After months of teasing, cloaked views and quick cuts to trailers, 20th Century Fox has pulled back the curtain (and the cape) of Toby Kebbell's Doctor Doom for Fantastic Four. In this new trailer, we see the transformed Doom show off his powers and his new form. This is a whole new Doom. The previous film iteration of the character, played byNip/Tuck's Julian McMahon, saw the character wield electrical-based powers.
However, this new clip, revealed by Comic Book Resources, shows there are a lot more tricks up this guy's sleeve. His abilities are not spelled out for us, but the footage reveals he has some sort of mental or super-sonic attack that can pop his victim's brains open like tomatoes. Secondly, he has some sort of force powers, similar in visual style to what we've seen from Kate Mara's Invisible Woman - Sue Storm's force fields are blue-tinged, while the bullet-deflecting shield around Doom is green. Then there's his physical appearance. We know that Victor joins Reed (Miles Teller), Johnny (Michael B. Jordan), Ben (Jamie Bell) and Sue on the inter-dimensional trip that grants them their abilities.
"Fantastic Four" No. 1, released in 1961, launched modern-day Marvel Comics and remains one of the most influential titles ever published. Co-creators Jack Kirby and Stan Lee gave readers a contemporary, intelligent spin on superheroes. They're a group of scientists and adventurers transformed by cosmic rays after a trip into space. Here were relatable characters with problems who acted like real people - not supermen. The DNA for the superhero-movie explosion we all now enjoy (and sometimes tolerate) can be traced to those early "Fantastic Four" issues.
"The Fantastic Four should be an Avengers-level franchise," says James Viscardi, a former Marvel employee and now executive editor of comicbook.com. "There's a ton that can be played with." Many have tried. There have been cartoons going back to the 1960s and a 1994 Roger Corman-produced movie was rushed into production three days before the rights expired. It was never released, and rumor has it Marvel Studio head Avi Arad later ordered every copy destroyed. The 2005 version of "Fantastic Four" earned a respectable $154 million, and its 2007 sequel "Rise of the Silver Surfer" pulled in $131 million, but neither was well received by critics or fanboys.