The Marvel Cinematic Universe has begun the ramp up to Avengers: Doomsday in earnest. Marvel Studios has started releasing teaser trailers for the movie, which have shown off the returns of Chris Evans’s Captain America and Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, as well as showing off the X-Men in action. Fans have waited ages for a movie this big, finally bringing in Marvel’s merry mutants into the MCU. Each trailer ends with a countdown to the film’s December 18, 2026 release date, building fan anticipation. These teasers have started the hype training rolling, and yet there doesn’t really feel like there’s any actual heat to the movie. In fact, looking at what we know about everything so far, I’m very trepidatious.
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The MCU hasn’t been as hot as it once was, even with the reaction to the Avengers: Doomsday trailers. This isn’t a normal MCU film, but an event film, and there’s a lot riding on it. However, there’s been almost zero build-up to the film other than letting everyone know who’s going to show up in the movie. No one has any idea what the story will be, other than vague multiverse stuff with Doctor Doom at the center of it, and that’s a problem. I’ve been reading comics for decades and have experienced a lot of event storytelling. The build-up to Avengers: Doomsday reminds me of some of Marvel’s biggest comic mistakes, and it’s all extremely worrying.
The Build-Up of Avengers: Doomsday Has Been Anemic
Marvel has become known for their event comics in the 21st century. One can argue that they depend on event storytelling too much, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about. The publisher’s events follow a similar formula for their builds — building up to the event in numerous miniseries and ongoing series before dropping it on readers. Even as far back as the early ’90s, with the legendary Infinity Gauntlet, the House of Ideas would use its output to set things up for the next big event, building hype with good old-fashioned great storytelling.
As the years have gone on and the publisher started to depend more on event comics, the lead-in time for a lot of the big yearly events has sometimes been cut down to size. During this time, the least beloved Marvel events have had rushed builds, and this has shown in the hype behind the events themselves. For example, Fear Itself was the big event of 2011, but it had very little build-up; basically just a one-shot comic. Empyre was 2020’s event comic, but it was also given an anemic build that barely built any hype for the story. The recent Blood Hunt was more of the same; it hardly got any build-up, with Marvel depending on the star power of the creators to sell the book to readers.
Marvel Studios’ franchise initially became popular because of how well it built up its event movies. Look at 2012’s The Avengers; the first four years of the MCU built it perfectly, and fans loved it. Phase Two and Three of the MCU continued this, building up towards Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, making fans excited for more than the event that the movies represented. Marvel expertly built a compelling story leading into the movies, and this paid off very well.
Avengers: Doomsday hasn’t done that. There’s a simple reason for this: the loss of Kang as the big bad of the next Avengers films. This completely derailed everything that the MCU has built up over Phase Four and the early parts of Five, and now there’s no hype at all for the continuation of the story of the MCU; instead, the hype is for the characters that will appear. People complain about multiverse movies because they allow filmmakers to use the power of “member berries” as hype instead of the promise of a compelling story. Unfortunately, so far, “member berries” is all Avengers: Doomsday has going for it.
No one is interested in the story of the movie. No one ever talks about anything but what characters are returning for the movie. Everything about Avengers: Doomsday screams Marvel Studios panicking over the recent failures of the MCU and going back to the old wells of Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, the Fox X-Men, and the Russo Brothers instead of building a good story. Add in the stories about scripts not being done until filming was well underway, and it doesn’t bode well for the film.
Avengers: Doomsday Is Repeating the Worst Mistakes of Marvel Event Comics
There’s a lot of hype for the 2026 superhero movies. It’s shaping up to be a pretty great year for fans of both Marvel and DC, as Supergirl, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and Avengers: Doomsday are all coming to theaters over the course of the year. Avengers: Doomsday is obviously the biggest of 2026’s superhero films, but mostly because its an Avengers movie, not because of well-built storying leading up to it. There’s been very little build-up for the film — the Incursions set-up in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the Fox X-Men showing up in The Marvels post-credit scene, and the teasers, which are downright nonexistent when compared to what we used to get.
Marvel has used this kind of anemic build-up in the comics numerous times for their event stories, and every time they did so, we got a lackluster event. Marvel Studios isn’t selling its fans a great story that is the culmination of years of storytelling; they’re selling the movie with who’s going to be in it. This doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in what we’re going to get. There were definitely some unpredictable curveballs thrown at the MCU in recent years, and that has changed the plans, but that’s no excuse. Avengers: Doomsday has a lot riding on it, basically the fate of the MCU itself, and it needs to be better than a movie that constantly asks, “Remember when?”
Avengers: Doomsday will be in theaters December 18, 2026.
What do you think about the build to Avengers: Doomsday? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
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