Doomsday’ Trailer Leaks Continue The Movie’s Awful Marketing
Thor Love and Thunder
Marvel
For a movie that’s smashing together the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and X-Men for the first time, it sure seems like things should be going more smoothly here. But given the rocky start, I suppose it’s not a huge shock that we are where we are with Avengers: Doomsday’s marketing decisions, which now involve two leaked trailers with two more undoubtedly on the way.
Marvel made the somewhat baffling decision to produce theatrical-only teaser trailers for Avengers: Doomsday, a full year ahead of release. Now, of course, they have leaked online. Spoilers follow, although no one can be blamed for that but Marvel.
There are reportedly four teaser spots: one focused on Captain America, another on Thor, a third for Doctor Doom and then one larger teaser.
That is Steve Rogers’ Captain America, not Sam Wilson, the Captain America the MCU has been attempting to pass the mantle to since Endgame. Now, it seems Wilson is clearly going to be playing second fiddle to the OG, even if the Rogers character is just showing up as “Steve.”
In the brief Cap spot, we see Steve arrive home on a motorcycle, briefly look at his old Captain America suit in a box, then hold his young baby. A tagline says that Steve Rogers will return in Doomsday.
There are complete, but grainy, recordings of this trailer and somehow, perfect 4K screenshots. Disney is ruthlessly trying to copyright blast all of this out of existence, but when does that ever work on internet Pandora’s boxes? You can still find it in a thousand places.
I haven’t seen as much leak from the Thor spot yet, but that’s starting to happen and I’ve seen images, at least. In the scene, Thor prays to Odin before a battle for “the safe return of his daughter,” who would be his adopted child from Love and Thunder.
Combine these with the Doctor Doom tease at the end of Fantastic Four, where Doom is with Franklin Richards, and a picture is painted of a plot that seems to be akin to Doom collecting superhero children like Pennywise the clown or something.
It cannot be overstated just how dumb it is that Disney is releasing these in theaters so that the story points and first looks at Doomsday are going to be seen in widely shared bootlegs and leaks across the internet, without fail.
This is far from the first time this has happened, as Disney has previously done things like show the Thunderbolts or Daredevil Born Again trailers behind closed doors at events, only to have those leak in poor quality. But here? In wide theatrical releases? That was always going to happen within minutes, and whatever plan they have to sell extra tickets via one-minute Doomsday teasers does not seem worth it, given what’s going on.
The entire marketing for this movie has been bizarre: the mask-off Doom moment announcing Robert Downey Jr. that confused everyone more than anything; the infamous “chair” livestream as the most boring way to announce a cast ever; then the Russos have been sharing “cryptic teasers,” including this week. That’s hilarious, given that these other trailers are leaking online at the same time.
There is a lot to say about the film more generally, supposedly now trying to be a “direct sequel” to Endgame, allowing large chunks of the last era of movies and shows to be missed. But I cannot understand how a movie that should be generating so much hype is fumbling the ball at every opportunity. The most exciting promotion about this movie at this point is from insider reports, and somehow even AI-generated leaks are more interesting than anything we’ve officially seen. They have a year to get it together.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
