By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 17 seconds ago
Marvel Studios has been making a big deal out of its first trailer for Avengers: Doomsday, which was going to premiere ahead of James Cameron’s upcoming film Avatar: Fire and Ash. However, the trailer recently leaked online, and it focused entirely on returning favorite Steve Rogers.
Chris Evans will reportedly play the lead character in this highly anticipated film, but this is actually a bad sign: it reveals that Marvel is officially out of ideas, and the big plan to rescue their brand from superhero fatigue is to pit Steve Rogers against Tony Stark in a movie that should just be called Captain America: Civil War 2.
Somehow, Civil War Returned
The first Avengers: Doomsday trailer (which we aren’t allowed to show you here until it’s officially released) isn’t all that impressive. You see Steve Rogers getting off a motorcycle at home, holding a baby (presumably his son with Peggy Carter) and staring at his old superhero suit. The trailer ends with the promise that “Steve Rogers will return in Avengers: Doomsday.”
According to reliable scooper Daniel Richtman, the first trailer focuses on Steve for the simple reason that he is going to be the film’s lead character; this aligns with older rumors that Tony Stark’s Doctor Doom is hunting Steve down because the former Captain America altered the timeline by staying in the past at the end of Avengers: Endgame.
All of this makes sense from a cynical marketing perspective, of course: one reason for the superhero fatigue plaguing Marvel is that audiences don’t like newer heroes like Mr. Fantastic or Anthony Mack’s Captain America as much as they like the original Avengers. Accordingly, bringing those core Avengers actors back is a big part of Doomsday’s marketing, and they went so far as to bring Robert Downey Jr. back as a new character altogether. For as much as audiences may want to see him and Chris Evans back onscreen together again, I don’t think the fandom will be all that excited for a movie whose basic plot is a lame retread of Captain America: Civil War.
Bring On The Cameos And The Weird, New Lore
While Civil War was a solid Marvel movie, it is mostly remembered for two things: the extended airport brawl between the various heroes and the knock-down, drag-out fight at the end between Captain America and Iron Man. Previously, the marketing for Avengers: Doomsday mostly emphasized its crowded cast of characters, including popular MCU mainstays (like Loki, Bucky, and Thor) and fan-favorite X-Men from the 20th Century Fox films (like Beast, Magneto, and Professor X). Implicitly, the movie is promising we are going to see tons of fights and team-ups with characters who would otherwise rarely interact, like Captain America: Civil War on a much, much grander scale.
Civil War also revealed that Tony Stark’s parents were killed by Bucky back in his Winter Soldier days. When this news came to light, it worsened the relationship between Captain America and Iron Man, a relationship that had already soured because these heroes took different sides on the issue of superhero registration. All of this was, of course, a convoluted reason to pit former besties Steve Rogers and Tony Stark against each other.
Doomsday For Marvel Studios
Right now, that’s what Avengers: Doomsday feels like a retread of. We’re getting a timey-wimey story and a massive multiversal crossover event just so that the same two guys who wailed on each other in 2016 can wail on each other again in 2026, complete with rival teams of familiar faves. At best, this is going to be just a worse version of a big-screen fight that we have already seen; at worst, this gamble could actually sink the MCU when the general public realizes that Marvel’s big new movie is built on nothing but recycled ideas.
Of course, you have to recycle old ideas when you can’t create new ones, which is where the Marvel Cinematic Universe is right now. As an old-school fan, I’d love to be wrong here, and I sincerely hope that Avengers: Doomsday is a worthy Endgame sequel that blows us all away. But judging from the tepid online response to the leaked trailer and its Steve Rogers deal, it looks like Marvel is about to wipe out its cultural legacy quicker than Robert Downey Jr.’s new character can say “I’m not Iron Man.”
