‘Very Anti-Social Programmer’: Details On Doctor Doom Changes For ‘Fantastic Four’ Reboot

The team behind Fox’s Fantastic Four reboot knows the hard-core comic fans are up in arms about the changes they’ve been making to Marvel’s first family, and they added fuel to the fire on Monday, revealing tweaks to classic FF villain, Doctor Doom. You may want to sit down for this one.

Collider, which earlier on Monday leaked details on Margot Robbie possibly signing on as the Suicide Squad’s Harley Quinn, recently sat down with Toby Kebbel, who plays Doctor Doom in Fox’s upcoming Fantastic Four reboot. Or, well, perhaps one shouldn’t say he plays “Doctor Doom,” because Kebbel revealed something of a change in the character for the new movie.

“He’s Victor Domashev,” Kebbel said, “not Victor Von Doom in our story. And 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.'”

That little tidbit is sure to rustle the jimmies of many a Fantastic Four fan, as it’s just the latest in a string of hints that the Fantastic Four that hit the screen in August of next year likely won’t look like anything that Marvel Comics fans will recognize. Whether it’s likely to be worse than previous film incarnations, though, is up for debate.

Miles Teller, who plays Reed Richards, has already said that the reboot will tell the story “in a different way,” without a “kitschy, overly comic-book world.” That, of course, hasn’t gone over too well with Fantastic Four fans, who were already wary of the addition of African-American actor Michael B. Jordan as the traditionally white Johnny Storm. Add in Jordan’s remarks that the new Four would be a “gritty film” featuring characters in “containment suits,” and some fans are probably thinking it’s just about clobberin’ time.

Kebbel’s remarks on the tweaked Doctor Doom are actually in keeping with what’s been revealed of the new Fantastic Four film so far. Another snippet from the Collider interview jibes well with what Jordan said about the reboot being a “gritty film,” as well as Teller’s claim that it won’t be “overly comic-book.”

“Yeah, it was cool, man,” Kebbel continued. “[Director Josh Trank], 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.”

Previously, it’s been speculated that the Fantastic Four reboot could crib heavily from the twisted vision put forth by noted internet madman Warren Ellis in his series Planetary. That talk of the Four having to “come to terms with what was given by this incident,” though, seems almost in line with another of Ellis’ takes on the FF. Without going too far into the details, Ellis scripted a dystopian take on the Marvel Universe in 1995 called Ruins. That version saw the Fantastic Four meet a much grimmer (no pun) fate.

Of course, it doesn’t seem too likely that Fox will have its rebooted Fantastic Four meet similar fates just as they hit the screen. That would make for a pretty short movie, and Fox wants a blockbuster to kickstart the franchise so it can capitalize on those licensing rights it bought from Marvel. It does, though, look like the Fantastic Four that takes the screen in August of next year will be something unlike anything we’ve seen yet. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen.

[Image courtesy of Marvel Comics]