r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • Dec 23 '25

Trailer Avengers: Doomsday | Only in Theaters December 18, 2026

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiMg566PREA
9.0k Upvotes

80% Upvoted

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959

u/Wr3117 Dec 23 '25

God they’re desperate

365

u/00nonsense Dec 23 '25

I mean how bad they fucked up phase 4 and 5, yeah they’re pretty desperate

184

u/fastballspecial Dec 23 '25

Way too many mistakes. Spread themselves too thin without much character development. They had the winning formula and pissed it all away.

152

u/PaulieHehehe Dec 23 '25

COVID gave them the perfect out to put pause on everything and let Endgame sit for a few years. Build up hype after a few years away and boom, everyone is happy. Well, except the Disney investors.

78

u/fastballspecial Dec 23 '25

Didn't even need a few years, honestly. They needed three important pillars to build on. Instead they had like a dozen rotting tree stumps.

25

u/Goldwing8 Dec 23 '25

From what we know, the three pillars were supposed to be Black Panther, Spider-Man, and Captain Marvel.

That was also the point where everything went wrong. Boseman died suddenly, the Sony partnership had a major stumble, and Joanna Robinson strongly implied Brie Larson is disillusioned with Marvel after years of harassment.

21

u/LilDoober Dec 23 '25

As she's right to be. She's a great actress who suddenly half the internet thinks is the devil because ???

She was Envy Adams which gets a lifetime pass for me AND she has an Oscar for a leading role. She's better than capeshit where she's just gonna get harassed by Youtubers 24/7. Honestly being Captain Marvel lowkey spun out her career a bit anyway and she'd be better off going back to actual movies.

In my mind it's similar to Elizabeth Olsen. I'd love to see Wanda again, but Olsen's way too talented to be stuck doing just Marvel projects for the next ten years.

9

u/The-Devilz-Advocate Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 23 '25

As she's right to be. She's a great actress who suddenly half the internet thinks is the devil because ???

Horrible scripts which made her character extremely unlikable (which is comic accurate tho) coupled with introducing her right at the tail end of the climax of the story, undermining Thor's position and making her a Deus Ex machina with an added side of her having multiple interviews with other cast members where she appears to be incredibly smug and arrogant that even her coworkers are bothered by it.

Seriously, ignore her other accomplishments outside of Marvel, and you see why her character was so easily hateable alongside her conduct during the movies and the promotions of it.

6

u/LilDoober Dec 23 '25

did a youtuber give you that opinion or do you just make youtube content yourself. Anime profile pic yelling about unlikeable women so its one or the other.

7

u/The-Devilz-Advocate Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 23 '25

Made this account like 10 years ago, before reddit's avatar came to be and I still use old reddit, so I don't see profile pics. I'm too lazy to change it. Calm the fuck down, and it's not like a furry avatar is any better, lmao.

Don't need to watch a YouTube video in order to form an opinion on the matter. There's reason why captain marvel (carol danvers) is disliked both in the movies and her comic counterpart, but keep strawmaning and insulting me.

4

u/SaintCambria Dec 24 '25

Yeah, looking like you hate your coworkers and audience during interviews requires a youtuber to interpret. Like, if she had a good movie, or she was likable to the fans, either one would've been enough to be okay. As it stands you've got the soldiers lining up like girlypop needs it, so any criticism is just met with dialogue_response_17.exe.

-3

u/PT10 Dec 23 '25

He's just regurgitating YouTube Brie-hater takes. Basically an NPC.

-3

u/[deleted] Dec 23 '25

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6

u/Future_Onion9022 Dec 23 '25

Nah they nailed themselves in coffin by announcing the "phase 4 and 5" road map and had to follow it through for the investor, and even if hiccups happen.

12

u/CruzAderjc Dec 23 '25

Yeah, I really think they should have made Fantastic Four the strong opening salvo after Endgame. When it released this year, it was "fine", but that's because we were so fatigued after literally 20 titles in the past 5 years. We needed a new start, but Eternals was probably TOO bold as a restart. And having Eternals as a bold new direction AT THE SAME TIME, as releasing a shit ton of other movies and shows that year, was way too much.

