Doctor Doom: An Introduction to the MCU

There has been a lot of hype around the Fantastic Four coming to the MCU which leaves some questions to be asked. The most important being: How do we introduce Doctor Doom, the Fantastic Four's greatest villain?

To answer this question, I'd like to touch on the three key components to making an MCU Doctor Doom work.

1. Where has the Doctor Been?
2. Where is Latveria?
3. Where is his Power Source?

Now that the MCU is a bona fide universe, we have some advantages in introducing new characters that utilize the shared history and context that viewers are familiar with. If you are not familiar with any of the below items you can click them to catch up.

• The Sanctum Sanctorum
• The Ultron Drones
• The Sokovia Accords

Now let's find out how Doctor Doom could fit into the current MCU.

The Man Behind the Mask

We will start by examining the history of Doctor Doom in the comics and discuss how these points in his backstory can be integrated with our modern MCU. By the end, I hope you will be convinced by how seamlessly the current state of events supports the origins of Doctor Doom.

In the comic book history Doctor Doom is the son of a Romani (gypsy)
witch and a nobleman known only as the Baron. His mother died and he
was drivin out of his clan by his father.

This origin can remain relatively unchanged. Though Viktor should grow up in what is now known as the Sokovian countryside.

But before he was driven away, he discovered the implements of his mother's mystic
arts and began to practice witchcraft himself.

In our story he discovers them and learns how to use them to great effect. It is clear that Viktor is good at whatever he puts his mind to.

He moved to the United States and became a distinguished scholar
before being expelled from the university for experiments gone awry.

This can also remain unchanged. But this event should occur concurrently with the events of Sokovia. Viktor feels like the worlds is crumbling apart around him. He has lost his family, his professional life, and now even his home has been destroyed. This is the period of time where his obsession and focus grows.

He would begin creating the movement that joins the surrounding nations affected by the Sokovia incident as one nation under one rule known as Latveria.

He then journeyed to Tibet and studied with monks, mastering their
disciplines and finally becoming what we know as Viktor von Doom
before he leads a revolution to take control of Latveria.

These events occur roughly after the snap. There is a 5 year gap that our Doctor Doom would view as a tactical opportunity to take advantage of.

It is in this window that Viktor von Doom would solidify his place as a world leader with diplomatic immunity and amass the assortment of powers that make him so dangerous (we will explore this more in the Power of Doom) .

After the events of End Game, Doom is torn. He feels that the earth needs to be better protected and that every nation should be under the control of Latveria. He also becomes obsessed with how the avengers were able to bring back the dead. In all the spells he's learned in the Sanctum Sanctorum (more on this in the Power of Doom), there is nothing this powerful. And Doom's unreasonable rivalry with the Avengers begins as he tries to uncover the secrets of the unsnapping to bring his mother back.

Latveria: The New Sokovia

Viktor von Doom would become the Philanthropist, humanist ruler who repairs the destruction left behind by the Avengers. He restores order, wealth and technology to Latveria. And his people love him. We have an opportunity here to leverage the specific events in the MCU to create a Pablo Escobar inspired villain. The de facto leader whose people love him and who makes the life of the common man better.

The more villainous aspect of Viktor's rule will have to do with a theme already established in the MCU from the events of Sokovia. The main weaknesses of Doctor Doom are his pride, his need for control, and his ends justify the means mentality. This allows for a central question surrounding Sokovia about what safety and prosperity are worth. We can explore how Latverians feel about trading civil liberties for the protection and genius Viktor von Doom offers.

This is a powerful way to introduce a villain into the MCU who is as resourceful and powerful as an established character would be. We are exploiting the incredible amount of development that Tony Stark has received throughout his MCU career and continuing on those themes with a version of his own shadow. We are able to essentially pit the avengers against the actual backbone of the MCU by proxy.

Sokovia, and by extension our Latveria, is without a doubt the best region to explore political themes. It is fictional yet plagued by relatively relatable events. We have already seen one film do something similar to great success. The Black Panther. The fact that Latveria and Wakanda are both fictional give us the ability to truly explore their political themes without becoming too preachy or grounded in real world events (a problem many modern stories have trouble overcoming).

And last but not least, the Sokovia Accords gives Viktor von Doom a foothold to begin legitimately working his way into world politics and slowly (perhaps secretly) growing his personal power and control over susceptible nations.

This also gives Doom a political platform for pursuing the technology of the unsnap to bring his mother back. He would appeal to all those who lost people in the Sokovia Incident and vow that he would not rest until he makes Latveria whole again.

The Power of Doom

Finally, we can explore the question of how Viktor von Doom gets his powers in the MCU. This is the perfect way to showcase Doom's resourcefulness, drive, and genius.

