Marvel Cinematic Universe

We'll have to wait and see the upcoming Daredevil Disney+ show on how they'll be able to pull off Kingpin's campaign & eventual election as mayor. Hopefully it does well enough that other street-level heroes such as the rest of the Defenders & Punisher also get their own shows or be able to make more appearances. Spider-Man too but that still depends on how willing is Sony going to play ball w/ Disney. In fact, having a street-level MCU setting would work wonders for the brand.

And Luthor can fun villain even when he's not going up against Superman, but it's not the same. There's an element missing.

Well Doom has fought around the Marvel verse unlike Luthor.

There's a reason why he's considered a Marvel wide villain while Lex is mostly Superman.

Heck, I really enjoy the stories where Spider-Man does fight Doctor Doom, so he can work for the MCU if need be.

Edited by RedHunter543 on May 7th 2024 at 12:56:08 AM

@Ars Thaumaturgis Because it's shitty to Hulk, who along with being reduced to a secondary character in the MCU isn't even going to interact with Thunderbolt Ross and the Leader, whom he has great dynamics with.

Also grafting villains to other heroes has already been criticized before. The primary complaint towards Wenwu/True Mandarin is by Iron Man fans incensed he never got to fight Tony.

Having him face Shang-Chi is more of a necessary evil to completely wash away the awful taste Killian spread, but it's still shitty that Iron Man never got to face off against his greatest nemesis.

Edited by slimcoder on May 6th 2024 at 10:50:07 AM

Joke's on you, Iron Man's greatest nemesis is Tony Stark

Yeah, a big part of Doom's character is that he has enmities with basically every Marvel hero and can believably be a major villain for anybody.

Tbh, sometimes his rivalry with Reed feels like the least interesting villain/hero relationship he has.

Edited by KnownUnknown on May 6th 2024 at 10:50:27 AM

Yeah, Reed is a boring guy IMO. Doom gets more mileage from the Thing and Human Torch sometimes from what I read.

Doom is a versatile character, you can put him in different types of stories, and his expansive lore and skillset means he has lots of reasons to fight other heroes and have it mean something.

Hell, one of his greatest stories was with Doctor Strange of all people in triumph and torment.

Doom plays off a lot of dudes.

As pointed out, he's the second best sorcerer are Strange.

His armour his near equal with Iron man, despite Tony constantly updating the design, while Doom's armour remains Aesthetically the same (he obviously updates it as well, he just doesn't advertise it with a new look the way Tony does).

He's a fellow ruler and king like both Black Panther (who's not a King anymore) and Namor (who's also not a King anymore).

Reed....is just really smart. And can stretch.

.....Ok. I demand someone start giving some cool facts about Reed. I don't want this to turn into a Reed dunking thing. I know there's more, because there's always is, but I admit, I'm not deep into FF lore enough to give him a good account.

Reed can stretch his brain to give himself Xavier's powers. If you ever had to chose only one of the two, pick Reed and get both anyway.

I like making fun of Reed Richards, and I enjoyed him getting murdered by Scarlet Witch because he was being a dumbass and telling Wanda about Black Bolt's powers.

Here is your mandatory Reed Richards panel. Adapt this for the MCU.

I knew about the stretching Brain matter or whatever to make himself even smarter, but does it make him psychic?

I will say this, Reed is probably better to hang out with than Professor X.

At least until something godawful but avoidable happens to you and he decides to just let it happen because math.

Yeah, it REALLY doesn't help Civil War, Ultimate Spider-Man, 60s Fantastic Four where he traumatized an elderly holocaust survivor, and certain others comics, is where I was introduced to Reed.

I guess he's kinda cool in the World's Greatest Hero cartoon.

He did it in Earth X. Xavier's mutation is physical, hence Red Skull getting psychic powers just by implanting part of Xavier's brain. So Reed could accomplish the same thing with stretching.

Magneto was being a real dick tho

Edited by Bocaj on May 6th 2024 at 11:27:09 AM

It’s a bit of a shame we can’t play Doom opposite of either Tony or T’Challa in the MCU but version of Triumph and Torment would be cool sometime down the line.

He can if he's written as having such animosity.

Then change who his Moby Dick is.

Hulk is effectively unavailable—so why hold back his characters, too?

Is it not rough to them to go unused just because another character associated with them is unavailable for use?

Because we're not stuck with a Captain America movie about Hulk villains. Instead of bringing in other Cap villains and giving them spotlight, instead Sam is going to be fighting another hero's villains.

"Then change who his Moby Dick is."

Thats a terrible way to go about this. These characters have defined unique relationships to each other and that helps make them interesting. Saying you should just change Ross' obsession to any other superhero just makes them feel interchangeable.

