Victor Von Doom will apparently get an overhaul in the upcoming Fantastic Four… and that apparently includes a fresh change of name.
After Josh Trank signed up for Fox’s Fantastic Four it looked as though we’d be getting something very different… and now it’s all becoming clear – the newly rebooted franchise is already aiming to steer well clear of what’s come before. Even the Marvel comic books. And it looks as though nobody is safe, not even Doctor Doom who’ll be getting an all-new origin and a brand new name.
In an interview with Collider, 32-year-old Toby Kebbell – the man behind Doctor Doom in the upcoming Fantastic Four – revealed that there are some huge departures coming up for his character.
“He’s Victor Domashev, not Victor Von Doom in our story,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll be sent to jail for telling you that. The Doom in ours – I’m a programmer. Very anti-social programmer. And on blogging sites I’m ‘Doom’.”
Of course, this is a huge departure from the original comic book stories, where Doctor Doom hails from the fictional country of Latveria and ends up studying alongside Reed Richards in the Empire State University where his experiments to contact the dead using a machine of his own invention causes a dramatic explosion, leaving his face permanently scarred. But while the Latverian techno-sorcerer was a popular villain in the comic books, it looks as though he is destined for a more humble origin this time around.
And it seems he might not even come from Latveria…
“The only thing I can tease you about is what I worked on most was the voice because nobody—even in the cartoons, when I was watching them I was like, ‘So where’s he from?’ There’s a mild change and I’ll tell you because of our history.”
It sounds as though Fox is doing its absolute best to back out of the comic book origins and really do its own thing… but I’m not exactly sure the fans will appreciate it.
Of course, Doctor Doom’s origin isn’t the only thing to change in the upcoming Fantastic Four reboot… and where previous films have seemed more on the lighter side of the super hero spectrum, it looks as though Josh Trank’s ‘Fantastic Four’ will be a lot grittier.
“Yeah, it was cool man,” said Kebbell. “Josh, the whole deal, the lo-fi way he did it, the ultra-real. It was just nice to do that. It was nice to be feeling like we had to come to terms with what was given by this incident.”
It certainly sounds as though the powers gained from the currently unknown ‘incident’ will be a real struggle for the Fantastic Four as well as Doctor Doom – who presumably gains his powers in the same way.
And I can’t help thinking that this is almost a rehash of Trank’s earlier film, Chronicle.
Still, perhaps a change of pace is exactly what the Fantastic Four franchise needs. And if anything, they’ve certainly got the right man for the job when it comes to Josh Trank. Will it be any good? That’s another matter entirely… but it can’t be any worse than the previous films.
What do you think of Doctor Doom’s new origin? Will Josh Trank really nail this reboot? Let us know what you think in the comments below…