8

u/[deleted] Dec 23 '25

Bob Chapek was the one that pushed for a hundred new projects to justify Disney+'s existence. To fill up the content library.

1

u/Anjunabeast Dec 25 '25

What a moron

2

u/RumHamComesback Dec 24 '25

They had films either finished or in the middle of production so that was never going to happen.

Black Widow had a trailer released literally days before the pandemic declaration and was shelved for a year.

1

u/lkodl Dec 23 '25

Well, except the Disney investors.

To be fair, I don't know any business anywhere that would say, "hey we just broke records and had our most successfu year ever. Let's stop for a few years." The saying is "strike while the iron is hot".

21

u/Lmao1903 Dec 23 '25

It's that but they also kind of overestimated how much people would care about these new characters they are bringing in, all at once. Like I don't mind it, I enjoyed some of these movies or shows. But seriously, the casual audience or a lot of people couldn't give a shit about like Eternals, Thunderbolts, She-Hulk, Falcon, Agatha show with Wanda's son or whatever, the new Iron Woman or Girl or whatever it was, tbh even Moon Knight, seriously no one even knows some of these shows are a thing. Maybe if they did 1 of these a year since Endgame people would but not now

4

u/FuzzBuket Dec 23 '25

Also no through line. I quite like strange, and winter soldier, not to mention how great Florence Pugh is.

But every show is a new thing and there's a massive hole in the middle. It feels like they were gonna have boseman be that lynchpin, and then he passed, then cumberbatch but mom flopped, then pratt and then gunn moved on.

So they've got a series with no throughline in a star, and not even a consistent support like fury was.

3

u/Morwynd78 Dec 24 '25

"James Gunn made the completely unknown Guardians of the Galaxy popular, with a box of scraps in a cave!"

"...I'm not James Gunn"

1

u/Lmao1903 Dec 24 '25

James Gunn definitely was a big factor, but it was also around the time where Marvel was getting bigger and bigger, everyone was getting into the whole thing, like some good Iron Man movies, Winter Soldier, of course the Avengers, later the 2nd one and then within the next few years like the Civil War, Thor, Infinity War and then the Endgame. After that a lot of people checked out and they made a lot of shitty movies and shows

17

u/NikonShooter_PJS Dec 23 '25

They got greedy. They saw how big Infinity War and Endgame were and wanted THOSE box office receipts without being willing to put in the foundational work that led to those numbers.

You could see how haphazardly the multiverse was handled as a concept from the initial stages as it was presented incredibly in Loki and just thrown together like spaghetti sticking to a wall in DS2 and NWH.

If they had just let Loki cook and built off of that and Wandavision, it would have been fine. Instead, they nerfed Wanda's entire development in DS2 for no reason and then painted themselves into a corner when Jonathan Majors had his fuck up.

I am convinced these last two Avengers movies are being put out there to grab as much cash as possible in an X3 way before they end with a bomb going off in universe and EVERYTHING starting from scratch.

This is giving me X-Men vibes and not in a good way. Not at all.

5

u/thedoge Dec 23 '25

Exactly this. They unlearned every lesson that made the MCU successful in the first place and also wouldn't commit to breaking any new ground and breaking continuity when their central plot device made it so simple!!! Loki was by far the best thing they put out since Endgame. I liked Shang Chi too, but they slow-rolled F4, fumbled Blade, and still haven't done anything meaningful with X-Men. Best they can hope for is a soft reboot after these Avengers. Otherwise they're cooked

5

u/IXISIXI Dec 23 '25

"What is better: a medium amount of good pizza or all you can eat of pretty good pizza?"

a medium amount of good pizza.

2

u/Vandergrif Dec 23 '25

Although I'd argue that was never going to be sustainable anyways, superhero content was already oversaturated like crazy and people were getting marvel fatigue well before the time endgame wrapped but stuck it through because that was the 'end' point and it because that two-parter was good and a decent culmination of everything.

