The three Fantastic Four movies that were made by Fox completely ruined Marvel’s best villain. Doctor Doom is a much better character than any other villain in the Marvel Universe, and Fox turned him into a fancy tin can in 2015! Now that the Fantastic Four have finally come home, we can imagine that Marvel will finally give them the movie they deserve. But more than the heroes, Marvel has a major responsibility to fix the villains.
Galactus and Silver Surfer are great villains and Marvel will surely bring them in at some point of time, but the Fantastic Four villain that we know for sure is coming into the picture is none other than Victor Von Doom aka Doctor Doom. He has got so much potential to be salvaged for a long time, and we can be sure that Marvel will do exactly that. According to a source close to We Got This Covered, Marvel has major plans for Doctor Doom in the MCU.
The Marvel villain probably won’t even be the antagonist in the first Fantastic Four movie. Considering the fact that the Fantastic Four have always started with him and screwed up, Marvel surely wouldn’t want to repeat the same mistakes from the past. Doctor Doom is a character that can actually get the Black Adam and Shazam! treatment.
Shazam! opened up with a different villain and Shazam! 2 will not bring in Black Adam either. He will get his own movie before taking on Billy Batson in Shazam! 3. Bringing the same scenario to Marvel, the Fantastic Four and Doctor Doom could be explored in different movies and then later pit together. Moreover, Doctor Doom could actually go on to be the perfect villain for an Avengers movie, even before he turns into one for the Fantastic Four.
What we can say right now is that Doctor Doom could go on to be what Loki was in the Infinity Saga. He could become something even better if used properly. Now let’s come onto the question of when we could get to see Doctor Doom in the MCU. Kevin Feige has said it in the past that both the X-Men and the Fantastic Four will take some time before they make their debut in the MCU. Feige told io9:
“It’ll be a while. It’s all just beginning and the five-year plan that we’ve been working on, we were working on before any of that was set. So really it’s much more, for us, less about specifics of when and where [the X-Men will appear] right now and more just the comfort factor and how nice it is that they’re home. That they’re all back. But it will be a very long time.”
Marvel currently has a 5 year plan running and the likes of Fantastic Four & X-Men would only make their debut after that. Since we’ve not seen a Fantastic Four movie since 2015, it may be logical to get one in within the next 3-4 years, and that’s why Marvel’s First Family might just beat the 5 year timeline count down. But even with that Doctor Doom may not make his debut. So it would be safe to say that Doctor Doom is still around 5 years or more away from his big MCU debut.
We usually get some major surprises when Marvel announces their slates. Feige has confirmed that the slate will be announced after Spider-Man: Far From Home releases, so what if Fantastic Four is already a part of it? Feige said:
“The slate that we’re building over the next five years [is] not apples to apples. It is two very distinct things and I hope they’ll feel very distinct. But there is a similar mentality going into it, which is ‘How can we continue to tell stories with some of the characters that audiences already know and love in a unique way, in a different way, in surprising way, of which we have a lot of plans and ideas and work already going into it?’ [Then] ‘How can we introduce new characters that even hardcore fans, comic fans, have barely known or barely heard of.’ That’s really exciting too.
Some of these films will feature characters that you already know. Some supporting characters will assume leading roles, while some new characters will be introduced. The reward for all of these films working is that we get to try to do it again and do it differently and learn from our mistakes and try something we haven’t tried before.”