It is in the 5 year window after the snap that he would use the lack of a guardian in the Santum Sanctorum and his knowledge from the monks to track it down and study the tomes within, becoming a true master of magic and rival to Dr. Strange.

Viktor would gather and purchase the companies that cleaned up the discarded Ultron Drones from the Sokovia incident and use his technological skills to reverse engineer his own version of the iron man technology. This allows him to create his doombots, the “protectors” of Latveria.

He also would take advantage of Wakanda's lack of a leader to obtain enough vibranium to construct his own indestructable vibranium Iron Man suit. A prototype for his version of Legion, a system to protect the earth from its impending doom.

Now, at the beginning of phase 4, Doctor Doom has the Magic of Dr. Strange, the technology of Iron Man, the Vibranium of Wakanda and the resources and political power of a coalition of nations.

Doctor Doom has modeled Latveria after Wakanda and he has modeled himself after not one, but many of earth's mightiest heroes.

The Fantastic Four: The First Family

How the Fantastic Four should be introduced into the MCU is another topic entirely. But I feel it is important to talk about what makes them so unique in Marvel and why they are such a strong thematic opponent to Doctor Doom.

We discussed some of the primary weaknesses of Doom being his need for control and his pride. Because of this, Doom will attempt to do everything alone and refuse the help of others. He will even refuse to ask for help when he needs it. He is the pinnacle of what man can build himself into, but in the end, he is alone.

The Fantastic Four are more than just a team, they are a family. They understand the importance of working together and demonstrate that the sum is greater than the parts. When they work together they can support and enable each other to overcome any obstacle.

That is the great tragedy of Doom. Were he able to ask for help or work with a team, he would be unstoppable. But the Fantastic Four represent the quality of his shadow that he will never overcome. And so, he shall never overcome the Fantastic Four.

References

The Sanctum Sanctorum

We were introduced to the Sanctum Sanctorum in Dr. Strange. It is three residences housing countless mystical paraphenalia residing in London, Hong Kong, and New York. They all link together through portals and are connected to Kamar-Taj in Nepal. The network of the Santum acts as a defense to mystical attacks against the earth. This is where Stephen Strange studies the mystic arts and becomes sorcerer supreme.

The Ultron Drones

In the Age of Ultron Baron von Strucker has been using the Scepter to experiment on humans to grant them powers. He casts aside his allegience to Hydra and focuses all his attention on the Maximoff twins.

He performs his experiments at a base in Sokovia. Ultron uses the resources at this base to create his upgraded body and build an army of robot drones after murdering Baron von Strucker.

This leaves the base and the research that was done here available for Doctor Doom to pick up where Baron Strucker and Ultron left off.

The Sokovia Accords

The First Avengers movie was ground breaking. No one questions that. It has its legacy in making the MCU possible.

The Second Avengers movie culminated into another earth changing event. A city was dropped from the sky and resulted in absolute catastrophe. This event served as the catalyst for much of Phase 3 of the MCU and much of the events that led to Infinity Wars.

The Sokovia Incident resulted in the world's nations creating the Sokovia Accords, which combined with Zeemo's revenge kicked off the events of Civil War.

The Accords are essentially a world-wide agreement that allows for the oversight and regulation of super-powered individuals.

This is the document that will serve as a precedent and springboard for Viktor von Doom, the political leader.

One Marvelous Scene

Nando v Movies started a video series inviting video essayist to weigh in on
what he has called, “One Marvelous Scene.” I've put a link to the whole
playlist here

Everything You Need to Know

So there are a few things I'd like to discuss before we actually delve into
why I chose this one marvelous scene and why I feel this scene is so important
to kicking off the more than 20 film MCU franchise.

• Archetypes of Superheroes
• Tony Stark: 5 Dramatic Situations
• A Scene as a Story

Archetypes of Superheroes

One of the main criticisms of superhero sequels is that they tend to rehash the
same themes and stories as their first installment. And to illustrate this, i'd like to take a detour to DC and talk about Batman.

As far as character and story go, I believe that the main reason The Dark Knight had a such a positive critical reception is that the archetype of Batman that is explored in The Dark Knight is different than the archetype explored in Batman Begins.

The Arc API provides a framework for analyzing and
developing characters in storytelling by archetype and is the source I'll be
using in my analysis. (I developed this framework with jmsdevx)

As shown below, “Batman Begins” follows the journey of Bruce Wayne as
the warrior. He takes on the role of a student of Ra's al Ghul to acheive mastery of various skills that will aid him in leaving a mark on Gotham City to provide the type of hero that was needed to save his parents. And the main struggle Bruce Wayne faces in Batman Begins is whether or not the ends justify the means.

