Quote Originally Posted by Michael Watkins View Post
Untrue. I can think of several who have done this.
Ultron
Not many good stories or moments between Ultron and Dr. Strange, Ultron and Spider-Man.

Dracula
Ditto for Spider-Man.

Kang
Ditto for Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, X-Men.

The Wrecking Crew
Not for Dr. Strange and X-Men.

Mephisto
There's just a handful of good stories with Mephisto (the Silver Surfer ones, Triumph and Torment, Infinity Gauntlet as Thanos' court jester). Aside from that he's an annoying obnoxious character.

Norman Osborn
Norman hasn't been a Marvel-wide villain for years now, and even when he was, I don't know if many of the stories he was involved in was the best Avengers stories.

This isn’t the 70s any more.
Doom's best stories came in the 80s: Secret Wars '84, Triumph and Torment, Interlude, Emperor Doom, the Iron Man time-travel stories.

Quote Originally Posted by Michael Watkins View Post
The special effects weren’t there, yet.
That applies to Doom and the Fantastic Four too no? Like the special effects weren't quite advanced in the Tim Story FF movies. And the failed 2015 movie was an issue of poor aesthetic choices made by the director who wanted to do a totally idiosyncratic approach to the character and settings.

Whoever said that about Wonder Woman was a sexist.
The fact is it was based on the same reasoning as Doom not working in live-action simply because everything before had failed. I am not saying that the reasoning isn't valid at all but it is if it's not qualified or considered in context. Fact is virtually everything and every character was dismissed because "it didn't work before". That's not a valid reason.

I’d argue that the last few FF movies would have worked if they had left Doom out. The problem was the lame threat. Everyone liked Johnny and Ben.
The problem is also miscasting, misunderstanding, lack of sense of tone. Trying to make Reed and Sue into a cliche couple with drama and problems. Mashing together Doom's origins on top of FF's, making Galactus a sentient Gas Cloud. Making Reed into a nerdy kid rather than a type A Feynman-esque Scientist which is what he is in the comics. There are a host of problems in those movies. And even then I'd hardly call "a lame threat" in those movies as a problem. Considered as plot it's not lame at all. I did like Larry Fishburne's vocal performance as Silver Surfer for what it's worth. And Mike Chiklis as Ben Grimm. There's also problems of casting. If you want to do Doctor Doom as a major villain and do the Reed Richards rivalry justice, you can't cast Ioan Gruffudd and Julian McMahon, the former a low-key British actor whose biggest claim until then was the male lead in the 101 Dalmations sequel, and the other a TV star. You want to know why Batman and Joker worked in the movies because they cast big name actors to play those parts. If you beleive Joker is a great villain, that belief needs to be reflected in who is cast in that role and Joker has Nicholson, Ledger, Phoenix (and Leto who for what it's worth did win an Oscar and while miscast in the part is on paper a talented actor). You need big name actors to do Reed and Doom justice in live-action.

Admittedly, there are problems with doing Doctor Doom in live action that don't exist with Magneto, Loki and even Thanos. Namely that this is a character who spends most of his time behind an iron mask. That's hard to sell and pitch to a big actor. And it's not like Darth Vader because you are supposed to see and recognize Doom's human and expressive eyes at all times. Magneto, Loki and Thanos (via CGI motion-cap) have faces to express emotion and so on. Whereas Doom needs an actor with a strong body language, sense of gesture, ability to move with costume, and vocal performance...you need a Boris Karloff type. The nearest equivalent would be Edward Norton as the Leper King Baldwin in Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Jerusalem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbIL6nHjG78