{"id":160895,"date":"2026-01-05T17:25:56","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T00:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=160895"},"modified":"2026-01-05T17:25:56","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T00:25:56","slug":"impending-doomsday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2026\/01\/05\/impending-doomsday.html","title":{"rendered":"Impending “Doomsday”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I will be the first to admit that I am unreasonably in love with the MCU.\u00a0 As a long-time comic book collector, I just get a huge kick out of seeing Marvel characters (in one form or another) up on the big screen, and while there have been ups and downs in the franchise, even in the worst I usually find something nice to say.<\/p>\n

That said, regarding the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday<\/em> film coming out next Christmas:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I am really excited.<\/li>\n
  2. I am really worried.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The excitement part is just because, even if it is a dud, I expect to enjoy bits of it to make it worth my while (and an extortionate amount of money at the box office).<\/p>\n

    \"Avengers<\/a><\/p>\n

    The worried part is is more complicated.<\/p>\n

    First, the MCU has been seriously adrift since the Avengers: Infinity War<\/em> and Endgame<\/em> duo. Not that I haven’t enjoyed the stuff coming out (well … I gotta admit that\u00a0Secret Invasion<\/em> was hard to like, for a lot of reasons).<\/p>\n

    Marvel spent a lot of time, and a lot of movies, building up an interlocking cast of characters against the menace of Thanos, and with sub-build-ups about the Avengers forming and the Infinity Stones<\/del> Gems. One thing built on another; even where movies were a step or two askew from others, the post-credits scene would often build up that little tie-in.<\/p>\n

    By the time we got\u00a0Infinity War<\/em> and\u00a0Endgame,<\/em> everyone (in the MCU and the viewing audience) knew who everyone was,\u00a0 all the characters had had some solid-crossover work between them, and the villain and his glowing MacGuffin was ready for the big reveal.<\/p>\n

    Even with all of that, that duology was sort of a cast of hundreds payoff for everything that barely fit the bounds of the movies. Even with all that planning and groundwork, it verged on being just plain old too big.<\/p>\n

    What’s happened since then?\u00a0 A scatter-shot of movies and TV series of various popularities and viewership.\u00a0 Concepts left, right, and center. Very little follow-up of new (or newish) characters showing up elsewhere.<\/p>\n

    Most of all, the early work to tee up Kang the Conqueror as, a la Thanos, the BBEG for the next phase or three got blown out of the water by (a) the actor’s out-of-movie actions, and (b) not a lot of enthusiasm for the character or his hi-jinx in the couple of places (Loki 2, Ant-Man 3) we actually got to see him (or a version of him).<\/p>\n

    <\/a>
    <\/div><\/div>
    Marvel universe drops Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror after conviction. Now what?<\/div>
    Jonathan Majors had two movies in the balance with Marvel, Disney before the studios dropped him Monday after his conviction for assault, harassment.<\/div>
    www.usatoday.com\/story\/entertainment\/movies\/2023\/12\/19\/jonathan-majors-convicted-dropped-by-marvel-disney\/71971150007\/<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n

    Kang getting kicked to the curb not only robbed the MCU of something to get excited about, or focus the storylines on (there was no equivalent of the Infinity Gems to play with), but it knocked a lot of planned stories out as well, requiring rewriting, replotting, rejiggering to deal with no BBEG yet identified.\u00a0 All the teeing\u00a0 To the extent that was tied to the creative and box office difficulties of the MCU for the past few years, we also got a lot of planned movies and shows canceled, poking further holes into the MCU fabric.<\/p>\n

    It took Marvel too long to decide the next big villain would instead be Doctor Doom — and, once that was announced a Comic-Con or three ago, to actually get him some action in one (1) movie, and that only mid-credits.<\/p>\n

    Bottom line, we’ve got a lot of movies and TV shows with very little tying them together and, I suspect, very few people (aside from, ahem) who have seen and\/or appreciated all of them. We have a villain who’s largely a blank figure (sure, we didn’t know of Thanos’ real motivations, but at least we’d seen his actions behind the scenes before that). And we have a movie that looks like it’s going to have everyone and their sister and brother into it, both ostensibly retired heroes \/ characters (Thor, Captain America, Loki, and, for that matter, Robert Downey, Jr), ones waiting in the wings from other studios (we’ve finally gotten the FF, and word has it we’ll finally be getting something of the X-Men, again, using previously-used actors), and ones that we’ve gotten maybe one or two looks at in various properties but whose actual tying together into something that looks like “The Avengers” really hasn’t happened yet.<\/p>\n

