While nobody knows yet exactly what Marvel has planned for the Fox movie characters, one thing seems certain: Dr. Doom is coming. Outside of Thanos and the Spider-Man bad guys, Doom is probably the best-known Marvel Comics villain, and a strong contender to be the next big bad of the MCU. Whether that’s with the Fantastic Four, or the stand-alone Noah Hawley Dr. Doom movie that apparently isn’t dead yet, we don’t know yet. But who should play the MCU’s Doctor Doom? We have a few ideas.
Christoph Waltz
The Marvel Cinematic Universe kicked off when Samuel L. Jackson showed up to lay down some exposition the way he does so well in Quentin Tarantino movies. After Jackson, Waltz is the second-best enunciator of Tarantino-talk on the planet, and he’d be a fantastic evil monologuist. He also deserves a really good supervillain role. The next James Bond movie does not appear to be featuring Waltz as Blofeld, and Chudnofsky/Blood-nofsky ain’t getting a Green Hornet 2. Waltz can easily play the smartest guy in the room, with a fateful vain streak, charming and terrifying heroes simultaneously.
Robert Downey, Jr.
What if Doom emerged with Tony Stark’s face? It would feel like a horrendous violation, and throw most of the heroes off guard. Downey is an actor with wide range, but because he’s been Iron Man for so long, he’s largely played hyperactive wiseacres for the last decade. Downey should get a chance to play a villain. For one movie, anyway. At the end, Doom should reveal the “true” face of someone else on this list.
Doug Jones
This is in case the MCU goes with the Ultimate version of Victor Van Damme, a descendant of Dracula with goat legs and metal claws. Honestly, they shouldn’t, because the Fox movies veered too close to that version as they were. But if they did, Guillermo del Toro’s favorite Faun has the ability to make such a fantastical creation feel imbued with menace and movement.
Will Poulter
If we’re going younger, Narnia’s cousin Eustace, who was very nearly Pennywise the Clown, has the range for the job. He’s been a hero in The Maze Runner and a villain in Detroit, but frequently operates in an ambiguous middle ground. As a colleague who turns to evil following an accident, he’d be a natural.
Kenneth Branagh
Doom has always had a flair for the dramatic, and Branagh’s a Shakespeare-phile already well-versed in the MCU. He has also played both Gilderoy Lockhart and Dr. Frankenstein. A perfect amalgam of those two would give us something very close to Von Doom.
Domhnall Gleeson
General Hux is always going to be an also-ran in the Star Wars universe as long as Kylo Ren lives. But Gleeson deserves a venue for his sneering, preening, fascistic narcissist persona to shine as the main big bad. Even in movies where he plays semi-sympathetic, like Peter Rabbit, his face proves extremely punchable. And what would be more frustrating than him adopting a metal mask so the good guys can’t punch it?
Christian Bale
Assuming he’s not sick of armored suits yet, the former Batman could combine his American Psycho persona with his real-life rage outburst on the Terminator: Salvation set. Handsome, charismatic, and unstable, Bale could really let his mask of sanity slip. Plus, he just played Dick Cheney as a sort of supervillain. Unconfined by historical narrative, he could push that even further. The real Cheney has often played along with the joke that he’s a Darth Vader figure, so why not Doom?
Dolph Lundgren
He has the physique of a comic-book character, a third-dan black belt, a degree in chemical engineering, knocked Sylvester Stallone out, and hails from Europe. Are we sure he’s not actually Dr. Doom? At 61, he may be a little long in the tooth, unless Marvel swerves us as they did in Ant-Man and makes Kristoff Vernard the main Dr. Doom. If that’s how they play it, Dolph could be a great Daddy Doom.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Along similar lines as Lundgren. We’re not sure exactly what a Latverian accent sounds like, but it would probably be a lot closer to Schwarzenegger’s than that of anyone else mentioned thus far. And after Mr. Freeze, he deserves a supervillain do-over.
Tommy Wiseau
This is a somewhat frivolous choice, as Wiseau is legendarily incapable of remembering his lines or taking direction. But as a mystery man from an unknown part of eastern Europe, wealthy for reasons he won’t reveal, and prone to exerting all of his energy on big expensive failures, only he could approach the role as a true method actor. “YOU ARE TEARING ME APAAARRRT, RICHARDS!”
Who would play your ideal Doom? Let us know in comment section!
Recommended Reading: Fantastic Four: Books of Doom
