5 Reasons For My Complicated Excitement for Avengers: Doomsday

5 Reasons For My Complicated Excitement for Avengers: Doomsday 

We’re about 13 months away from the release of Avengers: Doomsday. This will be the first Avengers movie in six years. As a lifelong MCU fan I’m always very excited for a new Avengers movie. But when it comes to Avengers: Doomsday, while I’m still excited for it there’s also a number of reasons why I’m concerned about it. Here are five reasons why I have such a complicated excitement for Avengers: Doomsday. 

• REASON #1: Originally Avengers: Kang Dynasty w/Kang: If you’ve been following these Avengers movies production you know it’s been very interesting. We’re currently in The Multiverse Saga. The multiverse has been a pivotal piece in this saga of the MCU. Several movies and tv shows were built around the concept of the multiverse. Originally, Kang the Conqueror was going to be the big bad for this saga. We saw him appear in Loki and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, as the main villain in the latter. Due to the poor response to Quantumania and all of the trouble with Jonathan Majors, Marvel quickly pivoted away from Kang. The first director attached was Destin Daniel Cretton who directed Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Jeff Loveness who wrote Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was attached as the writer. Once the writers strike happened in May 2023 Loveness left the project. It’s reported that he left because they wanted Loveness to write it because of Kang and his connections to Quantumania. After Majors’ allegations, Marvel decided to move away from Kang so Loveness left the project. In November 2023, Cretton left the project due to schedule delays. But he was still on good terms with Marvel and was working on a number of projects with them. In December 2023, Marvel fired Majors and the title “The Kang Dynasty” with the film being renamed “Avengers 5”. In June 2024, Shawn Levy, the director of Deadpool & Wolverine was in talks to direct the project. He later denied this information during the press tour for Deadpool & Wolverine. At San Diego Comic Con 2023 it was announced that The Russo Brothers were back to direct Avengers 5 now titled Avengers: Doomsday with Doctor Doom being the villain. At that point it was also announced that Robert Downey Jr. would be returning to the MCU playing Doctor Doom. Due to a whole number of different things, this movie had a very troubled production. There’s been several great movies that have had troubled productions but turned out great. Whenever there’s a lot of trouble with a film’s production, it’s hard not to worry about the quality of it. We’ll talk about Downey and Russo's return later on, but I think even with them returning ties into the studio trying to fix things after the firing of Majors and the pivot to Doctor Doom. 

• REASON #2: Bringing Back Characters of the Past for Excitement: This is sort of the problem and frustration with modern comic book movies is they rely too much on the past. The only comic book movies this decade to make $1 billion, Spider-Man: No Way Home and Deadpool & Wolverine. What do those two movies have in common? They brought back characters of the past, Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Hugh Jackman. Even the third highest grossing comic book movie of the decade is Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Given its title it has a lot of multiverse fun and lots of cameos. We got the casting announcement for Doomsday a couple weeks back. The cast announcements that got people the most excited were Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Alan Cumming, Rebecca Romijn, Kelsey Grammar, and James Marsden. What do they have in common? They’re actors from the Fox X-Men that get people excited for the upcoming film. There were very few representatives from Disney+, John Walker was our only Disney+ character that was announced. The other obvious one to talk about that relates to this, Robert Downey Jr. is coming back. It hasn’t been official, but Chris Evans was in talks to return. I’m not sure how much of that is true and if that’s still a thing. When you take Robert Downey Jr + Fox X-Men cast it feels like Marvel trying to gain excitement through the cheapest way possible. They know that we’ll buy tickets if they bring back a familiar face. When that’s Marvel’s one trick pony of these last couple of years, that’s very sad and disheartening that that is what the MCU has turned into. Everybody was pumped for Infinity War and Endgame because they made them feel like an event. You know that we were going to get something special with these movies. You were excited to see Thor with the Guardians of the Galaxy or Iron Man with Doctor Strange. Now, it’s not really interesting to see James Marsden and Chris Hemsworth share the screen. It’s not interesting to see Simu Liu and Pedro Pascal share the screen. Because they haven’t built up to it, we don’t know what these dynamics are going to be. We got 27 cast members announced and Kevin Feige confirmed that there’s still more actors to be announced. With 27 cast members, I don’t have any idea for the plot of the movie or who The Avengers are. The title for the movie is Avengers: Doomsday and with 27 cast members, no idea who The Avengers are. We didn’t get announcements on Maguire, Garfield, Jackman, or Ryan Reynolds; they'll probably be coming. You get the stars of their most successful movies of the past six years to return, it only confirms my concerns with this many people coming back. 

