Film Theory: Marvel Paid $100M for Him... Is it Worth It?

Marvel is paying upwards of 100 million dollars to bring Robert Downey Jr. back in Avengers Doomsday, and the news has lit the internet on fire. But the question on my mind is, was it worth it?

Well, we did the research and crunched the numbers, and the answer is gonna surprise you. But not for the reason you might think. Hello internet!

Welcome to Film Theory, the show that wants its own cool mask. Can we make that happen? Is that a thing we can do?

It's no secret that Marvel's in a bit of a lull right now. Tragedy struck and took one of their rising stars, COVID and the strike shut down the entire industry, and they had several underwhelming movies and disappointing Disney Plus shows back to back. Even Deadpool wasn't shy about making fun of them for this.

And just looking at our own numbers internally, Marvel content just doesn't perform like it used to. There was a time where we counted on MCU predictions and analysis as a backbone for our channel, but now? I love Marvel and covering their movies, but we have to pick and choose our battles because Marvel burned a lot of their trust with their audience.

I actually wasn't planning on doing anything related to Comic Con until I saw the news of Downey's astronomical payday, but this is just too big for Marvel and Disney and the film industry at large. We had to cover it. Yeah, in hopes of pulling an Uno reverse card to turn their fortunes around, continuing the momentum from Deadpool and Wolverine, Marvel announced that they're replacing Kang the Conqueror as the main villain for their next Avengers movies with the iconic Doctor Doom, played by Iron Man himself, the one and only Robert Downey Jr.

And my initial thoughts are, uh, huh? That certainly is a choice. I'd always thought that the clear and obvious pick was Cillian Murphy, and this certainly seems like Feige asked for the guy from Oppenheimer and his assistant misunderstood him.

Let's face it, this is not the worst thing you've caught me doing. Regardless, this is a bold choice for Marvel and Disney, especially considering just how many dump trucks of money they must have backed into RDJ's driveway to make this happen. Reports are saying that it is significantly more than $80 million, just for one guy for two movies.

So that leads me to the obvious question. Will this be worth it? And I don't just mean the money.

Is it worth it to bring RDJ back from the perspective of the fans, for the story that they're trying to tell, and for the amount of money they have to spend to make this happen? That is what I want to answer today, loyal theorists. Was bringing back Robert Downey Jr.

for Avengers Doomsday and Secret Wars worth it? Or are Marvel truly doomed? Suit up in your favorite armor and throw on your cloaks, chat, as we get to the bottom of this question.

Now, the very first thing that should be in the forefront of Marvel's mind when they make a decision like this, and for us when we ask whether or not it was worth it, it's not the money, but how it impacts their fanbase. Yeah, the fans are the single most important part of these franchises, so was it worth it to bring back RDJ for the fans? We mentioned at the top of the episode that the MCU has been in a bit of a rut, and both Marvel and Disney as a whole have needed a big PR reset.

Like, sometimes it's hard to remember because it seems like a billion years ago, but 2023 was an awful year for Disney. They had flop after flop with Ant-Man Quantumania, Indiana Jones, Haunted Mansion, The Marvels, Wish. It was rough, and that was just in the theaters.

There was bad news for Disney+, bad news for their hotels and parks, bad news for their corporate structure. They needed something to make us all forget about that and move on. To put it in YouTube terms, they needed an apology video, right?

Something to address the concerns and put people's fears at ease, preferably without a ukulele. This announcement of RDJ was their attempt at that, an attempt to shift the conversation, and when you put it hand in hand with Inside Out 2, a genuinely fantastic family movie, and Deadpool and Wolverine, a really solid movie that is hilarious and tugs at your heartstrings, it did the job. On the surface, every part of this decision is fan service.

First of all, Doom 100% makes sense as a villain choice. Kang just was not connecting with audiences, let alone all the controversy surrounding his actor, so a switch made sense, and there isn't a better choice than Doctor Doom. Doom is hands down one of Marvel's best villains, and consistently ranks in lists of the Top 10 Marvel Villains Ever, and oftentimes he takes home the gold.

He's just a great character. If you don't know, and you wouldn't if you've only seen Fantastic Four and Fant4Stick, Doom is the ruler of his own kingdom, genuinely loves his people and his family, and is a master of science, art, magic, and technology. But he's also arrogant, with an ego and hubris that outshines even Tony Stark.

He holds grudges and believes himself to be the best of the best, and ignores good advice just because it wasn't his idea. Like he's the sort of dude who wants to take over the world because he sincerely thinks that he can make it a better place for everybody if only he was in charge. He's also the main villain of Secret Wars, the story that they're probably adapting in these new Avengers movies, so sure, slam dunk here.

And on top of all of that, fans loved Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. If you want proof, one of my favorite things to do is go and watch audience reactions to big movies, and the cheer Downey got at the end of Endgame was insane in every video.

