While we still have not seen anything close to a full-scale trailer for this winter’s Avengers: Doomsday, promotion is starting to trickle out. This week, that included the first official cast art for the film, featuring nearly all the major characters in this new Avengers assembly. Or rather, a number of Avenger-ish groups stuck together.
It’s awful. The art is awful, to start with, but even though we knew who was in the cast, seeing them in one place compared to the last four Avengers movies in the “good old days” of the MCU is pretty brutal. It’s hard to even know where to start here, but there are issues with almost every aspect of this.
Steve Rogers – Chris Evans is back as a man in a black T-shirt holding Mjolnir, one of the best moments from Avengers: Endgame turned into a permanent part of his character because he gave his shield and uniform away. He shouldn’t be back in the first place, and he certainly shouldn’t look like this.
Sam Wilson (Captain America) – It is extremely clear that Marvel does not trust Anthony Mackie’s version of Captain America to lead this film after Brave New World, with him perhaps being the fourth- or fifth-highest-profile character in the movie, at best, when previously Steve and Tony led the whole thing.
Doctor Doom – Speaking of Tony, we still have the beyond weird situation of a second main Avengers actor returning, Robert Downey Jr., to play Doctor Doom. This has never stopped being weird as everyone waits for some sort of explanation for that, if there even is one, or if he’s just playing two huge characters in the MCU that don’t actually have anything to do with each other. Both answers would be strange.
The Fantastic Four – The group and especially Reed seem to be getting a top billing, when previously they’ve only been in a single movie that didn’t exactly light the fanbase on fire, no Human Torch pun intended.
Thunderbolts – They are coming off a good but dramatically underperforming movie, which means few audiences saw it. Yelena is being given a big role, as Kevin Feige has said, but she will never be Black Widow.
Thor – Well, at least one OG Avenger is back without any weird changes. That said, he is coming off a truly awful movie with Love and Thunder. Also, why can’t he grow his hair back by now?
Ant-Man – His movies got progressively worse as they went, and Quantumania could actually be the single worst MCU movie. He feels tacked on when so many of the biggest names are missing.
Shang-Chi – Love him, great character, great performance. And he has only been in a single movie that released five full years ago in 2021.
Shuri and M’Baku – Obviously not their fault, but losing Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa has really hurt the Wakanda storyline, and you can see from how big they are on this page how important the film is projecting they will be.
FOX X-Men – God, where to begin? We have said goodbye to this era of the X-Men probably twice already. Professor X has died three times. Channing Tatum’s Gambit was supposed to be a one-off joke in Deadpool and Wolverine, but now he’s actually here for real. They are missing some of the most key team members, from Jean Grey to Storm. Just a nightmare.
Who’s Missing – Who isn’t there is practically as big of a problem as who is. Fans are surfacing old concept art from the original Kang Dynasty storyline, reminding us that this version of the film is missing the likes of Captain Marvel, Vision, Doctor Strange and Hawkeye (Kate Bishop). But obviously it goes far deeper than that. No Hulk, She-Hulk, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, War Machine, Spider-Man, Scarlet Witch, any of the Guardians, any of the Netflix Defenders like Daredevil, who is now at 40+ hours of screen time in the MCU after four seasons of his TV series.
I would argue probably 90% of those are more important to include than 70% of the existing Doomsday cast. So much of the problem there is that those characters are often A) lesser names and B) ones that have only been seen once or twice before this film, at best, when so many other characters have a decade or more of time investment behind them. This feels awful.
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