Avengers: Doomed Day

Disney would very much like for you to go see more movies. Well, less "more movies" and more "the same movie a bunch of times."

Let's set the stage: Marvel has been working on their latest planned blockbuster, Avengers: Doomsday. The project is the next major milestone in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and so it's been the subject of a nigh-unparalleled level of expectations.

Seems Disney is doing whatever they can to squeeze money from those expectations. In what seems like a move to get people to go see the new "Avatar" movie multiple times, Disney has made four different Doomsday trailers, of which only one will play per showing of Avatar.

This is a weird play, but definitely makes sense in context. That context being, "Disney." But it's more than just greedy trailer stuff that's got me giving Doomsday some severe side-eye.

New Heroes, Just like the Old Ones

The movie was announced a decade ago in 2024. It was clear from the drop that they were gonna do whatever it takes to keep this franchise going. Out walked the next big bad evil guy for the franchise: Doctor Doom, who was then revealed to be Robert Downey, Jr, who had previously been Iron Man before getting killed by some rocks in Avengers: Endgame.

So they brought back RDJ, only to then go on to release a trailer revealing that Chris Evans would be returning as Steve Rogers (Captain America), after his character had chosen to step away from the hero life in the previous Avengers movie.

At this point, they should just bring back Edward Norton as the Hulk for completeness' sake.

Rewrite the Rewrite the Rewrite

So I'm already skeptical about the state of things, then I come to read that the script was not finished still by July of this year, with ongoing rewrites as they went along. That's not actually super out of the ordinary for Marvel, but the churn seems more significant this time.

Actors didn't know if they were done recording or not. Some chalked it up to keeping the script secretive, but it's hard to tell if it's that or just that they have no idea what to do with the story, which was scuffed from the start.

If you've not paid attention to the Marvel Cinematic Universe over the past few years, you would have completely missed the rise—and sudden disappearance—of an entirely new main villain for the franchise after Avengers: Endgame came out.

Kang the Conqueror was set to be the next big bad evil guy, only there was a bit of a problem: Jonathan Majors was the actor for Kang. Majors was arrested for domestic violence in 2023, sending Disney into a panic. Combine that with his first major villain debut (Ant-Man: Quantumania) flopping, and you get… whatever is happening now.

Regardless, Disney's Disney

I have no reason to believe that Avengers: Endgame won't do well. I have every reason to believe it'll be a mess. Still, I'm sure it'll end up raking in a ton of money.

I highlight this because our major media companies are just insulting us at this point. While Disney is doing this, they're also investing $1,000,000,000 USD in OpenAI while lending Disney character intellectual property to OpenAI's video generator app, Sora. Disney also says they plan to use AI to "create new experiences" for their fans.

Genuinely, it all makes perfect sense when you remember that Disney is basically just an IP law firm with an entertainment wing.