I really don’t know what Disney and Marvel are expecting me to feel after watching the second trailer for Avengers: Doomsday. Because, honestly? I’m still not feeling much of anything.
This is now the second long trailer we’ve gotten for what is supposed to be one of the biggest movies Marvel has ever made, and I still couldn’t tell you what the plot of this movie is. We know Doctor Doom is involved. We know he’s going to cause some serious problems. Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards essentially screams at him, “Did you do this?” And…that’s about it. Everything else is character shots: Thor standing around, Captain America standing around, the Fantastic Four standing around, the X-Men standing around, the Thunderbolts standing around. Everybody standing around.
Then we get a barren wasteland where Thor and Doom fight because, apparently, the easiest way to make a movie look enormous is to put two people in the middle of absolutely nothing and throw some CGI at it. Maybe this trailer is slightly better than the first one. I’ll give it that. There are a couple of images that look cool. Doom has some presence. The Sentinels are obviously a big deal. Seeing all these characters together is, in theory, exciting. But that’s the problem: in theory.
Marvel is trying desperately to recreate the feeling of Infinity War and Endgame. They’re giving us the giant roster. They’re bringing back Chris Evans. They’re bringing in the X-Men. They’re putting the Fantastic Four alongside Thor and Black Panther and Shang-Chi and Ant-Man and everybody else. We’re apparently going to get some enormous battle involving Sentinels and basically every hero Marvel can fit into the frame. And it all feels completely unearned.
That’s the thing Marvel seems to have forgotten: you can’t just recreate the image of an emotional moment and expect the emotion to come with it. When everybody showed up in Infinity War and Endgame, it mattered because we’d spent years watching these people become a part of one story. We’d watched Tony Stark and Steve Rogers fall apart. We’d watched Thor lose almost everything. We’d watched Wanda lose Vision. We’d watched the Guardians become a family. We’d watched all of these characters grow over the course of a decade. So when they finally stood together, it meant something.
Now we’re getting a room full of people who barely know each other. Shang-Chi is standing next to the Fantastic Four. Thor is standing next to people he’s never met. The X-Men are suddenly involved. Gambit is here. Captain America is back. And Marvel seems to be saying, “Look! Everyone’s here!” Okay. But why should I care?
Chris Evans coming back as Captain America should be one of the biggest moments imaginable. Instead, he’s wearing a T-shirt and jeans and throwing punches. It’s such a strange way to present what is supposed to be one of the movie’s biggest trump cards. The idea of Chris Evans returning as Steve Rogers is more exciting than the actual footage of Chris Evans returning as Steve Rogers.
And then there’s Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom. I’m sorry, but it just isn’t hitting for me. I understand why Marvel did it. I understand the marketing value. Robert Downey Jr. is one of the faces of the entire MCU. His return is guaranteed to generate headlines, discussion and ticket sales. But I’m not watching this thinking, “Holy shit, Doctor Doom.” I’m watching it thinking, “Oh, Robert Downey Jr. is back.” That’s not the same thing.
Doom hasn’t been built up in this universe. Thanos wasn’t just dropped into Infinity War and expected to work because Josh Brolin looked intimidating. We knew Thanos was coming. He was teased in the first Avengers post-credits scene. He showed up in Guardians of the Galaxy. He was in Age of Ultron. For years, Marvel was quietly building the idea that this guy was coming. You didn’t need to give Thanos a ten-minute monologue in every trailer because the audience already knew the threat.
Doom doesn’t have that. Marvel is asking us to treat him like the next Thanos without giving us the years of buildup that made Thanos feel inevitable. And that’s basically the problem with this entire movie: everything feels like a shortcut. Want an emotional Avengers moment? Put everybody in a room. Want a terrifying villain? Have Doom stand around looking cool. Want to make the movie feel huge? Put the characters in a CGI wasteland and have giant Sentinels come out of the ground. Want people to lose their minds? Bring Chris Evans back. Want people to talk about the movie? Put Robert Downey Jr. in the villain role.
It’s all aura. Doom is aura farming this entire trailer. And, sure, he looks cool. I’m not going to pretend he doesn’t. But looking cool isn’t the same thing as being interesting.
The visuals aren’t helping, either. There is something genuinely depressing about watching footage from Doomsday immediately after watching something like Spider-Man and then seeing the difference in how these movies are made. Whatever you think of the latest Spider-Man, there is still a sense of occasion when Spider-Man shows up on a giant screen. Spider-Man is Spider-Man. Batman is Batman. Those characters have a cultural weight that exists outside of whatever cinematic universe they’re currently occupying.
And the latest Spider-Man was a reminder that people will still show up for these movies. They’ll still make them enormous hits. They’ll still care when the filmmaking gives them something to care about. But Doomsday looks lifeless. The CGI looks rough. The environments look artificial. There are barren landscapes everywhere. Characters are standing in rooms that look like soundstages. People are posing dramatically rather than interacting with one another. For a movie that is supposed to be this enormous cinematic event, it has remarkably little life in it.
At the same time, Marvel is announcing the cast of the new X-Men movie, with Storm, Rogue, Cyclops, Professor X and Mr. Sinister, and I’m having the exact same reaction. It’s not that these actors aren’t talented. They are. It’s that Marvel seems to have settled into this mode where the casting announcement itself is supposed to be the event. Find a hot young actor, put them in an iconic superhero role, announce it online and let the internet do the rest. But casting a talented actor doesn’t automatically mean you’ve found the right person for a character.
And that seems to be the larger issue with Marvel right now. They’re still incredibly good at making announcements. They’re still incredibly good at assembling intellectual property. They’re still incredibly good at making something look enormous on paper. But I’m not convinced they’re still very good at making it feel enormous on screen.
I think that’s why these Doomsday trailers are bothering me so much. I used to be completely bought into this stuff. I wanted to know what happened next. I wanted to see these characters cross over. I wanted to dissect every trailer and every post-credits scene. Now I’m watching an Avengers trailer and thinking, Who are half these people? Why are they all standing around? What’s actually happening? That’s a pretty significant change.
Maybe Doomsday will be good. Maybe the Russos have another Infinity War in them. Maybe the finished movie will somehow turn all of these disconnected characters into something coherent and emotionally satisfying. I hope it does. I really do. Because I don’t want Marvel to suck.
But after two trailers, I’m still waiting for the thing that makes me want to see this movie. And that’s the strangest part of all. This is Avengers: Doomsday. It should be the easiest sell in the world. Instead, I’m sitting here wondering if Marvel has finally run out of sauce.
