Avengers: Doomsday

In 2026, the Avengers face their biggest foe yet: Superhero fatigue. Oops… I mean Dr. Doom, of course. Indeed, with 41 million trailer views on the official YouTube video in its first 24 hours alone, it’s difficult to argue that the Avengers aren’t in the running for most popular film of the year, seven years after the commercial peak that was Endgame. At the very least, it promises an unprecedented spectacle for longtime Marvel fans. While this is the film’s first official trailer, promotion for Avengers: Doomsday has already included a series of character reveal teaser videos released online last winter, and an unusual “Now In Production” quasi-trailer back in April 2025.

Under a single note in strings, we hear Robert Downey Jr. as Doom in a distinctively Latverian (the fictional Eastern European country Doom hails from) accent. “Something’s coming… something we may not be able to deter,” he intones, every syllable thick, as Patrick Stewart’s Professor X appears on the screen for what we know will be his final go at the role.

At the studio title card at 0:28, the strings pick up into a persistent thrum with percussive accents, now with Thor taking the monologue. Brass enters with a simple but effective melody outlining a minor scale on the low end, like a funeral dirge, as we see various cameos of the X-Men—all but new to the MCU—fighting more established heroes, like Gambit squaring off with Shang-Chi. During this sequence, the brass slips into a minor second from the tonic, rendering it even more sinister; as this resolves, an epic choir enters.

At 1:04 higher strings and synth are layered on the ever-stacking arrangement, again emphasizing this melodic motif that’s now insistent on an unnerving minor third and minor second. The melody is further bent at 1:19, moving from the minor second to the leading tone before resolving. Notice at 1:28 not only are we on the minor second, but we also move from a minor third built on that note to a major third. In other words, the evolution of this melody and harmonization is built on ever more unstable ground.

We get a reprieve towards the end for a scene between Thor and what at least appears to be Steve Rogers; Thor hands Mjolnir, the hammer that can be only wielded by those deemed to be worthy, to Steve as a test, given he was able to brandish the weapon in Endgame; he does so. While questions remain, at surface value it’s a hint of hope which presages the main title screen with a run though of the now-classic Avengers theme by Alan Silvestri—and, in retrospect, the that three note motif at the tail end of the theme seems to be what the entire trailer is built around.

Focusing on that three note motif and steadily warping and disintegrating it achieves multiple ends: It points towards the film’s plot about colliding universes, while also subtly signalling it’s an Avengers film, while also deferring from connoting any particular franchise or character in a movie that promises to contain practically every Marvel property in existence.

Avengers: Endgame arrives in theatres December 18th.

— Curtis Perry