point in the MCU’s lifespan, it’s okay to cut corners, to sweep the storytelling risks they’ve taken under the rug when they don’t do well, and to go forward with nostalgia at the forefront of their ethos.
Some of the MCU’s post-Infinity Saga stumbles can be attributed to the increased production mandate set under Bob Chapek, which caused Disney+ shows to proceed through development without showrunners and put extra strain on VFX houses. Disney CEO Bob Iger and Marvel have collectively fixed some of these problems, but falling back on proven successes when Kevin Feige has the largest sandbox he’s ever played in at his disposal is a choice that lacks confidence.
“In our zeal to greatly increase volume partially tied to this wanting to chase more global subs for our streaming platform, some of our studios lost a little focus. So the first step that we’ve taken is that we’ve reduced volume, we reduced output, particularly in Marvel.”
— Disney CEO Bob Iger
Marvel and the MCU have brought me tremendous joy in my life, and that joy is unlikely to waver, despite my disappointment in this choice. However, I enjoyed watching the MCU take risks, try new things, and set up a story with incredible potential. While the MCU’s path to Avengers: Doomsday is largely unclear as of now, audiences should expect to learn more about Dr. Doom and how this choice plays out in the upcoming Fantastic Four: First Steps.
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