There is compelling themes of hate, control, jealousy between Ross and Bruce, born from the fact Ross never thought Bruce was good enough to marry his daughter and then proceeds to dehumanize Bruce when he becomes the Hulk in an obsession with controlling this great power he feels Bruce doesn't deserve. And his transformation into Red Hulk sums up how horribly hypocritical he is by becoming the very thing he's hated and hunted down.

You can't just switch that to other characters. He's not going to have any of this with Sam. He's just going to be generic evil government guy who happens to turn into a Hulk.

Edited by slimcoder on May 6th 2024 at 12:34:44 PM

Sam and Ross would have a different dynamic, both being military men and feeling different ways about that.

IIRC one of the Civil War novelisations briefly highlighted that Sam and Rhodey were both ex-Military but since Sam was enlisted and Rhodey was an officer that affected how they felt about authority.

There's definitely an angle to be had there.

That said given that he's also in Thunderbolts, it's not like Ross is Sam's big bad or nemesis here, he's a reoccurring character in the MCU with his own thing going on.

Marvel is a bit of a toss-up sometimes.

Marvel tends to specialize in villains who are fluid - most of their characters' rogues galleries are made such that they can be plugged in to basically any other hero's story and still work. But there are still some characters who are expressly conceived in relation to other characters, and as such you end up with the issue that shifting them to another character could just be better served... adapting a different character who better fits the shift they're trying to make.

Marvel doesn't actually have a lot of characters like that - in comparison to something like DC, for instance, who tends to write its characters as very mythos specific. We were just talking about how Doom was written to be interchangeable, for instance.

But they do have some. Loki, for instance. And yeah, I'd agree that while you could (and they seemingly are) doing Ross-As-Main-Villain without Bruce, it's kind of a waste - especially when the characters still have unfinished business in the overall story.

That said, I think at the end of the day it's because this was conceived as a Leader-And-Ross story, with the hero being kind of interchangeable, rather than Ross being the interchangeable one.

That wouldn't make sense. No other character would fit the role of Ross' Moby Dick.

He wouldn't be given government funding to go after someone like Spider-Man. Plus Spidey already has Jameson thinking Spider-Man is a menace.

Luthor has fought around the DC universe. Every major villain have fought other heroes, but they all have that one antagonistic relationship that's more important than the rest.

It's only with Reed Richards where you see just how petty Doom is.

Edited by Cortez on May 6th 2024 at 5:55:09 AM

And that's why Reed and Doom are inseperable despite the writers (especially those who see Doom as a way to write their bullshit Benevolent Dictator fantasies) and Doom stans' attempts to force them away from each other. They can't stand the fact that deep down their Villain Sue Creators' Pet is in reality an immature petty manchild who can't move on from this one guy he can't stand. It's like rightwingers who keep insisting that Trump is a stable genius who plays others like a fiddle despite having his own Reed Richards in the form of Barack Obama who he'll never measure up to in terms of likeability or charisma or, in my personal experience, Pinoy rightwingers and tankies keep insisting Rodrigo Duterte is a peace-loving man who wants the Philippines to be politically independent despite constantly trying to kill poor people disguised as a War on Drugs or constantly kowtowing to China & letting both Chinese criminals & CCP agents inside our borders unopposed to wreck havoc.

And a villain being a petty dickhead whose unconsciously making himself a fool despite his grandiose bullshittery is more interesting & fun than an unstoppable Villain Sue. It's why Hux's reason for betraying the First Order in Star Wars' Sequel Trilogy is unironically my favorite part of the First Order & why over in DC both Robin King and Amanda Waller come across as obnoxious bec they're both too much like how Doom stans (both the writers & the readers) perceive Doom to be.

Regarding Sam vs Ross, it also doesn't help that the leaked alleged plot claims that Captain America 4 is a rehash of Civil War w/ Isaiah Bradley going rogue bec it turned out he also was brainwashed Winter Soldier-style while in captivity & his trigger was activated.

Edited by KRider on May 6th 2024 at 5:24:04 AM

https://ew.com/captain-america-4-first-look-anthony-mackie-harrison-ford-brave-new-world-8629213

Here's the article that 1st alleged that the plot of Captain America 4 is a rehash of Bucky's HYDRA programming but w/ Isaiah instead of Bucky. And if that is indeed the plot of Captain America 4, they could've kept President Ritson instead of replacing him w/ Ross or, if they REALLY want Harrison Ford as a supervillain US President, introduce him as President Dutch "The Teflon Gipper" Nagaer (bonus points if you get the reference) and have him turn into a weresnake instead of Red Hulk.

Edited by KRider on May 6th 2024 at 5:31:23 AM

Doom's rivalry with Reed is unique in how incredibly petty and personal it is. It's less a conflict between super archfoes and more a continuation of the grudge that started in college.

YMMV on how well that can translate to the big screen. A supervillain whose entire motivation was being unable to admit he did the math wrong and a peer did the math right is a tough sell.

Edited by M84 on May 6th 2024 at 10:52:32 PM