Marvel's Avengers: Doomsday cast video revealed a bleak truth about the future of cinema
Did someone say something about 'superhero fatigue'? Over the past half-decade, prevailing logic has insisted that the cultural dominance of comic book films – especially that of the sprawling, multi-billion-dollar franchise known as the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) – was on the wane. Superhero films were no longer the surefire box office catnip they had been throughout the 2010s. Each new entry seemed to plumb fresh depths, Marvel not merely jumping the shark once, but doing it again and again, installing itself at SeaWorld as a special shark-jumping attraction. But if this week has shown anything, it's that 'superhero fatigue' is set to give way to one hell of a second wind.
Yesterday afternoon, Marvel announced the cast list for its forthcoming blockbuster Avengers: Doomsday. A staggering 27 actors were announced – only a few of whom had already been confirmed (Robert Downey Jr as Doctor Doom and the four leads of the forthcoming Fantastic Four reboot); the rest included a nostalgia grab-bag of stars from the Noughties X-Men films (Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, and Alan Cumming among them), and an eclectic heap from recent MCU entries. The announcement was made over a period of hours, with a livestreamed video showing each actor's name on the back of a chair; every 10 minutes or so, the video feed would pan over to reveal another chair. At one point, there were more than 10 million people watching this video. To repeat: a nearly six-hour-long video of mostly static furniture, watched by more people than this year's Best Picture Oscar winner. Avengers: Doomsday may well be on course to become the most lucrative film of all time.
Creatively, the film has all the hallmarks of disaster. Firstly, there is the total conceptual overhaul that took place after actor Jonathan Majors was convicted of assaulting his partner, and was fired from the franchise. Majors' character, interdimensional tyrant Kang, had been seeded as the MCU's next Big Bad, to such an extent that he was even included in the film's original title (Avengers: The Kang Dynasty). With Majors no longer viable, the MCU roped in Downey Jr – the erstwhile face of the franchise, whose role in 2019's Avengers: Endgame was supposed to be his swansong. Bringing him back – and in a new role – represents a big risk of tarnishing Downey's Marvel legacy, with a lot of potential downsides.
Moreover, it's hard to imagine how Doomsday will be able to corral its ludicrously over-stuffed cast into a coherent narrative. Endgame managed to (just about) deal with this problem by sidelining most of its many characters, reserving the limelight for Downey Jr and a few choice Avengers. It's fair to assume that some of the 27 announced actors will be relegated to glorified cameos, but most – particularly the exhumed X-Men – seem to demand something substantial.
It's telling, too, that most of the buzz from the cast announcement concerns the return of decades-old characters – superheroes from an era that predates the MCU itself. (Marvel Studios has only held the rights to X-Men since 2019, when its parent company Disney merged with Fox.) This tactic is prevalent all over the film and TV industry now – a reliance on hollow 'remember this?' nostalgia, sort of a Peter Kay approach to franchise filmmaking. Last year's Deadpool & Wolverine embraced it, and while the film itself was shoddy and obnoxious, it was also a huge hit, grossing nearly $1.4bn. This, for Marvel, is the new blueprint – a promise of certitude in an industry where long-held notions of bankability can no longer be trusted.
Those who have spent the past five years salivating over the impending heat death of the superhero craze had better buckle up: it's clear the MCU isn't going anywhere just yet. We may need to brace for the possibility that it'll outlive us all – that 100 years from now, Marvel will be announcing the cast for yet another Avengers sequel, in a video that lasts a week and features enough chairs to fill the Royal Albert Hall. Thankfully, I'll be dead by then.
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