The first official Avengers: Doomsday trailer is finally here, giving us our first real look at Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom. However, thanks to some confusing angles and a rather bizarre accent, the highly anticipated trailer has me worried that Marvel may have taken the wrong direction with this new villain. That is, unless Marvel has another trick up its sleeve.
Avengers: Doomsday hasn't had the easiest road to the big screen. Once intended to be Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, the project saw a complete overhaul followed by a series of delays. But excitement for the fifth Avengers movie soon shot up again after Marvel's famed Hall H panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2024 saw unmasked Iron Man star Downey as Doctor Doom, confirming the movie had swapped out Kang the Conqueror for the green-suited baddie.
With Doom never appearing in live-action before, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Not to mention the fact that Downey had spent the past decade-plus playing the MCU's first, and perhaps most beloved hero, Tony Stark. With that, I wondered how Marvel would get around the fact that the new villain looks and sounds exactly like the late Avenger. However, I'm not sure that the first trailer has settled my worries. In fact, I fear it has made matters worse.
Doctor Dracula
The new Avengers: Doomsday trailer immediately delivers what we have been waiting for. As Professor X's academy burns to the ground, we hear Doctor Doom warning, "Something's coming, something we may not be able to deter," before we see the villain kneeling, wearing his iconic armour and silver mask. Later in the trailer, we get a full look at Doom as he faces Chris Hemsworth's Thor, before the camera closes in on the villain's mask and glowing green eyes.
However, I can't help but feel as though Doom's voice sounds like a bad Dracula impersonator. Yes, in Marvel comics, Victor Von Doom was indeed born into a Romani community in a fictional nation known as Latveria. I understand that having the new foe sound anything like Stark would be way too confusing, but Downey's newfangled accent sounds dangerously close to Hotel Transylvania rather than the Eastern European scientific genius Doom is meant to be.
The second issue I have with how Doom is presented in the trailer. When we first saw Downey's Doom in The Fantastic Four: First Steps post-credits scene, the villain had an incredibly dark and looming presence. Although he didn't really do anything too shocking in those few moments, his overall energy was ominous. But in the Doomsday trailer, the villain seems quite stiff and struggles to leave an impression. This differs from how Marvel Comics presents Doom as a 6-foot-7 force of nature who has brains and brawn. In short, I need him to have a similar aura to Agamemnon in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey.
Marvel's main man
Complaints aside, let's not get ahead of ourselves and judge a book by its cover right away. As I mentioned earlier, Doom's initial appearance in Fantastic Four did leave a lasting effect, so letting the first Doomsday trailer put a dampener on the whole project would be a mistake. We know that Downey is a capable actor and has been put in quite a difficult position in practically saving the fifth Avengers movie from being delayed indefinitely. Let's also remember that the movie is still in post-production, meaning any kinks can still be, ahem, ironed out.
I do think it was a mistake to give so much of Doom away in the very first trailer. Just look at Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The upcoming Spidey installment is less than two weeks from hitting the big screen, and we still don't know who the main villain is. With this, I wonder why Marvel has chosen to show so much of Doom. Could he be a red herring? I have had my doubts about whether Doom really is the main villain in Marvel Phase 6's Doomsday.
Another detail in the trailer, which I feel as though many people are skipping over, is that Doom seems to be warning the heroes that an Incursion is coming to destroy Earth-616. Why would he do that if he wanted to put an end to the Avengers? On top of this, the new Doomsday synopsis from Fandango teases "Beloved heroes from three distinct universes will be set on a deadly collision course and ultimately face an existential threat unlike anything they've ever encountered." But fails to mention Doom by name.
The rest of the synopsis suggests anything goes in Doomsday, as the movie marks the Multiverse Saga's "final chapter" and "will lay the foundation for the future" of the MCU. I do think that Doomsday will change Marvel's Cinematic Universe as we know it, including killing off many of the heroes it is bringing back in its stacked cast list. I just hope that Doom's lackluster reveal is part of a bigger plan, and that we haven't just seen all of what Avengers: Doomsday's villain has to offer way too early.
Doomsday arrives this December 18. For more, check out our Avengers: Doomsday trailer breakdown, and keep up with other upcoming Marvel movies and shows.
