New Doomsday Quotes Suggest Robert Downey Jr.'s Doctor Doom Face Combines On-Set Acting With A Digital Performance Layer

New quotes from the Doomsday directors have completely changed my expectations for what Robert Downey Jr. will look like in this movie, and I want to break down everything we just learned. Up until now I had assumed that Victor von Doom would spend most of his screen time inside the armored mask, with maybe some latex scarring applied to his face for the rare unmasked moments. That assumption no longer holds.

Empire Magazine's Comic-Con recap includes new quotes from Joe Russo and Kevin Feige

Empire Magazine this week ran a write-up from Chris Hewitt recapping San Diego Comic-Con, including exclusive quotes from the Doomsday cast and crew that are only now going to print. Joe Russo tells Empire, "It's an incredibly ambitious film, and it's by far and away the biggest crossover that Marvel's ever seen. It's an absolute collision of three gigantic universes coming together in the face of a very serious existential threat."

The article also frames the challenge of adapting Doom for the screen, writing that "Doom has never been done right" and that this is the challenge the Russos, Kevin Feige and Downey faced. Feige tells Empire, "He's the greatest actor of his time, and he can pull off anything. Robert found something fairly quickly." Joe Russo adds that because Doom rarely removes his mask in this movie, "it's really elegant work that he's doing... he had to think a lot about his body and his eyes and how to convey emotion and intensity in his movement and very subtle eye movement."

The Russo brothers confirm Doom's performance is a combination of on set acting and a digital layer

The most interesting detail comes from how Downey actually pulled the performance off. While a Doom costume was briefly on display at the Marvel booth at Comic-Con, Joe Russo confirms the performance itself is "a combination of things," including performance capture, something Downey saw firsthand with James Spader on Age of Ultron and Josh Brolin in Infinity War and Endgame. Anthony Russo adds, "I think Downey had a lot of the same fun on this with Doom. He was on set performing everything. Because of the way we're creating the character with a digital layer, we also get a second pass at him in terms of what we can do on a digital level. There was a lot of experimental performance. It's incredible, but also unexpected. What he brings to the table, you couldn't see coming." Joe Russo also says there is "zero similarities" between Tony Stark and Downey's Doom.

That changes things for me. I had been picturing latex scarring like Heath Ledger wore as the Joker in The Dark Knight, which combined applied prosthetics, face paint and a full vocal and physical performance to make Ledger nearly unrecognizable. But if the Russos are describing on set acting layered with a full digital pass built from performance capture, that suggests Downey needed to be in some kind of fractal mocap suit with reference dots on his face, the same approach worn by James Spader as Ultron and Josh Brolin as Thanos. Mark Ruffalo did something similar as the Hulk back in 2012's Avengers, though Downey himself never needed to share a soundstage with Ruffalo during that work.

Downey has already been digitally altered twice before in this franchise

Downey has been transformed with visual effects in a Marvel movie before. The first 20 minutes of Avengers: Endgame digitally reduced his face, neck, chest and arms to show how emaciated Tony had become after nearly starving in space for a few weeks. In the opening scene of Captain America: Civil War, the Russo brothers de-aged Downey to show Tony as he looked in his early twenties. Marvel arguably started this whole approach of thinning or altering an iconic actor's face with the skinny Steve Rogers effect in 2011's Captain America: The First Avenger.

So I think what we can expect here is something similar in method: digital CGI that lessens and erases parts of Doom's face and head, rather than a straightforward prosthetic job.

What Doctor Doom's ruined face might actually look like on screen

A few iconic examples come to mind for what this kind of digital erasure could produce. Aaron Eckhart's scarred face as Two-Face in The Dark Knight burned away his skin, cheek and muscle tissue to expose his jaw and gums. Javier Bardem's eroded jaw as Raoul Silva in Skyfall showed corroded teeth and gums after a hydrogen cyanide pill, with his cheek sagging inward and his eye socket drooping. There are also famous examples of erasing the nose entirely, like Red Skull in Captain America: The First Avenger and Infinity War, and Ralph Fiennes' nose-less Voldemort in the Harry Potter films.

From what we know so far, Doom's eyes and the tissue around them are still intact. We can see both green eyes, his eyelids and his eyelashes, and the Russo brothers made clear there is going to be a lot of eye acting in this movie. His mouth also seems mostly intact, since in the trailer dialogue he pronounces sounds like s, m, b, v and back-of-mouth k sounds clearly, and those are hard to produce if the lips, teeth or tongue are damaged. That really just leaves the nose, upper cheeks, ears, neck and the top and back of the skull as areas that could be scarred or missing. My guess is there's going to be a huge gash across Doom's face leaving a massive concave scar where his nose used to be, running across the side of his head, possibly burning away his hair and exposing his skull.

