Before Robert Downey Jr. made his surprise reveal at Comic-Con International: San Diego that he was playing Doctor Doom in Marvel Studios' Avengers: Doomsday movie, he shared the backstage area inside Comic-Con International: San Diego's Hall H with the cast of The Fantastic Four: First Steps - but the director of that film says he won't actually be in that movie, despite being the team's most iconic villain.

And it's the right move.

"Doom's a great character, but he takes up a lot of air," director Matt Shakman told Entertainment Weekly's Christian Holub recently. "Other film adaptations have done both an origin story and Doom. We're doing neither, and that allows us to look at them from a fresh perspective."

The subtitle of this new Fantastic Four film is 'First Steps,' but it's also the fifth try at a successful FF film in the past 31 years. In all three of those, it had a variation of the FF's origin and the debut of a new Doctor Doom - the only one that didn't was a sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. And in many ways, Marvel Studios' The Fantastic Four: First Steps is doing a sequel - or at least skipping past the obvious bits, to tell something new.

How (and when) Marvel Studios has skipped the obvious villain and obvious origin

This isn't the first time that Marvel Studios has avoided the obvious. They have so far avoided Spider-Man's most recognizable villain Norman Osborn/Green Goblin in three movies to date, making his eventual debut and first clash with his adversary its own event - as should the Fantastic Four's first meeting with Robert Downey Jr.'s Doctor Doom... in, presumably, 2026's Avengers: Doomsday.

"In Spider-Man’s very specific case, where there have been two retellings of that origin in the last whatever it’s been – 13 years – for us we are going to take it for granted that people know that, and the specifics," Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige said in 2015 ahead of Spider-Man: Homecoming. "It will not be an origin story. But, with great power comes great responsibility. It is inherent to who his character is. But we want to reveal it in different ways and spend much more time focusing on this young high school kid in the MCU dealing with his powers." 

Take that kind of thinking, and it fits neatly into what they're doing for The Fantastic Four: First Steps - and possibly other franchises it's about to reboot. 

DC has done it before to a lesser degree - with Man of Steel avoiding Lex Luthor until later movies (but keeping it an origin story), and James Gunn saying that 2025's Superman movie will be avoiding an origin story (but not avoiding Lex). With Marvel avoiding both and avoiding the obvious, it makes what was once obvious and taken for granted into their own special points, we hope they'll engage someday down the road.

And Marvel has already said they will in the case of Doctor Doom vs. the Fantastic Four - just not until 2026's Avengers: Doomsday.

Of course... Robert Downey Jr.'s Doctor Doom could still appear in the The Fantastic Four: First Steps

While I'm not saying The Fantastic Four: First Steps director Matt Shakman could be lying to us, the way Marvel Studios itself classify movies - and its parts - does leave open for Robert Downey Jr.'s Doctor Doom to appear when you go see the Fantastic Four movie - while not being in the movie.

How?

Well, in many ways, Marvel Studios treats its famous post-credits scenes of movies as distinct and separate events from the movies themselves. To the point that some are entirely disconnected from the story and characters of the movies themselves, and in other cases not even written or directed by the writer or directors of the movie.

They've even done it recently, with the New Avengerz/Fantastic Four post-credits scene of Thunderbolts* being filmed, written, and shot as part of Avengers: Doomsday work by the Russos and not the creative team of Thunderbolts* at all. It's not inconceivable that the same could be done from the working set of Doomsday here for The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

"Doom's a great character, but he takes up a lot of air," director Matt Shakman told Entertainment Weekly's Christian Holub recently. "Other film adaptations have done both an origin story and Doom. We're doing neither, and that allows us to look at them from a fresh perspective."

Consider this a meta post-credits scene for Marvel fans - the four key articles you need to read next to continue the thrills:

• All the upcoming MCU movies, TV series, and specials on the horizon
• How to watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe in release or chronological order
• The best Marvel Comics stories of all time
• All the MCU movies ranked from best to worst