• REASON #3: MCU’s Post-Endgame Run: The MCU hasn’t been as strong since Endgame. Spider-Man: Far From Home to Captain America: Brave New World hasn’t been a great run. There’s been some great movies there. I’ve enjoyed a number of the movies. But the quality of the individual projects haven’t been as high and the consistency between them hasn’t been great. Whenever we get a MCU movie there’s some of that hesitation of will this be another MCU disappointment or one of the MCU movies that shines through? I enjoyed Captain America: Brave New World, I gave it a positive review but I still think it’s a flawed movie. Part of the reason why so many recent MCU movies have disappointed is because they microwave scripts. They greenlit and started filming with scripts that weren't ready. Their mindset is sort of just “we’ll fix it in post with reshoots”. That’s not a great way to make a movie because if you change the movie too much in post then the final product isn’t as good as people hoped. I think that’s why Brave New World disappointed so many people. Multiverse of Madness and The Marvels are other great examples of this. They’re movies that have ideas in them that are interesting and could make for good movies. But because they did a lot of reshoots for those movies the end results weren’t bad but they were underwhelming. Given the production history of Doomsday, I don’t think it’s fair to say that it has a microwaved script. But because there’s so much script problems happening it’s hard not to have concerns. When the system isn’t as strong as it used to be, this raises the concerns even more. In The Infinity Saga, there were samples of movies that had script issues and re-writes but turned out great. Ant-Man being the prime example of this. There’s some similarities between that movie and Doomsday. But Ant-Man came out when the MCU was on top, Doomsday is coming out when it’s not. 

• REASON #4: The Russo Brothers’ Post-Endgame Career: This goes very nicely with what I just talked about. The MCU’s post-Endgame track record hasn’t been very strong. That’s been the same for The Russo Brothers. They’ve directed three movies since Endgame came out, all of them were not well reviewed and were viewed as massive disappointments. This year they put out The Electric State. The initial Rotten Tomatoes score was 15%; it hasn't gone above 20%. Ever since then it’s been talked about a lot as to why The Russo Brothers were fantastic in the MCU but bad outside of the MCU. They never really had success prior to the MCU. I believe they directed two movies before The Winter Soldier and nobody really talks about them or remembers them. They worked on Community which was a hit tv show. But as far as movies, the MCU is really where they shined. People have been saying that they’ll probably make a great MCU movie because they made four great MCU movies in the past. That’s true and their MCU movies are my top four favorite MCU movies. I think the difference in this is, The Russo Brothers were great when the MCU was great. When the MCU isn’t great are The Russo Brothers still going to be great. That’s a big question that a lot of people have been wondering. Of their post-Endgame movies, I never saw Cherry. The Gray Man was a fun time when I watched it, never had a desire to rewatch it and feels like another generic streaming movie. I didn’t hate The Electric State like most people did. But it’s not great, it’s very mediocre and bland. When that’s their movie that’s most fresh on people’s heads going into Doomsday, that’s probably not great. If The Gray Man and The Electric State were better then this wouldn’t be a concern of mine. With them having a lackluster post-Endgame career I have a lot of questions about how good of a job they’ll do directing this movie. 

• REASON #5: Filming Only A Year Before Release:This is one of the things that most surprises and confuses me. As of this moment, this movie is supposed to release in May 2026, that’s 390 days away. For a movie that’s probably going to cost close to $400 million, maybe more than $400 million. That has 40+ cast members only a year to film and do post-production is a tight amount of time. As a point of reference, they finished filming Endgame in January 2018 when it had an April 2019 release date. They finished filming Endgame before Infinity War even came out. They’re starting filming Doomsday this week. They should have finished filming Doomsday by early 2025 and started filming Secret Wars shortly after that. They’re going to film Doomsday and Secret Wars within two years of them releasing. That’s crazy and insane to me. There’s also a lot of rumors that maybe they’ll get delayed. Right now May 2026 is giving us Avengers: Doomsday and The Mandalorian and Grogu. Those are two movies that could potentially make Disney a lot of money. Both of them could make over $1 billion. I’m wondering if they’ll push back Doomsday to December and have the be the final big blockbuster of the year the way that The Force Awakens and No Way Home were. I don’t know if they’ll do that, but it might be wise to give them more time in the filming and post-production process to give them more time to breathe and not time consuming from everybody.