A fantastic farce masked as a movie

Rating: 3/10 (7 August 2005)

This is a movie of a major missed opportunity: Doctor Doom. Victor Von Doom is one of, if not THE major villain in all the Marvel universe. And since Marvel absorbed DC with all its classic heroes, Marvel must do something very right, and you can't do super heroes right without also doing super VILLAINS right. Enter Doctor Doom. He's unique. He's terrifying. He's Darth Vader, Count Dracula, Hitler and Satan all rolled into one. He's got style and substance few heroes ever achieve. In this movie, unfortunately, he was relegated to a standard cookie-cutter bad guy. Doom, much like the Joker and other Batman movie villains, could (and should) have easily upstaged the heroes. In fact, there could have been a movie made all about him (and before anyone says you can't make a movie about a villain, how many Dracula movies have been made over the years?) Doom's major strength lies in his genius. He does NOT HAVE super powers. He makes his own! Normally, altering the basic story of a comic is forgivable in the essence of dramatic or cinema-paced storytelling, but this is criminal! Doom getting "powers" along with the other FF strips him of everything that makes him threatening and cool. Moreover, it takes away the thunder of the heroes as it takes 4 people to defeat just 1 when they have the same essential background. Doom has always been a self-made villain, seizing power for himself, not getting it by accident, and therein lies the terror--the heroes have powers beyond humanity, and yet Doom still finds a way to become their equal--imagine if he DID have "powers". Well, this movie giving them to him and then having him still get beaten means the writers gave this great character no greater thought than "We're doing the FF movie, so who is their major nemesis, okay let's get the costume right, and give him the standard villain duties to look menacing and then get beat up." However well this movie may have treated the FF themselves, it was a travesty for Marvel's greatest villain. If they make a sequel to this disaster-piece, leave Doom out of it--most Marvel villains can tolerate being reduced to cookie-cutter bad guys, and I'm sure they're lining up for the FF sequel, but godforbid trashing Doom further.