The comics have argued about how disfigured Doom should be for decades

In Jonathan Hickman's Secret Wars number three, with art by Esad Ribic, there's a moment where a memory wiped Susan Storm, now God Emperor Doom's wife and consort in Battleworld, comforts him over his inability to remove his mask and show people his disfigured face. That scene reflects a long running disagreement in the comics themselves. Jack Kirby's original version had the college explosion, caused when Ben Grimm tinkered with Victor's experimental device, leave Victor with only a minor scar, still an otherwise handsome man, with his vanity being the reason he hid behind the mask.

Stan Lee, writing in The Mighty Thor number 182, preferred Doom to be horrifically disfigured, described through the horrified reactions of characters who glimpsed his face. Later, John Byrne in Fantastic Four number 278 fused both ideas: Victor suffered only a minor scar in the original explosion, but vanity drove him to a Tibetan monastery to forge a mask, which he then put on while it was still hot, ruining the rest of his face.

Why the PG-13 rating won't stop Marvel from showing serious gore

Avengers: Doomsday is going to be PG-13, but the MPA now lets major films get away with a lot of violence and suggested gore as long as the amount of red blood and bloody tissue shown on screen is limited. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness graphically imploded Black Bolt's skull with brains oozing from his eyes and nostrils, but that was mostly contained within his headgear. Reed Richards was spaghettified and his head popped, but it was rendered in scarlet magic rather than blood. Captain Peggy Carter was split at the midsection, but the camera stayed on her face while the rest played out of focus in the background without visible blood.

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith stayed PG-13 in 2005 despite showing Hayden Christensen's face on fire, but the MPA has different standards now, especially with these movies needing to perform well in overseas markets like Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, China and Brazil. So even if Doom's face is burned away, as long the scar tissue is rendered gray, black or brown rather than red, the film could show his cracked skull and pulsing brain inside a barrier of glowing green magic and still keep its PG-13 rating.

My theory that Downey took this role chasing an awards level transformation

I actually think Downey took this role to face the challenge of being completely unrecognizable as an iconic villain. When actors take on past iconic villains in the comic book or fantasy genre, whether that's Heath Ledger's Joker, Josh Brolin's Thanos, Ralph Fiennes' Voldemort, Bill Nighy's Davy Jones, Bill Skarsgard's Pennywise, Andy Serkis' Gollum, or Darth Vader mask on or off, that kind of physically transformative, demanding performance seems to be what is exciting Downey about this role. I think he wants to go for an Oscar as Victor von Doom.

As for how he got the scars in this new continuity, the second trailer hints at a past tragedy, with a line describing how everything Doom loved was taken from him. I think we can assume from that trailer footage that whatever tragedy took Victor's wife and child is also what left him scarred and physically broken.

Rumor rundown: an unconfirmed leak claims Doom blames Steve Rogers and kills his son

From here I want to shift into acknowledging some unsubstantiated leaked plot information going around, and this is not a confirmed leak, so treat it with a big pinch of salt. The description claims that later in the movie, after the heroes confront Doom on his Earth, Doom reveals that Steve Rogers' presence in their universe triggered an incursion, which also led to the death of Doom's family. Doom reportedly became obsessed with stopping the incursion, ran dangerous experiments, one of which killed his family and left him disfigured, forcing him into the armor and mask.

I have some follow up questions about this. Doom's castle is clearly still intact in all the trailer footage, so whatever killed his family and scarred him would have had to be rebuilt or happened somewhere else, and it's unclear why his wife and child would have been present at wherever those experiments were happening unless some kind of sorcery targeted people close to him. It also seems odd that Doom, who is smart enough to know his own obsession caused the accident, would blame Steve Rogers rather than himself.

The bigger reason I've doubted this leak from the start is the claim that Doom kills Steve's son in front of him as revenge. We don't know how old that child will be in this movie, but while Disney and Marvel movies can show extreme violence and suggested gore within a PG-13 rating, Disney and the MPA are far more protective about showing fatal violence against children on screen. Revenge of the Sith showed children killed in 2005, but that was before Disney owned Star Wars, and standards have shifted since. The 2022 Obi-Wan Kenobi series revisited Order 66 on Disney Plus, but the MPA doesn't govern streaming, and that episode carried a content warning tied to the timing of its release. Peter Parker being dusted in Infinity War also isn't comparable to vengeful murder shown on screen.

It's possible the killing of Steve's son is actually Doom pruning the child with the Ultimate Nullifier device seen in the toy line, which could be a more sanitized erasure from existence rather than outright murder, with the possibility the child reappears in Battleworld. Either way, I think that detail in the leak is either a misinterpretation or a fabricated addition layered onto otherwise accurate information. I don't think Disney, in what needs to be its most important movie of the year, will show the savage murder of a child in cold blood on screen. If there is a death like this, I expect it to be more sanitized and fantastical than the leak describes.

What do you think Doctor Doom's face should actually look like once the mask comes off?