Doctor Doom: the new origin story

Here's how I think they'll do it, given that the Russo brothers are back in charge and they're smart and so they know that casting Robert Downey Jr as an entirely different guy in the MCU would be pointless. Also they know that a villain called "Victor Von Doom" who wears medieval armour under a green cloak is pretty dumb. So it's obvious: Downey will be playing Tony Stark in the Fantastic Four's timeline. 

As in the regular timeline, Tony is injured by one of his own weapons -- and maybe also disfigured, though I suspect they'll drop that aspect of Dr Doom's origin as audiences will want to see him with the mask off. But things are different in this timeline. Maybe Pepper is with him in Afghanistan and gets killed. Maybe there's no Yinsen to point him on a better path. Maybe (oh, please) Raza is on course to becoming the real Mandarin and having him as a shadow-self only makes Tony more bitter and self-righteous.

Of course, in this timeline Tony has to be an old college buddy of Reed Richards at MIT, but after the death of his parents Tony went off to be a rapacious capitalist weapons dealer while Reed stuck with their youthful utopian ideals. As a brilliant but ruthless arms manufacturer Tony has dozens of nicknames on social media, one of which might well be "Doctor Doom". After he builds the suit (and note that the original suit design isn't far off the Kirby Doom's armour) he leans right into that soubriquet. Even so, through most of the movie I'll bet they'll be just "Tony" and "Reed" -- after all, there's not much that can be done with the name "Mister Fantastic" either except through the lens of irony.

And this will make for a much better character basis to the conflict. An old friendship gone sour, an antagonist who believes he's doing the right thing, regret at the path not taken, the faint possibility of redemption -- that will give a real spark to their dialogue together, and give us a chance to see Reed's fundamental decency contrasted with an arrogance we always half-knew only needed a nudge to go bad.

Or maybe I'm wrong and Anthony & Joseph Russo will come up with an even better way to work Robert Downey Jr logically into the Phase VI storyline. They've done some top-class work in the past, so I'm betting whatever they come up with will be worth the wait.

A funny way to tell a story

There’s been a lot of talk lately of MCU style writing, meaning the kind of quip-filled dialogue which doesn’t take the story seriously. Characters behaving like high schoolers made sense in Buffy, where they actually were high schoolers, but is a lot less effective when the mighty Thor says lines that you’d expect from Xander Harris.

Good writers know that their writing must be true, and thus it must include humour because humour is a part of life. Also that the humour must be in-character, not any old joke that will raise a laugh – then it’s not cinema, it’s panto. Thor’s comments in the first movie are funny because they are how an arrogant Asgardian god might see our world. But six years later: ‘He’s a friend from work,’ is the director* sneering at you for taking superhero movies seriously.

That’s the lazy way to get a laugh, which is just to have characters in a fantasy setting use slangy modern idioms. But the writers who began the trend did it with serious intent; they still wanted you to believe in and care about their story. They were looking for ways to make the audience relate to the characters, and clearly lots of ‘Prithee, varlet’ dialogue wasn’t going to do it. There is plenty of humour (I hope you will agree) in Mirabilis, but Leo and I try never to put a line in a character’s mouth if it isn’t true to the moment and spoken in their voice.

Undercutting tension with humour can be very effective if it’s true to character. Look at Steed and Mrs Peel, most especially in the scene at the end of “The House That Jack Built” when the defence mechanism of their insouciance almost breaks down. But for the writer who doesn’t care, it’s a short step from there to having every character reach for the glib line that will get a laugh.

It is unjust to call this MCU writing. The entire Captain America trilogy managed to include humour in a way that rang true. The Russo brothers’ Avengers movies likewise. And in any case, Marvel didn’t invent the trend. Look at the Universal monster series. They start off selling us the story straight with Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy. Four years on, The Bride of Frankenstein is most definitely Whedonesque – or perhaps we should say that Joss Whedon’s writing is Hurlbutian. It took Universal a bit longer to get into their non-stop gag phase but Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein could easily match Thor: Love and Thunder or Willow for hey-it’s-all-a-joke silliness.

And, as a writer, how do you know when that funny line you’ve thought of serves the story and when it’s going to kill immersion? Well, that’s the job, isn’t it? But if you need some pointers, this video by author Brandon McNulty is an 8-minute masterclass in the use of humour:

* Yes, we all know that particular line was suggested by a kid who was visiting the set. But it's the director's choice whether to include it, and it fit in with the tone he decided on for the whole movie.