Funny how these Doom threads keep popping up like dandelions on a springtime lawn.
Going by the cast listing, Julian McMahon is the fifth billed. Using the past history of supervillains translated to the screen, his screen time will most likely be less than the rest of the cast. Yet more than a few fans cite this as their biggest concern.
I am starting to wonder about the nebulous "creative differences" explanation given for Peyton Reed's departure as director. If memory serves, Peyton Reed wanted to place the film in the same time period as when the comics first came out - the 1960's. In this context, I think movie Doom would have ended up being been very close to the comics version. The highly eccentric view of Tim Burton's Gotham City comes to mind - - there is just no city like this in the real world. It seems to exist in a constant state of twilight and I can't recall very many scenes done in dazzzling daylight. It gave Batman a sort of self-contained universe where it didn't seem so strange to have the Joker and other assorted weirdos on the loose.
If the FF movie was done in this manner, I think the credibility factor for "old school" Doom would have been a slam dunk. Instead of trying to comtemporize Doom you would create the environment in which he exists - a fantasy version of our Earth known as the Marvel Universe. In this universe, there is a forboding building known as the Latverian embassy in New York, Doctor Strange has a townhouse on Blecker Street in Greenwich village and a SHIELD helicarrier patrols the skies.
Instead, they chose to fit Doom into something closer to our reality. Absolute monarch translates into industrialist/billionaire and his medieval - themed armor looks like Calvin Klein or some other design house. I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky they didn't try to make Doom an allegory for someone like Osama Bin Laden. We also see Doom's transformation occur much later in life than in the comics. In the film, he has already gone through college with Reed and is an established business baron when they all get exposed to the cosmic radiation. Fox is rolling the dice on this in the hopes that there is enough of Doom from the comics to satisfy the fan base and seems to be making changes in the script to correct this according Simon Kinberg, the last screenwriter to work on the film. By July we will know if they have succeeded. I just wish someone at Fox had the cajones and creativity to make a movie in which a more faithful version of Doom could exist but it's gone too far for that now.
I hope they leave the fate of Doom at the end of the movie open-ended and he becomes a recurring character in the manner of Ian McKellan's Magneto. Let's just hope that we don't have to wait as long as the Supeman franchise has in eradicating Gene Hackman's buffoonish version of Lex Luthor.
