Avengers: Doomsday Trailer: Underwhelming?

Avengers: Doomsday Trailer: Underwhelming?

Avengers: Doomsday is one of the most anticipated and talked about films of the year. Today we finally got our first official trailer for the film, and there’s a lot of discourse surrounding the trailer and the excitement of the film. Here are my thoughts on the trailer!

Context: If you know me and my love for movies you know that I love the MCU. The MCU was the defining franchise of my childhood and so much of my love for movies came from the MCU. I have been a defender in the later years of the MCU. It is flawed and not anywhere near the quality or consistency of the Infinity Saga. But I have really enjoyed several of the projects, specifically the movies. Like most people, I found it to be a massive desperation move when it was revealed that Robert Downey Jr and The Russo Brothers are returning to the MCU. It felt like they knew that the MCU was not as strong and they were doing anything they could to win people back. I still had this movie as one of my most anticipated movies of 2026, despite having a lot of skepticism. The marketing for the film up to this point I thought was interesting, but it clearly worked but it was breaking viewership records on all sorts of things. 

My Thoughts

  We finally got our first official trailer for the film…and I was underwhelmed. To be clear, I am still going to see this movie opening night. I will be there day one excited to see this movie and hoping that it is awesome and a top tier MCU film. But the trailer did not really raise my excitement for the film. It also did not really lower my excitement for the film. 

  I think the big problem with the trailer is that it is just recapping information that the audience already knew. We already knew that Thor was returning, and the X-Men were returning, and the Fantastic Four were coming to the main MCU earth. So, when we see all the teams in The Avengers tower, it does not really mean anything, but we already knew this information. You watch the mid-credit scene for Thunderbolts* and we saw that team learning about the Fantastic Four. We knew that the X-Mansion was being destroyed but the little teaser we got in January showed the X-Men destroyed. Even the final payoff of the trailer being Steve Rogers returning. It does not mean anything because we have known that Steve Rogers is returning since December because they showed us. Even the big payoff at the end of the trailer is just recycling information. There was nothing new about this trailer to get us excited about the movie. 

  I have seen some people debate how much this trailer should have shown. Some people are saying that it should have shown more of the plot and what it is about. There are some people that hear that and assume they want their entire movie given away and the fact that this is just a teaser trailer. It is a reasonable opinion to have wanted this trailer to show off more of what this movie is about. Because we got four one-minute-long teasers that just teased that Steve Rogers, Thor, X-Men, and the Fantastic Four are returning. When we got our first trailer for the movie, it should have been more exciting, and we should have learned more about the plot of the film. The trailers we got in December and January were the teasers; this was the first official trailer. The official trailer should be the one to really give the audience a sense of the scope of the film and what the film is about. There are theories about the film’s plot and what Doctor Doom’s motivation is, but it would have been cooler if they showed or told us what the motivation is. The frustrating thing is that between this trailer and the trailers we got earlier in the year. We now have 7-minutes of footage from the film and still do not really know much about it. This trailer should have been meatier and showed more of what the film is about. 

The movie looks like a fun time. I am sure this will be a movie that audiences will have a blast with (me included). But when this is the first Avengers movie in seven years and it is following up Infinity War and Endgame with the same creative team and the expectations are “I’m sure it’ll be a blast,” that is disappointing. I hope that the next trailer we get, attached to the Avengers: Endgame re-release, gives us more meat and depth to what is going on.