What made “The Dark Knight” so interesting is that it did not reset the archetype of
Batman, but instead allowed the character to naturally evolve into the Master
role of the Hero. The Ruler. “The Dark Knight” then followed the journey of Batman
as the Ruler of Gotham and explored those theme's by contrasting him against
Rulers of different aspects of Gotham.

• Harvey/Two-Face
• Commissioner Gordon
• Joker

Batman

(Chris Nolan, David S Goyer, Bob Kane)

	WARRIOR/HERO	RULER
Aspect	Ego	Self
Method	Mastery	Control
Drive	Leave a Mark	Leave a Mark
Role	Student	Master
Shadow	The Ends Justify the Means	Tyranny

I believe that the biggest reason that Iron Man has remained so popular
throughout the life of the MCU, deliberately or through accident, is because his
character has evolved through so many archetypes during his screentime.

Iron Man

(Jon Favreau, Joss Whedon, Shane Black, Stephen McFeely, Christopher Markus)

	MAGICIAN	WARRIOR/HERO	RULER	MENTOR
Aspect	Self	Ego	Self	Self
Method	Power	Mastery	Control	Knowledge
Drive	Order	Leave a Mark	Leave a Mark	Spiritual Journey
Role	Master	Student	Master	Master
Shadow	Abuse of Power	The Ends Justify the Means	Tyranny	Arrogance

Tony Stark begins Iron Man as the Magician. A master of power who abuses that power to create weapons and irresponsably endangers the lives of thousands. He justifies this by hiding behind Order (the law and what is legal) and the climax of Iron Man involves Tony recognizing and casting off the shadow of the Magician.

The Avengers explores Tony's journey as the warrior, taking on combat and trying to figure out how to best serve this role.

Age of Ultron & Civil War explore Tony's evolution into the ruler role. His attempt to control the situation and protect earth lead to the creation of Ultron and pits him against the Avenger that helped him evolve from warrior to ruler, Steve Rogers.

And, finally, we see Tony take on the archetype of the mentor as he brings Spiderman into the MCU.

Tony Stark: 5 Dramatic Situations

Mike Figgis explores the base 36 Dramatic Situations
that make up the majority of all scenes in storytelling. Most stories are made
up of only a handful of these situations that recur throughout the character's lives.

In analyzing the appearances of Tony Stark in the MCU we can find that his
stories are governed by 5 core Dramatic Situations.

• The Enigma
• Daring Enterprise
• Disaster
• Remorse

• Necessity of Sacrifice

  Necessity of Sacrifice is more rare than the other situations
  since it is the pinnacle of Tony's arc. It is also worth
  noting that Tony's Dramatic situations almost always
  occur exactly in this same order.

We see Tony go through these exact situations in this exact order more than 10 times in the MCU.

• Avengers Climax
• Iron Man 3
• Age of Ultron
  • The Creation of Ultron
  • Saving Banner
  • Climax of Ultron
• Civil War
  • Sokovia Accords
  • Hanger Scene
  • Climax
• Infinity War

• Endgame

  I've made a chart to illustrate

These are the largest scale manifestations of this arc, but throught the series we also see countless scenes that also depict Tony's progression through this arc in miniature.

Which brings us to…

A Scene as a Story

John Truby's Anatomy of Story
outlines that scenes are where the writer translates the elements of
storytelling and character and presents them to the audience.

A scene is defined as ONE action in ONE time and ONE place. But the best
scenes are mini-stories which hold all the elements of storytelling. So at
their core, scenes and stories are the same. If you visualize a scene as a
triangle, the beginning frames what the scene is about then funnels and
culminates to a single point. A story is just a scene at a larger scale.

You construct the scene as a mini-story by

• Determining how it fits in the overall development of the character(s)
  • Considering the Archetype Evolution
  • Considering the Relevant Dramatic Situations
• Hitting the same beats as your story
  • The first 4 Dramatic Situations
• Ending on the climactic, single point of your story
  • The 5th Dramatic Situation

John Truby also outlines how the multi-character story needs a main desire line which acts as the spine of the overarcing story and the character who acts as the spine in the MCU is undboubtedly Tony Stark.

Genius, Billionaire, Playboy, Philanthropist

So these three points culminate into a scene that is essentially a predictive work of art.

Not only is this the first scene where we see Tony Stark journey through his 5 Dramatic Situations in Succession. But this scene also incorporates Steve Rogers challenging the warrior archetype of Tony Stark that kicks off and eventually leads to his development into the ruler in Iron Man 3.

