Marvel Movie Pitch

DOOM

Victor Von Doom is a young rebel fighting against The Baron, a petty warlord who rules the small nation of Latveria. Victor is not a hero, but a rebel leader fighting a war, and he knows it. He uses sorcery learned from his parents and science he gleans from constantly reading tech specs from AIM, Stark Industries, and Roxxon.

(Get Roma writers, actors, and directors to include good Roma depiction and representation as one of the groups within Latveria)

Victor deposes the Baron, and steps back from being in charge afterward to allow the people of Latveria to create a democracy. Now free from war, and somethign of an international celebrity for his fight for freedom, he receives a scholarship to Empire State University in New York. Here he meets Reed Richards, who becomes his natural rival, and Ben Grimm, who thinks Victor is a bully and war criminal.

Reed is working to build a rocket to examine cosmic rays well beyond the atmosphere. Victor is building a machine to allow him to speak with the dead, in the hopes of using it to help Latvarians recover from war losses. Each sees a flaw in the design of the other, and neither believes THEIR calculations are wrong.

Afraid Victor is the one who is right, Ben Grimm sabotages the Doom Projector, expecting it to just short circuit. Instead it explodes, badly damaging Victor’s face. Victor is expelled from the school and, no longer a student, his visa to stay in the U.S. is pulled. (Yes, I get why some people hate this. But Ben sabotaging Victor is, currently, comics canon. If we want to move away from that, some OTHERstudent could sabotage him.)

Angry and scarred, Victor goes to Tibet to find the Ancient One, who he has heard can heal him. He fails to find her, collapsing on a mountainside, and is rescued by a secretive group of sages who strive to blend magic and technology, but wish to do so without the rest of the world finding out. Victor joins their order, and becomes a master of this technomancy. He begins working on a suit of armor he claims will be the “mystic equivalent of Iron Man,” thought the process takes a long time and the armor takes days to cool. The sages, impressed by his acumen, grant him the doctorate degree he was denied by ESU.

News arrives that suggests Latveria is collapsing into near civil war, unable to cover its international debts and having no institutions or traditions to support building a democracy. (In the background, another news piece suggest Reed Richards is lost in space with friends during an unauthorized spaceflight.) Victor anonymously begins a grassroots movement over the internet and via astral projection to bring peace to Latveria.

His efforts are stymied by Prince Rudolf, who claims to be the rightful monarch of Latveria, and who controls the sorcerous Mephistopheles Guard. In a techno-crystal ball conversation between the two, Victor warns Rudolf he will not allow some faker to take over the country. Rudolf warns Victor he is not as safely secluded as he thinks.

Then the Mephistopheles Guard attacks the Tibetan sages, their sorcery and modern weapons firing magic bullets too much for the sages’ defenses. Victor rushes to put on his technomagic armor to save the sages… but the last piece, the control system mask, has not yet cooled. Gritting his teeth, Victor puts it on anyway, and we hear searing and smoke, but no cry of pain.

Victor defeats the remaining attackers, but nearly all the sages are dead. The few that remain thank Victor for saving them, and pledge their loyalty to him.

Victor goes to Latveria, where he blasts his way into the Royal palace, and confronts Rudolf. Rudolf promises that defeating him is pointless, his diabolical master will just recruit another pawn to take control of the country.

“Let them come.” says Victor. “And they, too, can meet their Doom.”

Von Doom sits on the throne. He orders Rudolf’s political prisoners released. They come to the throne room, and suggest Von Doom should step down and let them establish an autonomous collective. The politicos begin to should louder and louder, until Von Doom silences them.

They have clearly failed Latveria, Von Doom notes. He shall not. He will modernize, protect, and get to the root of who was behind Rudolf and possibly the baron’s, supernatural plots.

And no-one, notes Doctor Doom, shall stop me.

Credits.

End Credit Scene. We see the last few seconds of Doctor Doom’s taking over speech on a TV, which is surrounded in Egyptian iconography. There’s a date listed (day the movie is released).

There are two voices.

“So, we jump to before this moment, and stop him?”

“No, too risky, We’ll have to travel to just after this, and see if we con convince him to see things out way.”