On Wednesday morning, Marvel Studios kicked off an agonizingly sluggish, exceedingly enjoyable casting announcement for Avengers: Doomsday. Marvel’s five-and-a-half-hour livestream panned throughout chairs with actors’ names on their backs to tell us which heroes could be showing within the subsequent Avengers film, exhibiting off a brand new reveal roughly each 12 minutes.
Sadly, as annoying as a five-plus-hour PR stunt livestream sounds on paper, I had fun watching it. Every new reveal felt thrilling, and it turned a enjoyable little behavior to verify on the stream each quarter-hour, then sprint over to social media and group chats to see how everybody was reacting to the most recent identify revealed, whether or not it was somebody anticipated (like Anthony Mackie) or a shock (like Kelsey Grammer). However by the point the digicam hit Patrick Stewart’s chair, almost 4 hours into the stream, I used to be getting awfully weary — not of the livestream announcement gimmick, however of Avengers: Doomsday itself.
Don’t get me fallacious: I’m excited for the following set of Avengers films, and I’ve been a proponent of Physician Doom becoming a member of the solid since earlier than Disney introduced, then scrapped, Kang because the Multiverse Saga’s villain. However seeing that infinite row of chairs, every subtly offset from the final by just some inches, I might actually really feel all of the methods through which Doomsday writer-directors Anthony Russo and Joe Russo is likely to be biting off just a little greater than they will chew.
Doom is likely to be Marvel’s biggest general character, and he’s definitely its finest villain. Doom’s tales throughout the years have had tragedy and pathos. He has a multiverse-dominating ego, and the facility to hold out that ambition. In any given story, he’s equally more likely to attempt to kill the Avengers or assist them take out a rival supervillain, simply to open up area for his personal world-conquering schemes sooner or later.
In different phrases, Physician Doom deserves loads of time throughout his personal set of films to bask within the glow of the highlight and be the malevolent star of the present — particularly contemplating the dump truck full of cash that Disney should have backed as much as Robert Downey Jr.’s home to get him to placed on the masks. But it surely’s onerous to think about Doom getting the time he wants when Doomsday can be tasked with bringing all these goddamned X-Males into the MCU.
Throughout Wednesday’s present, Marvel performed issues cool at first. The stream’s producers let the digicam pan over Kelsey Grammer’s chair, seemingly confirming that The Marvels’ end-credits scene would have a task to play within the motion. Then, ultimately, the digicam allow us to in on a couple of extra secrets and techniques: Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Alan Cumming, and Channing Tatum are all becoming a member of the solid, too.
Picture: Marvel Studios/YouTube
Instantly, we’re staring down the barrel of half a dozen or extra X-Males characters getting launched to the MCU on this very film, together with Doom. For any shortcomings Avengers: Infinity Struggle might need had, it was principally working with a solid of characters that had every been established by a number of of their very own films by that time. Doomsday’s solid, by comparability, principally consists of members of the Thunderbolts and the Unbelievable 4, two groups whose films haven’t been launched but, together with members of the X-Males who haven’t even been teased within the MCU but — and who, in some circumstances, haven’t been in an X-Males film since 2006’s X-Males: The Final Stand. That simply looks as if an excessive amount of for one film to deal with.
I’m nervous that sooner or later, in throwing collectively so many characters, multiverses, and cinematic franchises, Avengers: Doomsday goes to really feel extra like a puzzle designed to suit all this stuff into place than like a movie in its personal proper. In spite of everything, if you happen to’re going to make a film about bringing this many alternative characters into contact, it definitely looks as if the introductions will take so lengthy that there’s hardly going to be room for team-ups or fights.
However perhaps none of this can matter a lot ultimately, anyway. Co-director and co-writer Joe Russo advised Omelete that whereas Avengers: Endgame was a definitive ending for a sure MCU period, Doomsday and its follow-up, 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars, are meant to be the start line of one thing new. So perhaps Wednesday’s parade of casting bulletins was principally only a checklist of characters who’re going to get killed off in Doomsday’s first 10 minutes to make room for the brand new MCU. If that’s not what occurs, I hope Downey Jr.’s Physician Doom no less than calls for the highlight he deserves.