Getting him back into the MCU was always gonna be a big card that Marvel could play to renew interests with the fans, and on the surface, I think it was a good call. But if you dig just a little bit deeper, reactions to this news has been surprisingly mixed. Like sure, the initial reaction was wildly positive, the room at Comic-Con went absolutely ballistic when they announced it, there's a subset of fans out there that love this news and that's awesome for them, but there are others that don't.

I'm pretty tapped into the filmmaking side of YouTube, and Robert Downey Jr. has been more polarizing than I expected with a lot of people whose opinions I really respect. Some people love the idea, like Dan Murrell and New Rockstars, while others, like Jeremy Jahns, are way more skeptical.

But I can't help but see Marvel Studios bringing Robert Downey Jr. back into the MCU, is them kind of admitting that they don't know how to fix it, and others, like NandoVMovies, are just confused. As for me?

Well, on the face of it, I don't love this decision, but I'm cautiously optimistic. Marvel's really needed a shot in the arm, and I'm not sure this is what I would have done to do it, but if it works, it's really going to work, and I can't fault them for that. But the real risk that they're running with fans here is going to be what this is going to do to Doom the character.

This version of Doom is, without a doubt, going to be what the average moviegoer thinks of when they hear Dr Doom for years. They have one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, who previously played one of their biggest characters, hopping into this role. How could anyone look at Doom and not think about Downey after this?

But the flipside of that is that, because of the wide reach of these films, they have a massive influence over the perception of these characters throughout all of pop culture, including the comics. Wolverine was popular in the 80s and 90s, arguably he was THE most popular X-Man, but after the movies blew up, his characterization and appearance changed, leaning way more on the tall, dark, and handsome Hugh Jackman version of the character instead of the Canadian fur gremlin from the comics. The same thing goes for Iron Man, Spider-Man, Captain America, The Hulk, Thor, Thanos, Loki, all of these characters changed to match the little differences from the movies.

Changed costumes, tweaked origin stories, vibe shifts. But maybe the biggest example of the films influencing the comics here, though, is The Guardians of the Galaxy. In the comics, the version of the team that we all know with Peter Quill and Rocket and Groot and all of the others, they actually only got together in 2008 as a way to tackle cosmic threats before they became a huge problem.

It was played pretty straight, the characters had uniforms, they were facing serious threats, that sort of thing. But after the MCU movie came out, all of a sudden the team looked identical to the movies, with the same members wearing the same costumes, they leaned more into fun adventures and comedy and 80s nostalgia. For better or for worse, the MCU changed The Guardians of the Galaxy forever.

So if Downey plays Doom as a character way different from the one from the comics, something closer to Tony Stark than Victor Von Doom, that's going to truly change this character's perception by the mainstream and hardcore fans probably aren't going to like that. And it's also going to probably be potentially really confusing for the casual fan. They may look at Downey's Doom and think, wait, huh?

Why is Iron Man green and suddenly bad now? And what if they want to bring Doom back in the future with a different actor? I do not envy the job that they're going to have to do.

That is just going to be an even bigger headache, unless they're comfortable shelling out $50 million or more for Downey every time he comes back for a movie, which is just not sustainable. And so now, with all of that in mind, we have to ask, from the fan's perspective, was this worth it for Marvel? At this point, it's hard to say.

In the short term, yes, absolutely this will be worth it. Alongside the success of Deadpool and Wolverine, this casting decision instantly changed the conversation around Avengers 5 and the MCU. But in the long term?

A lot has to work for this to go well, including the story of this character, which brings me to the next point. Is this worth it for the story? For the narrative?

Was it worth it to change the story to star Doctor Doom? So the first hurdle they need to clear here is whether or not there's enough time to build up Doom as the big bad for this story. At first, you might think the answer's no.

I mean, Thanos was teased for years before he became the main villain for the Avengers. How are they gonna make that work for Doom in just one movie? Well, counterpoint, did they really build up Thanos for years?

Think about it, he was in a post-credits scene in the Avengers where he smiled, there was like a two minute scene in Guardians that everyone forgets about, and then like I guess Gamora and Nebula mention him sometimes, and he had one line in the Age of Ultron post-credits scene. Most of the real build up for the Infinity Saga was for the Infinity Stones. Thanos himself didn't really become a character until Infinity War, and no one thinks that that didn't work.

So applying that to Doom in the Multiverse Saga? Well Marvel certainly has been building up the multiverse, for better or for worse, and Doom might have some screen time in Fantastic Four First Steps, and even if he doesn't, this specific team of producers, writers, and directors have made quote-unquote new villains like this work in the past. Plus, the story that they're building up to here, Secret Wars?