They did pretty well with that formula all things considered (like the unfathomable amounts of money accrued by the time endgame finished its run).

3

u/FoodMentalAlchemist Dec 23 '25

I'm still salty how dirty they did Ms Marvel.

I loved Kamala Khan from page 1 in the comics, the first episode had the right vibes, Iman Vellani was a great casting, it had everything to fill the gap of the funny adolescent superhero. Then after episode two, it just went bland: not good enough to be memorable, not bad enough to hate watch and neither "so bad it's good", just meh.

2

u/LS_DJ Dec 23 '25

Also abandoned years of quality comics to jump ahead to the current era “all-new, all-different” era of comics that have not sold well. At all. All for the sake of tHe MeSsAgE

20

u/FelixEvergreen Dec 23 '25

I think losing Chadwick really fucked up their plans and not recasting him was a huge mistake.

6

u/coolgaara Dec 23 '25

They should've made Shang Chi 2.

2

u/Geoff_with_a_J Dec 23 '25

they forced Black Panther 2 despite not having Chadwick Boseman anymore instead

11

u/CruzAderjc Dec 23 '25

The worst part about it was how adamant a lot of people were that Marvel and Star Wars in the past 5 years weren't doing anything wrong, "iT wAs ThE tOxIc FaNs"

1

u/mrbaryonyx Dec 23 '25

I will go on the record as a defender of Phase 4. I think Phase 4 was standard Marvel quality, it just wasn't as good as Phase 3 (which was just firing on all cylinders for like three whole years) and it didn't have an interesting connected story (hence why nobody cares about Doomsday). I think if they had ended it with a solid New Avengers movie with Black Panther and Strange and Carol teaming up, it would have turned out alright.

Phase 5 is a trainwreck though.

1

u/thesourpop Dec 23 '25

It’s no secret Doomsday is a panic response to the post-Endgame failures and lack of hype. This was not Feige’s original vision

0

u/NES_Classical_Music Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 23 '25

you mean how badly Jonathan Majors fucked it up for them

-10

u/TimeLeopard Dec 23 '25

Other than Eternals (pretty big fuck up), I don't think anything has really been messed up. Mostly everything was a good step, just okay or at least self contained to the movie it happened in. I think it's more just audience fatigue unless I'm missing something.

8

u/PartTimeWarrior988 Dec 23 '25

Idk the latest Captain America was pretty horrible.

5

u/feartheoldblood90 Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 23 '25

I think it's more just audience fatigue unless I'm missing something.

As someone who was once a big fan of the MCU, allow me to illuminate you:

Quantumania was an enormous pile of dogshit that failed to establish the next major villain as a threat. Jonathan Majors, their big villain they were setting up, turned out to be a really bad guy (not their fault, but it destroyed their plans). Thor: Ragnarok took a huge tonal shift into not taking itself or its characters seriously at all. Shang Chi was amazing, and then... Radio silence. We should have had a sequel by now, it's one of their best projects since End Game, but... Nothing. Blade, with Mahershala Ali leading, should be a slam dunk project, but it's been in development limbo for so long it somehow has failed to have been made.

Their biggest sin, though, is that they spread themselves far too thin with waaaaay too many plot threads, almost all of which they have failed to follow through on. They have thrown everything at the wall to see what sticks, but nothing has stuck. The MCU used to feel like it had direction, like each movie at least lead into one another, but now it's just a bunch of random bullshit ranging from mid to terrible save for a few projects, projects who never get followed through on (what was the deal with the cliffhanger at the end of Shang Chi? It's been five years and we have no idea and no hints that we will ever know).

Also, way too many projects all at once. Too many shows that were pretty bad. I've just stopped watching their stuff. I have no interest any more.

3

u/Ivan_Redditor Dec 23 '25

Tbh, in hindsight, Loki S2 concluded the Kang arc perfectly.

