British actor Toby Kebbell, who played Doom in the doomed 2015 reboot of Marvel‘s Fantastic Four, has been reflecting to Forbes about the disastrous reboot and he puts the blame on the people “in charge.” He says that “I think we were a victim of bad leadership and organisation.”
In what seems like an ill-fated move from the start, the powers that be decided to reboot a franchise that was less than a decade old during the superhero boom, when Marvel movies were dominating the box office. But the reboot didn’t tie-in with the MCU, so fans weren’t interested. A version of Fantastic Four and a sequel were released in 2005 and 2007, starring Chris Evans and Jessica Alba, with the first one making $333 million.
The 2015 reboot starred Michael B. Jordan, Miles Teller, Kate Mara and Jamie Bell. Kebbell played Victor Von Doom in what was apparently a rehash of the origin story we’d seen just a few years before. It made $167 million and has a scorching 9% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
“You know, I’ll be entirely honest… I don’t think we were a victim of timing, I think we were a victim of bad leadership and organisation,” Kebbell said. “I actually thought people in charge – I mean in charge, in charge, not people creating and working on set – I think there were script differences.”
“I’m just saying while I was there, there was a lot more that could have been done to make that a better thing. There’s fans for it. I truly believe it. I love so many bad guys, my performance as Koba (Planet of the Apes films), there are bad guys that live in my heart. So I truly believe Doom is an awesome villain and they kind of always just do something goofy with it. It’s a shame, it’s a shame. I wouldn’t have gone into it thinking, ‘Ah, this is going to be another terrible movie.’ I thought they had that.”
“At that time Marvel was already the Apex predator, it was already the one to beat, they were already the people to try to do the thing with. Why that effort wasn’t put in, I don’t know. But, yeah I know none of those people will call me back to work with them, so the truth as I see it is that more could have been done by the powers that be. So I hope, I truly hope, that someone does create a great version because I’m a big fan of Doom as a character. He’s awesome. So, yeah. I hope they do it just right.”
While another reboot of Fantastic Four seems unlikely at this stage, if you’re trying to keep up-to-date with the current state of the MCU, check out our guide to Phase 4.