Is Doctor Doom following EVERY aspect of the comics? The latest Avengers: Doomsday rumor gives fans new insight into what Robert Downey Jr. will look like as the villain.
With Avengers: Doomsday finally shooting in earnest, fans have been excited for any set photo they can get their hands on. So much about the film has been kept under lock and key by Marvel (likely because the actual script isn’t exactly finalized yet). Suffice to say, so many of those following the film closely lost their collective minds when Robert Downey Jr. posted a photo of himself wearing a muscle suit while preparing to film a scene as Doctor Doom.
Though this hype turned to worry the more fans studied the picture linked above. Robert Downey Jr. had motion tracing dots placed all around his face. This left fans fearful that Marvel didn’t actually plan to have the actor perform wearing a mask during the filming of Avengers: Doomsday, rather adding Doctor Doom’s iconic steel facial covering in post-production. This would add yet another expensive VFX shot that would likely be seen in almost every major scene in the film.
Who (Or What) Is Beneath Doctor Doom’s Mask?
However, the latest rumor for Avengers: Doomsday suggests those dots may not be exactly what they seem at first blush. Marvel is seemingly giving a practical mask after all. The dots, in truth, are in order to disfigure Robert Downey Jr.’s face to make Doctor Doom look similar to classic Universal Monsters like the Phantom of the Opera.
“Apparently Chris Gore said that design that he saw is very evocative of the characters of the classic Universal Monsters movies when talking to Nerdrotic, and that sounds very much like the kind of thing that influence the original character design,” A commenter wrote on Reddit before later on saying “Apparently, yes. His face is indeed disfigured.”
While not much stock can be put in this specific rumor, it does line up with the inspirations Marvel seems to be taking for Avengers: Doomsday. Doctor Doom’s face isn’t always deformed in the comics, but perhaps the most iconic instance of it being is in the 2015 Secret Wars run. Given how much speculation there is that Robert Downey Jr. will be playing the film’s equivalent to God Doom, it tracks they’d take the….less appealing parts alongside the parcel.
Avengers: Doomsday is set to hit theaters in May 2026. Stay tuned for the latest news regarding the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more content!