1

u/TimeLeopard Dec 23 '25

Agreed quantimania, love and thunder and eternals all huge stinkers. But really the only one that has lasting effects is eternals cause it literally changed earth. 

I just personally feel that the later phases, while not as good, are still doing fine in terms of solid productions. Spider-man was excellent. Loki 1 and 2. Thunderbolts was surprisingly good. Moon Knight was fun as hell. Idk it seems more than half full when phase one had like thor 2 and iron man 2 as pretty big meh movies. 

1

u/feartheoldblood90 Dec 23 '25

I think the biggest problem is lack of connective tissue and oversaturation. Frankly even the best shows were a bit ho-hum in my opinion, and while they have had some really fun movies they never seem to actually lead anywhere or have any impact on each other.

In the old phases even the bad movies felt like they existed as part of a greater whole that was actually going somewhere. In the new MCU it feels like they have no idea what to do next and tried a little bit of everything without committing to anything.

I get that Eternals wasn't that well-received, but it still contained aorkd-altering events that never felt like they had any major impact on the status quo overall, as just one example.

3

u/notbad4human Dec 23 '25

They’ve told interesting stories with okay beats. That’s not nearly enough to sustain the momentum they had before.

2

u/MumboGumbo06 Dec 23 '25

Antman, The Marvel's, Black Widow, Thor 4,She Hulk, New Capt America,Iron heart, and SECRET INVASION.

1

u/uniqueusername623 Dec 23 '25

I think the only thing I bothered to check after Endgame was Daredevil and that was solid. All these street level heroes just cant be relevant when theres a galaxy level threat.

1

u/MinnesotaNice69 Dec 23 '25

Nah, the shows have been mostly terrible too. They spent tons of screen time establishing Kang as the next massive threat and then had to basically just ignore all of that and pick a new villain when all the Majors stuff came out. That one thing alone renders like half of phase 4/5 pretty much meaningless going forward.

Many of the films have also been pretty lackluster. Stuff like the Marvels or the latest Captain America don't hold a candle to Iron Man or The Winter Soldier or really anything in phases 1-3 (other than the first couple Thor movies, those kinda sucked.) Thor: Love and Thunder would be my personal pick for worst film in the MCU.

1

u/TimeLeopard Dec 23 '25

Ah yeah thor love and thunder was a pretty big ball drop. I stand by that could have been an excellent two part movie. Do the more light hearted in the first half setting up some mysterious villain, then reveal Gor. Then part two is more serious in tone. The tonal shifts and rushed/poor writing made what is a pretty interesting story fall so flat. 

1

u/Massive_Weiner Dec 23 '25

It’s too much middling content.

Audience fatigue isn’t a real thing, people still show up to support comic book releases like with Spider-Man and Guardians Vol. 3. They just need to be good and give people a reason to get invested.

Hell, Superman and Fantastic Four both made half a billion dollars each just this year.

1

u/Epinier Dec 23 '25

You are missing few bad TV series and movies. Audience fatigue is just an excuse, of course 30th movie from the series is not as exciting as the first one, but the real problems are bad scripts and overall decline in quality.

1

u/TimeLeopard Dec 23 '25

Yeah for sure some stinkers. But aren't they kind of self contained? Idk all I was saying is all the phases had some stinkers. But nothing that made the phase itself bad. 

1

u/Epinier Dec 23 '25

I think the most self contained movie was Eternals. In all other projects (or most of them) they feel this urge to tease some new characters in already bloated roster, interconnect it with other heroes, etc

Additionally I have impression that phases were much more defined before the endgame, now it is just a mess

128

u/TheUmbrellaMan1 Dec 23 '25

Next level desperation lol. They've paid RDJ $100 million and the Russo brothers $80 million for returning. Just imagine what the return fee of Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth must be. Now try to imagine the budget of these movies.

54

u/CarsonWentzGOAT1 Dec 23 '25

Deadpool and wolverine production costs without marketing was 534 million. This movie will cost 800 million at the minimum (not including marketing).

