Marvel Fans Are Convinced Avengers: Doomsday’s New Trailer Secretly Edited Out Multiple Characters

Marketing for Avengers: Doomsday is now underway. Over the past four weeks, Marvel has released a series of teasers for the upcoming blockbuster, each one spotlighting a different character (or group of characters) set to appear. Much about Doomsday remains under wraps, so there was much interest in these teasers, as they gave fans their first real taste of story hints and plot details. Between the return of Steve Rogers, the Wakandans meeting the Fantastic Four, and more, there’s plenty to dissect in the footage. As fans pore over everything the teasers have to offer, some believe Marvel is playing tricks by secretly editing characters out.

On social media, people have been pointing out what’s seemingly an unusual amount of dead space in some of the shots in the recently released Black Panther/Fantastic Four teaser. The suspicion is that Marvel digitally tweaked the footage to preserve spoilers, potentially removing Doctor Doom or the Fantastic Four’s ship. On X, user @ProjectHurts cited aspects like Shuri’s head being slightly angled and blurry spots in the background as signs the footage has been edited.

Did Marvel Digitally Edit the Avengers: Doomsday Trailer Footage?

At first glance, this seems to veer into tin foil hat territory, but claims of Marvel digitally editing trailer footage aren’t unfounded. There’s a precedent here. Some fans might recall that trailers for Spider-Man: No Way Home digitally removed Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield from certain shots in an effort to hide the fact that the old Spider-Man actors were returning. The Avengers: Infinity War trailer features a shot of Hulk charging with the rest of the heroes during the Battle of Wakanda. With Doomsday still 11 months away, Marvel is in no rush to show all of its cards, so it wouldn’t be the most surprising development if some of the trailer footage has been tweaked to keep specific elements hidden for now.

While the latest Doomsday teaser confirms a meeting between the Wakandans and the Fantastic Four, the full context of the sequence remains a mystery. Viewers don’t see how or why the Fantastic Four travel to Wakanda, raising questions. Perhaps their ship crashed as the team traveled across realities, and the Wakandans are coming to investigate. Marvel could want to hide a damaged ship to keep as many story beats under lock and key as possible. Another prevailing theory is that Doctor Doom himself has been removed from the trailer (the belief is he’s supposed to be standing next to Ben Grimm). Doom notably has not appeared in any Doomsday teasers yet, and Marvel is waiting for the proper time to officially reveal the villain. Assuming Doom really is in that shot, it would make sense to remove him since the object of the teasers was to highlight various heroes and their respective plights.

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It’s also entirely possible that this is just how these specific shots are framed, and Marvel isn’t hiding anything extra. Having some dead space in a medium shot is a perfectly suitable aesthetic choice. There’s no need to shoot everything in a closeup; closeups are arguably best utilized for intense, dramatic moments, as they place a heavy emphasis on the emotions a character is feeling. The medium shot is a happy medium for other kinds of sequences, namely ones where characters are standing together and talking. The camera is close enough that viewers can read the actor’s performance, but there’s still room the breathe within the frame.

It’ll be interesting to see if this exact sequence is even in the final Doomsday cut. Trailers typically incorporate shots that aren’t in the finished movie, namely because they serve a different purpose. In the cast of the latest Doomsday trailer, Marvel is communicating to general audiences that the Wakandans and the Fantastic Four are in the movie and will cross paths with each other. Maybe M’Baku and Ben’s amusing interaction was shot specifically for the trailer, and the final film will feature different dialogue between these characters. In the meantime, Marvel fans will surely continue to speculate about what Doomsday has in store.

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