Avengers: Doomsday is Probably Going to be Bad, Right?

Avengers: Doomsday

is one of the hottestly anticipated movies of the year. Or is it? The 5th installment of the Avengers movie franchise in the wider MCU is in its marketing campaign, and it seems poised to become one of the most successful films of all time, just like its predecessors, Infinity War and Endgame. Yet there is a notable lack of real hype to be seen on the internet. While yes, people are excited, people are also equally skeptical. As am I. In this piece, I want to discuss where this skepticism comes from and why I believe that Doomsday won’t live up to the sheer grandeur of what came before.

To discuss Doomsday is to discuss the failures of both phases 4 and 5 of the MCU. For those unaware, the MCU is broken into phases that are usually, but not always, capped off by a big team-up and the defeat of the big bad. This worked quite successfully for the first three phases, as they built up its mythology towards a grand finale: the mad titan Thanos and his quest to find all the Infinity Stones. Over the early years, we've seen an ensemble put together and rise up to the occasion. While not without its stinkers, it was nevertheless competent enough to build up goodwill and real hype. I still remember the opening night of Infinity War and it’s cliffhanger. It was electric. And Endgame delivered on that promise, pulling off a quite satisfying finale of the Infinity Saga, while giving a decent send-off to multiple characters, like that of Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man and Chris Evans' Captain America.

But that set the question for the future of the MCU and where to go from here? How could we build off that massive success? Well, for the longest time, the main idea was just to throw everything against the wall and see what sticks. We were swarmed with movies and TV shows that varied wildly in quality and return at the box office. It was during this time that we saw massive flops and, even worse, just downright lazy and bad installments. Movies like Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantummania or The Eternals saw massive criticism, and it soon became clear that the way things were handled wasn’t the way to go. What happened afterward, however, was somehow worse.

The MCU tried to set up what it called the multiverse: a multitude of universes existing alongside one another, each with its own heroes and variants of those already known. It promised to open up new potential for stories. But to explain this next point, I need to point out the elephant in the room. Kang. Or rather, where is Kang? Kang the Conqueror was set up to be the next big bad. A multiversal threat that existed in many forms, he was set up primarily in Loki and the aforementioned Ant-Man. But then two things happened: Ant-Man 3 was probably the worst installment in the MCU, and, even more importantly, Jonathan Majors, the man portraying Kang, got fired due to an indictment on charges of domestic assault towards his ex-girlfriend. So what now?

Not wanting to recast Kang for some reason, even though his main characteristic is that there are an infinite number of him and he is all dangerous and power hungry, the MCU chose another way. Even though previous movies established that different universes and timelines have different-looking variants of the same person. It threw him away and sought out to find another big bad. And find him; it did. The MCU, plagued by diminishing returns, a decline in interest, and poor quality, went on to develop Doomsday.

The first red flag was, of course, using Doctor Doom as the villain of the multiverse saga. While he's a very popular comic book villain, the complete and utter diversion to him, with no buildup whatsoever, was baffling. Unlike Thanos, there were no appearances in earlier movies besides a post-credit scene in the newest Fantastic Four, filmed after the announcement of Doomsday. A reminder: Thanos showed up all the way in the first Avengers; Doom wasn’t even mentioned in Phase 4. Even more baffling was the casting. Instead of bringing in a new actor, we get the return of Robert Downey Jr., in what seemed like a desperate PR move.

And then the other castings dropped. And with castings, I mean, the other actors were brought back. Disney, now in control of 20th Century Fox, gained the rights to the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and so forth. And did they use it? We now have all the important members of the old X-Men movies returning, alongside Chris Evans as Captain America and a rumored Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man. This, being marketed as the big crossover movie, did not have sufficient buildup or justification; instead, it’s the equivalent of a child smashing his toys together in what resembles a barely coherent story. My problem with these castings is clear: it feels like cheap nostalgia bait, more counting on the names than the promise of a good movie. It did nothing for the inclusion of the X-Men beforehand, aside from cameos in the second Doctor Strange and the most recent Deadpool and Wolverine. We’ve seen these characters sent off time and time again, and still, they keep coming back.

The last major gripe I have with this movie is its production. From the directors Joe and Anthony Russo, who, to their credit, have made some good Marvel movies, openly supporting the use of AI in filmmaking, to the fact that large chunks of Doomsday were filmed without a real script, as well as actors' interviews that seemingly confirm that all of this happens in front of a green screen, with them not even having scene partners present.

To wrap this up. Doomsday isn’t out yet, but it’s also already shaping up to be a bizarre movie experience, one that does nothing to truly justify its own existence. It seems lazy on multiple fronts, gets directed by people who oppose artistic integrity, and is filled with people you haven't seen in 20 years. In my opinion, this is not how the biggest movie event of the year should be made. Am I still going to see it? Of course, but that doesn’t mean I’m hyped for it.