Dr. Doom And Gloom: Robert Downey Jr.’s Post-MCU Career, In Memoriam

Was Dolittle really that bad? I mean, it was very bad, for sure, but it also came out in January 2020, and after a soft opening weekend managed to gross a bit more money than you might expect, given its reputation, before it more or less disappeared from the public consciousness in a flood of pandemic news and worries. The next time we saw Robert Downey Jr., he was in Oppenheimer, a massive hit that also managed to win him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Even for a guy who has undergone more than his share of comebacks, this was a pretty impressive one. Five years after the release of Avengers: Endgame, his final turn as Tony Stark in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Downey had essentially erased all memory of his worst-regarded big-budget movie of the past 20 years, with a Christopher Nolan smash and an Oscar.

Now, as it turns out, Dolittle and Oppenheimer are it; Downey has essentially called time on his post-Marvel movie career. Over the weekend at San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel triumphantly announced that Downey would return to their universe – not to revive Tony Stark (at least not for now; a movie called Secret Wars will arouse suspicion that Tony may indeed be back in some form) but to play Dr. Doom, one of the biggest Marvel Comics villains to have yet to invade the MCU. (Previous, non-MCU versions of the Fantastic Four included unsuccessful stabs at this character.) Downey will star in both Avengers: Doomsday in 2026, and Avengers: Secret Wars the following year.

“New mask, same task.”

Robert Downey Jr. surprises Hall H to announce his return to the MCU as Doctor Doom. pic.twitter.com/j1SEjzse3p

— Marvel Studios (@MarvelStudios) July 28, 2024

Downey may yet have time for some other roles that will get him into additional film releases in 2025, 2026, and 2027. Dr. Doom will presumably, like Thanos before him, not become a nine-picture MCU character with supporting roles and cameos. Though anything is possible at this point, it’s hard to picture this role dominating Downey’s schedule like Iron Man/Tony Stark did throughout the 2010s. After Downey’s 2008 comeback via Iron Man with a Tropic Thunder chaser (resulting in his second Oscar nomination), he initially made hay with another franchise (Sherlock Holmes), a big-star buddy comedy (Due Date), and some Oscar-bait dramas that didn’t work (The Soloist; The Judge). But from 2009 until 2019, the vast majority of his output was Marvel movies, especially as the decade wore on. When he played Dr. Dolittle, it was his first non-Stark role in over five years.  

Technically, his Oppenheimer part wasn’t his last non-Marvel role even in this narrow window; he played a whopping seven characters in the recent TV adaptation of The Sympathizer, giving him the opportunity to stretch, and score the show’s lone Emmy nomination in the process. But even given the pandemic break, the fact that a star with his level of wealth doesn’t need to work regularly, and his strong awards hit rate, this is a paltry between-Marvel CV. When he was introduced as the “best actor in the world” at Comic-Con, it felt like protesting too much; would the best actor in the world really want to do eleven Marvel movies in 20 years, and so little else?

Look, Downey will probably be good as Dr. Doom. He’s usually good, and across nine movies as Tony Stark, he rarely felt like he was phoning it in – even when that was literally, winkingly what his character was doing in Spider-Man: Homecoming. He’s also a movie star, even when disappearing into a character; there is going to be common stylistic ground between many of his performances, so what’s the difference if he happens to play a couple of Marvel guys rather than a couple of other charismatic guys with drinking/daddy/sarcasm issues? If he doesn’t need the money – and he doesn’t – maybe we should be forced to conclude that he’s doing this because he really, really wants to. (On the other hand: Some people’s need for money goes well beyond others.)

Yet there’s something that feels deeply defeatist about Downey finding his latest challenge within the confines of a diminished MCU. In the press for Oppenheimer, he talked about working with Nolan providing a much-needed reset for his career after playing Stark for so long. Was his recent work just a little recharge before re-entering the fray? Or did he really just mean, let me get my Oscar before I’m too old; then I can resume business as usual. At this point, even the much-promised Sherlock Holmes 3 would feel like a refreshing change of pace.

Perhaps Downey sees The Sympathizer as all the change of pace he needed, in one ambitious package. The Vietnamese lead character in that miniseries tells Claude, a CIA operative played by Downey: “You stand out like a sore thumb in this town.” It’s true to this particular Downey character, a red-headed American in the midst of the Vietnam War. It’s also true to Downey himself, the rich man who got richer playing an even-richer man, donning various guises in a miniseries from Park Chan-wook; it’s nowhere near the world we’ve become accustomed to seeing him in (even though he had a great line in playing mid-2000s paranoiacs for great directors).

As with Oppenheimer, it’s almost disorienting to see him in something so formally sophisticated; it’s almost as if he felt he had to alter his appearance just to make sense in a smaller, weirder part again. It’s also reminiscent of Tropic Thunder, of all things, where he plays an actor so self-seriously dedicated to his craft that he shapeshifts into another race. It’s nervy, possibly ill-advised work that appears to reveal a preference for Downey getting away from himself, even (or especially) as his most famous persona gets bigger. It’s the actor-versus-movie-star battle writ larger than life. Maybe playing Dr. Doom is a way to do this in even plainer sight, coming back to the scene of his career-abandonment crimes in what’s sure to be an eye-catching disguise. He may yet pull it off. But it’s difficult not to think of the times throughout his career when Downey could slip in and out of great movies in his own inimitable skin.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.