    (Yes, Thunderbolts*<\/em> gave us a (second) Avengers team — but, for all I really enjoyed that installment, it was made up of mostly 2nd tier characters (kind of the point) and didn’t do well in the Box Office.)<\/p>\n

    The feel I get of all of this, and the rush to get Avengers: Doomsday<\/em> out, is a sense of desperation, a whiff of “We gotta do something really big that will really, truly, profoundly guaranteed to be a box office smash.” And so Feige and company are throwing every plate of spaghetti they have (including some they had said had been thrown out) at the wall to see if enough of it will stick.<\/p>\n

    I just don’t see how we’re going to get everyone introduced (to the audience and each other), working together, with an appropriate menace ready to be taken down, given the size of the cast and the lack of groundwork, over the course of a single film. But that seems to be what Marvel+Disney are shooting for.<\/p>\n

    This isn’t the first Avengers<\/em> film. We’re not talking 6 heroes, some of them who’d helmed their own films, being pulled together against a known bad guy.\u00a0 This is kind of the opposite.<\/p>\n

    So, yeah, I’m worried. Especially since, less than a year before show time, we’re\u00a0still<\/em> hearing credible rumors about additional character being pulled into the mess.<\/p>\n

    <\/a>
    <\/div><\/div>
    New AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY Rumor Claims Fans Will See Big Screen Debut of a Fan Favorite Disney+ Series Character \u2014 GeekTyrant<\/div>
    Avengers: Doomsday \u2019s sprawling cast list has been mostly revealed, with fans excited to see the return of ...<\/div>
    geektyrant.com\/news\/new-avengers-doomsday-rumor-claims-fans-will-see-big-screen-debut-of-a-fan-favorite-disney-series-character<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n

    I really want this to be not just a movie I enjoy, but something that sort of justifies what we’ve gotten from Marvel for the past six years. Something that shows coherency of both plot and plan. Something I’m\u00a0not<\/em> the only one to enjoy.<\/p>\n

    Here’s hoping.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    It’s been six years since the last Avengers flick. Can Marvel bring back that magic?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"both","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":301,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,525,41,40],"tags":[477],"class_list":["post-160895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media-comics","category-marvel-cinematic-universe","category-media-movies","category-media-tv","tag-avengers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Avengers-Doomsday-card.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":138574,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2019\/04\/08\/what-do-you-need-to-watch-before-avengers-endgame.html","url_meta":{"origin":160895,"position":0},"title":"What do you need to watch before “Avengers: Endgame”?","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 8-Apr-19 7:00pm","format":false,"excerpt":"What's the minimum MCU watch list for a total noob?","rel":"","context":"In "Comics & Comic Books"","block_context":{"text":"Comics & Comic Books","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-comics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/avengers-endgame-poster.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/avengers-endgame-poster.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/avengers-endgame-poster.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/avengers-endgame-poster.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/avengers-endgame-poster.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":135656,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/14\/marvel-universes-collide.html","url_meta":{"origin":160895,"position":1},"title":"When Marvel Universes Collide!","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 14-Dec-17 10:50am","format":false,"excerpt":"This article gets a little breathlessly geeky in places, but there's no doubt that the folk running Marvel Pictures right now are salivating over finally getting their hands on the X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises -- heroes and villains alike. If they follow their pattern, we'll see stand-alone films there\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/iron-man-wolverine.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":46092,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/10\/28\/the-marvel-cinematic-universe-strikes-back.html","url_meta":{"origin":160895,"position":2},"title":"The Marvel Cinematic Universe Strikes Back","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 28-Oct-14 2:39pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Following up on DC's recent fleshing out of their slate of films, Marvel has further detailed their coming entries, adding both some new heroes to the MCU as well as giving titles for some of the sequels.2015- Avengers: Age of Ultron- Ant-Man2016- Captain America: Civil War- Doctor Strange2017- Guardians of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":135465,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/29\/avengers-infinity-war-trailer-drops.html","url_meta":{"origin":160895,"position":3},"title":"The “Avengers: Infinity War” trailer drops","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 29-Nov-17 7:48am","format":false,"excerpt":"And a million fans go \"Squee!\" Yes, really, I'm excited about this. 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