Like I mentioned earlier, it's main villain is Doom, and sees him ascending to godhood as he salvages parts of different universes to make a new universe called Battleworld. Honestly, given everything that they've been building up in the Multiverse Saga, that sounds like the perfect setup for this upcoming movie. They could take bits and pieces from the MCU, the Foxmen, the Sony Spider-Man movies, and all of their old obscure Marvel films and make an ultimate crossover.

So yeah, the switch to Doom here makes sense, but the real question here for our narrative concerns comes down to what type of Doom they're going to do. See, the Victor Von Doom from the comics is a really unique character in that we almost never see his face. He was horribly scarred in an accident, and prefers to stay inside his suit of armor, Darth Vader style.

This is absolutely a direction Marvel could go with here, casting RDJ in a glorified voice role like the Mandalorian, and keeping the character entirely separate from everything else Downey did in the MCU. They could keep him under that mask. But let's be real, there's no way they're doing this.

They did not pay $100 million or more for a name on a poster. They want Downey and his face in this movie for as long as they can have him. No, the second and far more likely option is that Doctor Doom is going to be showing his face and often, and that he's going to look like RDJ.

Even more straightforwardly, he could just be a variant of Tony Stark, but evil. Someone who wanted to put a suit of armor around the world and succeeded, or went down a darker path to make it happen. A lot of smart people here on YouTube have already connected those dots and thrown out that idea, and well, I'm mixed on it.

While it would be very inaccurate for the comics, and as we've already said, this interpretation of Doom is going to be what most people associate with the character for a long time, I also have to admit that there's a lot of incredible story potential here. Having this villain literally wearing the face of the greatest hero of the MCU, right off the bat, that is storytelling gold. Also, consider this.

How would Spider-Man react seeing his mentor and hero twisted into an evil dictator? How would this Tony Doom react to seeing this bright eyed spider kid light up seeing him and then get devastated when he realizes the dark path he went down? And that's to say nothing of other characters like Banner, or Thor, or hell, even Happy Hogan react to seeing their longtime friend and ally become the worst villain in the multiverse.

There's also a lot of potential for meta storytelling here, with the newer heroes of the MCU like Shang-Chi, Ms. Marvel, and Moon Knight battling an incarnation of the old MCU, someone who represents the first few phases that is currently a shadow looming over their head. Same thing with multiversal characters from older, pre-MCU movies like Wolverine, Tobey Spider-Man, and Blade, they also get the opportunity to go head to head against the same representation of the MCU that made their movies obsolete.

All of that is only possible by having an actor like RDJ take this role because of the history that he has with this brand, and we know for a fact that it can be very effective. We saw a similar, albeit much less serious example of this in Deadpool and Wolverine. Here Chris Evans shows up, and we're initially led to believe that he's a multiversal variant of Marvel's Boy Scout Captain America, only to reveal him to be the foul-mouthed womanizer Johnny Storm.

That's about as far away from Steve Rogers as you can get, and I don't know about you, but Evans saying Flame On got one of the biggest reactions in my theater because it was so different than what we expected. Not to mention the rant full of colorful language he goes on at the end of the movie. All of that only worked because of the context of Chris Evans' previous role as Captain America, the same thing that RDJ's Doom can tap into here with dramatic stakes.

So will this be worth it from a narrative perspective? Obviously they have to pull it off, they have to make it good, but yeah. It could well be worth it because of the sheer amount of unique possibilities RDJ can bring to this character, and who's to say they can't recast Doom later to explore more stories?

For this moment and this story, yes, it is worth it to drop all of this cash. Which leads us to our final point, all about the Benjamins. Was it worth it to pay this enormous price tag to bring RDJ back to the MCU?

Yeah, this might seem like a weird thing to save until last, but while the fan and the story perspective probably have the biggest impact on Marvel, this has the biggest impact on the worth of it for Disney. Just so we're 100% on the same page here, the official information we have for Downey's paycheck is that it will be quote, significantly more than the $80 million being paid to the Russo brothers to return to direct these two movies, on top of what is likely a hefty back end for both films. If you don't know, a back end deal in Hollywood basically means that an actor or director or whatever will take home a percentage of what the movie makes at the box office.

Typically, only big names can make deals like this since it will likely net them more money than an upfront paycheck. This is actually where Robert Downey Jr. made a lot of his money as Iron Man.

There are rumors that on top of his $75 million salary for Avengers Endgame, Downey negotiated a back enddeal that netted him another $55 million. While these are just rumors, honestly, that sounds about right for the amount of star power and importance Downey had for the MCU franchise at that point. It also makes the idea that he's getting upwards of $100 million for Doomsday and Secret Wars absolutely realistic.

Also, it's just mind-blowing to me there are movies, really good movies, made for less money than they're paying this guy. That is just, it's insane. Anyway.

