Getting that sort of nuance in a movie is really difficult.
I remember watching the first X-Men move. I was in college, but home on vacation, I saw it with an old friend who was a big comics fan and a particular fan of the X-men. We had a great time and both agreed it was the first movie to capture the _feel_ of comics on the big screen.
And yet . . .
It gets the character of Scott Summers badly wrong -- and he's a tough character for some of the same reasons that make Doom complicated. He's the senior X-man, and can be a bit of a prig, and sometimes overly invested in his authority. But he's invested because he has no life outside the X-men. Both because the group is his surrogate family and because he constantly fears that he's not _capable_ of life outside the X-men. That his powers will be accidentally destructive.
The movie captures none of that and doesn't even try -- there isn't space for that sort of emotion within the 2 hours of a movie.
I appreciate your description of Doom, and I would love to see a movie attempt to do him justice, but I've become convinced that many of the strengths of comic books don't translate well to movies -- and that weight of character history is one of them.
Getting that sort of nuance in a movie is really difficult.
I remember watching the first X-Men move. I was in college, but home on vacation, I saw it with an old friend who was a big comics fan and a particular fan of the X-men. We had a great time and both agreed it was the first movie to capture the _feel_ of comics on the big screen.
And yet . . .
It gets the character of Scott Summers badly wrong -- and he's a tough character for some of the same reasons that make Doom complicated. He's the senior X-man, and can be a bit of a prig, and sometimes overly invested in his authority. But he's invested because he has no life outside the X-men. Both because the group is his surrogate family and because he constantly fears that he's not _capable_ of life outside the X-men. That his powers will be accidentally destructive.
The movie captures none of that and doesn't even try -- there isn't space for that sort of emotion within the 2 hours of a movie.
I appreciate your description of Doom, and I would love to see a movie attempt to do him justice, but I've become convinced that many of the strengths of comic books don't translate well to movies -- and that weight of character history is one of them.