The Four Color Media Monitor

Nearly two months ago, The Hollywood Reporter noted that:

Dr. Doom is said to be the villain of the reboot (the character appeared in Fox’s two previous movies and was played by Julian McMahon). The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision is hearing that the studio is likely to go for a big name and isn’t ruling out switching genders for the role.

If they want to change the race of a FF member (which looks to be the Human Torch), that's one thing. But turning Dr. Doom into a woman is going a bit far by adding a second alteration to the mix, and could enforce the notion they're more interested in changing the structure of the characters than a meaty story.

Forbes spoke about this, and said:

So yes, even if it was merely a gender switch for the sake of a gender switch, having an actress playing Dr. Doom would indeed be something of a big deal. The vast majority of female roles in mainstream comic books have been in the love interest/hostage box. That was the presumption back in 2008 when Cate Blanchett joined the cast of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, with few aside from myself (mostly out of hope) considering that she might be the villain instead. And when Gal Gadot was cast as Wonder Woman in Man Of Steel 2, speculation immediately spread about whether she’d be a romantic rival for Amy Adams’s Lois Lane, as if two females can’t exist in a superhero film without fighting over a man. The (sadly often correct) presumption when a female is cast in a major role in a major film is still that she will play the love interest or romantic rival.

I thought Scarlet Johanssen as Black Widow was already proving otherwise? But if Victor von Doom becomes Victoria, then again, that'll only enforce the perception that it's all switches for the sake of it. For now, what I want to know is whether Doom will be the self-appointed overlord of the fictional Balkan country Latervia as he was in his 60s debut. Because in the first of two movies filmed in the past decade, he wasn't.

Now casting someone like Cate Blanchett or Robin Wright as Dr. Doom won’t make Fantastic Four a good movie all-by-itself anymore than Michael Clarke Duncan as the Kingpin made Daredevil a masterpiece. But Fox will no more lose a single dollar in box office grosses by releasing a Fantastic Four film with a black Human Torch and a female Dr. Doom than Sony will lose a dime from casting Jamie Foxx as Electro in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The free publicity accumulated by the breaking of gender/racial barriers cannot and should not be discounted. The next batch of superhero films, by virtue of their all-but-preordained success, has a real opportunity to break down barriers in terms of what kind of actors can play what kind of characters. 20th Century Fox and director Josh Trank may or may not go the gender switch route with Dr. Doom. But for the sake of setting precedent, and because it would indeed be something different, I sincerely hope they do.

I'm probably okay with that too, but not at the expense of story quality, and the talk of all the publicity this is bound to garner raises eyebrows. Is that all they care about? Not how good the screenplay will be? Even a business magazine should know better.

Labels: Fantastic Four, marvel comics, msm propaganda