So, with all of that in mind, is that huge paycheck worth just one Robert Downey Jr. for two movies? Well, from a box office perspective, abso-frickin-lutely.

If there's one thing Marvel's great at, it's mining the nostalgia of their fans and making fun movies out of it. Just look at their biggest movies since Endgame. Hype for Multiverse of Madness lent on cameos and fan-casting that people wanted for ages like Professor X and Mr Fantastic, No Way Home absolutely blew up because they brought back the Maguire and Garfield Spideys and their villains, letting them all interact and giving us a glimpse into these worlds after their movies ended, and of course, Deadpool and Wolverine is just a giant love letter to the Fox X-Men movies, built off the nostalgia of bringing back Hugh Jackman as Logan.

Clearly, putting these characters in new, exciting, and different stories sells. That, on top of the love that Downey has, and whatever Avengers, X-Men, Spider-Man, and Fantastic Four characters are going to show up in these movies, it's worth that price tag easy. Both Doomsday and Secret Wars are going to easily top $2 billion at the box office, and if they don't, Marvel has a bigger problem than casting.

But this isn't the whole story. Right here, right now, we're only talking about the movies. Don't get me wrong, that's an important part of this franchise, but they're not the whole story.

See, decisions like this are important to Disney as an entire business. Movies make up a shockingly small slice of the Disney pie when it comes to how they make their money. In one of their most recent earnings reports, Disney made just $1.

63 billion from what it calls content sales and licensing. That's basically the movies it puts out in theaters, DVD and Blu-ray sales, digital video rentals, video on demand, that sort of thing. To be entirely fair, this was after a slow year with a lot of flops, but if you look at this in comparison with other parts of their business, it's wild to see the difference.

Take a look at their Experiences segment, that's stuff like their theme parks and their merchandise. During this same period, Experiences made a whopping $9. 13 billion, almost 40% of all of the money the company made.

That right there, that's what Disney really cares about because it's their bread and butter. This is where the real money from the movies gets made and why the mouse cares so much about gathering IP like a dragon hoarding gold. But more importantly, keeping these IP healthy and important, relevant to pop culture is a huge part of how the Disney Experiences division makes their money.

It's why they wanted Marvel to begin with. See, back in the day, Disney always had good franchises that they could market to families, young girls and teenage girls thanks to stuff like Pixar, Walt Disney Animation, The Disney Princesses and Disney Channel. They bought Marvel and Star Wars to lock down the young and teenage boy demographics because they already had pre-built in audiences with decades of name recognition.

And thanks to the parks and merch, the return on this investment for these IP has been HUGE. In 2024, Disney reported that they'd made $13. 2 billion in profit from the Marvel IP.

That means that after accounting for the cost of making all of the movies and manufacturing the merch and building the multiple $500 million Avengers Campus Parks, they have made over $13 billion. Just having Doctor Doom be the villain in these next two movies would absolutely jumpstart this character in the merch and in the parks. Both Ultron and Thanos saw huge pushes after their villain debuts in the MCU.

Just a couple examples off the top of my head, Thanos and his goons were the bad guys in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 and he was also dancing his way through an entire Fortnite season, while Ultron was the main villain in Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite. I actually went to E3 2017 where they had a big booth for this game and a life-size Ultron statue that I thought was just so cool.

An even more recent and probably better example here is Deadpool and Wolverine. Both of these characters have been introduced as cast members that walk around the Avengers Campus Parks, host events, and that you can meet and take pictures with, with the characterizations from these movies. Casting RDJ as Doom not only gives him the awareness boost of being the main villain in a pair of Avengers movies, but also instantly adds the charisma Downey has to that character.

He's basically prepackaged for all forms of other media to adapt. A perfect face for a shirt, a mug, a poster, and a cast member that can be transplanted into the parks. So, to answer the question at the top of this theory, at the heart of this discussion, was bringing back Robert Downey Jr.

worth it? Yes. There's no doubt that this is going to be a risky move for Marvel and Disney, but the potential return on investment in terms of the narrative, the character, and the money spent to make this is the right decision for them to make right now.

But. . .

Disney? Marvel? Listen to me.

Sit down. You have to make sure you do this right. You have to respect this character and the fans who love him or this will blow up in your face, and if you want proof of that, all you have to do is look at Star Wars.

This is a brand that you haven't been treating as well as you should have, and what have the results been? Unenthusiastic fans, disappointing shows and box office bombs, parks that aren't packed and themed hotels that fail so hard they have to shut down. That is what happens when you don't put thought into how you make these decisions, and if you do the same here, with this incredibly important piece of Marvel history, well, it'll be your doom.

But hey, that's just a theory. A FILM THEORY. And cut!

And if you want to see how we'd fix those Star Wars problems, check out my video talking about how to save Star Wars.