Fantastic Four: Dr. Doom Probably Won’t Be Group’s First Villain and That’s Okay

The Fantastic Four will arrive in the Marvel Cinematic Universe sooner rather than later, that much has been confirmed by Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige himself. Thursday evening, the mega-producer unveiled Spider-Man helmer Jon Watts will be directing the MCU debut of Marvel’s First Family, and before long at all, fans were chatting about who’d they like to see in the feature. A recurring theme amongst many, naturally, was Doctor Doom — a character most might consider the one true archnemesis of the Fantastic Four.

While Doom will arrive in the MCU at one point or another, we’ve got to be frank with you for a second — the likelihood of the beloved character’s debut happening in Marvel’s first Fantastic Four feature is slim to none. Over the course of a decade, we’ve seen enough from Marvel Studios to back that up.

Take Spider-Man as an example. After the first five movies used the bigger players in Spidey’s rogue’s gallery, Marvel Studios chose to use some of the lesser-known ones; at the very least, characters at least not as popular as Green Goblin, Doc Ock, or Venom. We got Vulture (Michael Keaton) and Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhall) after two Green Goblins and Venom. Dr. Doom likely won’t be the first villain the MCU’s Fantastic Four faces for a number of reasons, the first being Feige and his team at Marvel have a knack for going for the most off-kilter baddies and turning them into households name.

Then, there’s the fact Doom’s been done before — within the past five years, at that. Doom appeared both in 20th Century’s original Fantastic Four feature and he was back again in Josh Trank’s 2015 reboot. Though box office numbers remind us time and time again superhero fatigue isn’t a real thing — at least not as of yet — maybe there could be a certain level of villain fatigue involved with the third iteration of the character in the group’s first major MCU outing. Especially after his last two appearances have been duds both critically and commercially.

Then there’s the story involved. In the Marvel library, there are few villains that deserve to have the same type of build-up that Josh Brolin’s Thanos did. Outside of Galactus, Dr. Doom’s probably one of those characters, at least in the batch of intellectual property Disney currently owns.

As of now, it’s likely the feature will have a villain we’ve yet to see in live-action, like the Mole Man’s, Terrax’s, or Annihilus’ of the Marvel world.

Marvel’s Fantastic Four has yet to set a release date.

Who would you like to see as the villain of Marvel’s Fantastic Four reboot? Let us know your thoughts either in the comments section or by hitting our writer @AdamBarnhardt up on Twitter to chat all things MCU!