And Genius, Billionaire, Playboy, Philanthropist was written before any of these scenes happened. It was written before Marvel became an unstoppable franchise. It was written before Tony Stark was the bonified spine of the MCU. It was written when Thanos, the archetypical foil to Tony Stark's character was only a teaser. And it was written before Tony Stark

SPOILERS

sacrificed himself to prevent the universe from being half destroyed a second time.

Which means, that this scene, and the fact that it echoed Tony Stark's larger arc of the Avengers was solely responsible for setting up the main arc of the entire MCU. And this scene didn't have to sacrifice character development or relevance to acheive this.

And this sums up why I believe that Genius, Billionaire, Playboy, Philanthropist is one of the most important scenes in the entire MCU.

The One Marvelous Scene

STEVE: You know damn well why! Back off!

TONY: Oh, I'm starting to want you to make me.

This fight is the framing of the triangle.
What is an arugment in the scene is the presentation
of the main challenges of these characters

STEVE: Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?

TONY: Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.

STEVE: I know guys with none of that worth ten of you. Yeah, I've seen the
footage. (MORE)

STEVE: (CONT'D) The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You're not the
guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy
crawl over you.

TONY: I think I would just cut the wire. ENIGMA

STEVE: (SMILING) Always a way out… You know, you may not be a threat, but you
better stop pretending to be a hero.

Steve challenging Tony which acts as the catalyst of Tony completing the arc of the hero

TONY: (that did it) A hero? Like you? You're a lab rat, Rogers. Everything
special about you came out of a bottle!

Forshadowing, for the super soldier serum has nothing to do with what makes
him special. He has always been worthy. And he was chosen because of the
qualities that make him special.

…

STEVE: You're not going alone!

TONY: You gonna stop me?

STEVE: Put on the suit, let's find out.

TONY: I'm not afraid to hit an old man. DARING ENTERPRISE

STEVE: Put on the suit. At that moment Banner who's looking at the monitor
notices something about the Tesseract.

BANNER: Oh, my God!

OUTSIDE THE HELICARRIER Barton PULLS THE TRIGGER ON HIS BOW.
The arrow then EXPLODES THE ENGINE RIGHT OFF THE HELICARRIER! INT. BANNER'S LAB
­ MORNING Everyone is thrown in every direction. Steve, Fury, Thor and Tony are
thrown across while Natasha and Banner is down in the lower equipment room.
Steve looks up at Tony. DISASTER

STEVE: Put on the suit!

TONY: Yep!

…

GALAGA PLAYER: (points to monitor) Turbine's loose. Mostly intact, but it's
impossible to get out there and make repairs while we're in the air.

AGENT MARIA HILL: We lose one more engine, we won't be. Somebody's got to get
inside and patch that engine.

…

TONY: Good. See what we got. Tony flies in his IRON MAN suit and gets close to
the damaged engine. REGRET | DARING ENTERPRISE | DISASTER

…

IRON MAN: begins to push the rotor using BOOSTERS from his boots SACRIFICE

Chart

	ENIGMA
Genius…Philanthropist	“I'd cut the wire”
Avengers Climax	How to shut off the portal
Iron Man 3	How to save Pepper and shut down extremis
Age of Ultron	How to Protect the World
Hanger Scene	How to stop Captain America
Infinity War	Take the fight to Thanos
Endgame	Time Travel

	DARING ENTERPRISE
Genius…Philanthropist	“put on the suit”
Avengers Climax	Fighting Loki
Iron Man 3	fighting without his suit
Age of Ultron	Creating Ultron
Hanger Scene	The Fight
Infinity War	Battle on Titan
Endgame	Going back further to get Tesseract and more Pim Particles

	DISASTER
Genius…Philanthropist	ship attacked
Avengers Climax	New York
Iron Man 3	Extremis Fight
Age of Ultron	Sokovia
Hanger Scene	War Machine
Infinity War	They lose the stone
Endgame	Thanos comes back back with Nebula

	REGRET
Genius…Philanthropist	underestimating Loku
Avengers Climax	cant save them in time
Iron Man 3	Putting Family in Danger
Age of Ultron	the aftermath
Hanger Scene	His responsiblity for War Machine
Infinity War	The loss of Peter Parker
Endgame	The Recording (happens after snap)

	SACRIFICE
Genius…Philanthropist	restarting the turbine
Avengers Climax	flying the missile into space
Iron Man 3	almost dies before Pepper saves him
Age of Ultron	Quicksilver
Hanger Scene	Putting himself in danger rather than others
Infinity War	Here, Strange puts up the sacrifice
Endgame	Snap

Placeholder

Reviews to Come