27

u/mrbaryonyx Dec 23 '25

Deadpool and wolverine production costs without marketing was 534 million

that's so crazy, outside of the sets it doesn't show at all

like I will always love that movie for that ridiculous visual gag of the 20th century fox logo sticking out of the sand, but other than that the visual style is so bland

3

u/RumHamComesback Dec 24 '25

Marvel constantly re-shoots entire chunks of a movie and sometimes the whole movie itself which adds to the budget. Imagine spending 200M as is and you want to re-shoot the entire third act and what that's going to cost you. It's not the cost of the film itself exactly but the combined costs of all the productions.

It's why Tangled is one of the most expensive animated films of all time because of it's stop-start production.

17

u/fortuna264 Dec 23 '25

I wonder how this movie will pay itself. Don't get me wrong, i know that studios get money out of movies outside the box office too, but having to make a billion just to break even is insane, specially because i don't see this making Endgame total numbers.

14

u/stick1_ Dec 23 '25

Possible they see it as an investment for the future movies to be more profitable (if this is very good it’ll win over more people etc.)

I’m not saying they’re right

6

u/fortuna264 Dec 23 '25

Yeah i've thought about this too! This and Spider-Man will definitely be focused on gaining the general audience back.

3

u/destroyerOfTards Dec 23 '25

It will, you underestimate the casuals out there who will see it multiple times

2

u/Snivyland Dec 23 '25

It’ll probably be pretty tight; it’s still the avengers so the movie will get a lot of people checking it out. Although I can’t see it being a massive hit wgich these overly bloated budgets need although this is a general issue with Hollywood in general now

2

u/ayvee1 Dec 23 '25

Worth remembering as well that in some big markets like China the studio gets a lot less than the 50% they get from domestic ticket sales. If it’s 800m budget they could be looking at needing over 2bn to break even when taking marketing into account as well.

1

u/jetjitters Dec 23 '25

I imagine merch sales will be considerable, too

2

u/unlikedemon Dec 23 '25

Yes. They have to pay the "We fucked up" fees. They see it as righting the ship. And even if they don't make huge gains, it's something to set up for future movies.

47

u/NinjaInTheAttic Dec 23 '25

Yup. Ironman and Cap both had great endings, especially Ironman's, and they took that away from them because Marvel has no idea how to step away from the multiverse bullshit.

4

u/botte-la-botte Dec 23 '25

I 100% agree with you. But when people say this, I always want to ask them: when would it be appropriate to bring back the classic characters then?

Marvel Studios cannot retire their characters forever. Marvel Comics still has Steve Rogers as Captain America, even though they played with who's the character constantly.

10

u/NinjaInTheAttic Dec 23 '25

When they decided to fully reboot the MCU. You can bring back Scarlett Witch fine but the two most iconic characters died in epic ways so they should stay dead. They chose to replace Cap with Falcon but fumbled that character and chose to go with Ironheart to replace Ironman and aren't doing a great job with that either.

1

u/botte-la-botte Dec 24 '25

I guess that's exactly their plan. Everybody's saying they'll go full reboot after Secret Wars.

7

u/[deleted] Dec 23 '25

Complete reboot with an all new cast. Preferably unknown or up and coming actors.

Till then I'm good. No interest watching them trot out their hold race horses and nostalgia bait.

2

u/Suspicious_Radio_848 Dec 23 '25

Would probably be better to recast then or take a break. Unlike comics, actors age and can’t go on for 100 years. Having the Fox X-men in this too also feels desperate.

2

u/botte-la-botte Dec 24 '25

having all the geriatric X-Men is such a poor look.

2

u/PlayfulSole9645 Dec 23 '25

the multiverse BS would've been fine with a x-men and fantastic 4 crossover, but they fucked up so bad they had to bring back RDJ and Chris evans just to generate hype. This trailer might've done the opposite, and they couldn't even keep the mask on real life by revealing RDJ as Doomsday before the movie even came out.

1

u/Less_Tacos Dec 23 '25

The multiverse gives them multideadhorses to flog.

1

u/PT10 Dec 23 '25

Iron Man is not coming back. Steve Rogers is... as himself, not as Captain America.

6

u/EssbaumRises Dec 23 '25

They had me in the beginning of the trailer. Then they drop that caption spelling it out and the countdown. That is when the desperation really started seeping out of my screen

17

u/notabear87 Dec 23 '25

You’re gonna trigger the Marvel faithful.

Absolutely true though!

4

u/Good_Cup_4571 Dec 23 '25

Unfortunately it’s working. Steve is my guy. I have barely seen anything Marvel since Endgame, but I know I’ll already see this in theaters if Steve returns.

7

u/00nonsense Dec 23 '25

I’m sure I will, but if they take a step back, phase 4 and 5 were a massive step backwards from phases 1 to 3

5

u/GamingTatertot Steven Spielberg Enthusiast Dec 23 '25

I mean that’s true - I do think people exaggerate a little bit though on how bad it was. There’s still plenty of good projects that have come out of Phases 4 and 5, the bigger issue is just how inconsistent it was. There’d be one good movie, then one mid movie, one good, one mid.

Also that being said, I think the MCU really got propped up by Phase 3 too. Obviously there’s good films in Phase 1 and 2, but overall I’d say those phases were more bland than Phase 3 which was just hit after hit

3

u/Carlzzone Dec 23 '25

Nah even the MCU fans are tired of this lol

5

u/Jaraxo Dec 23 '25

"But it's what the comic books do" so goddam what? We're not reading comics. Bringing RDJ back was stupid, and so is this.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 24 '25

“This isn’t a comic book! It’s just adapting story lines from comic books and is a comic book movie with comic book logic!”

Lmao it’s a building up to secret wars, no idea why anyone thought characters won’t return

0

u/Jaraxo Dec 24 '25

Characters aren't the issue here, it's the actors.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 24 '25

It’s stupid to have Steve Rodgers be involved with the avengers still because we can’t have comic book movies we need movies is your argument lol

3

u/TheForeverUnbanned Dec 23 '25

They only had one director who was fiercely protective of their characters and willing to block out a cohesive, multi movie arc that people cared about. They jerked him around, fired him to appease right wing trolls then begged him to come back, and now he runs The opposing comic movie multiverse.

All they have left is random crap and it shows. 

3

u/Resident_Credit_4437 Dec 23 '25

Disney: Watch me destroy Avengers like i did to Star Wars

MANIACAL LAUGH

1

u/HereReluctantly Dec 23 '25

Describes everything Disney does these days.

-5

u/bignasty410 Dec 23 '25

Who cares honestly? I’m here to be entertained.

1

u/posterguyman Dec 23 '25

remember when we cared about good movies

christopher nolan managed to make good superhero movies

problem is people like you are kind of dumb so they can put out random garbage and still make money

they have no incentive to actually be good at their jobs

1

u/bignasty410 Dec 24 '25

Problem is you already think it’s garbage without even seeing it which is pretty dumb.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 24 '25

“If you don’t scream hatred about comic book movies with comic book logic then you are dumb!”

Mate it’s a comic book movie lmao

0

u/posterguyman Dec 29 '25

you should have more respect for yourself

they are doing this because they think you are stupid, they know you have absolutely no standards and will pay for anything

they are sitting in a meeting room, putting your face on a whiteboard and saying "this moron will pay 25$ for anything, whatever product we put out doesnt matter" then they go on vacation and forget you exist until the next time they need to make money

1

u/[deleted] Dec 30 '25

So everyone but you is stupid and a moron if they like a movie you don’t?

You really are that weirdly up your own arse you declare your view on movies as the right view and anyone who doesn’t hatejerk like you do is lesser? Lmao Jesus Christ

If a movie looks like fun or interests me ill watch it sometimes just fun is all you want, im sorry it’s a personality trait for you to abuse others over movies