Avengers: Doomsday Special Look Trailer

We know—didn’t we just cover Doomsday? Well yes, but it seems Marvel doesn’t stand still, and Kevin Feige had to have something up us sleeve for Disney fan event D23 (so called for Disney’s founding in 1923).

Granted, this trailer does offer a special look, starting with an ethereal shot of Doom’s throne room and Sue Storm’s monologue, lamenting what happened to Victor Werner von Doom. “He used to be different… he used to be kind; he used to be caring,” she says, appearing on-screen after the studio title card, accompanied by industrial, shadowy echoes in the soundtrack. We get glimpses of Ian McKellen’s Magneto, Channing Tatum’s Gambit, and Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers.

At 0:28 we get a more pointed sound, reflecting the unknown threat that Doom represents, accompanied by Doom looking up at what looks like almost religious, prophetic imagery.

After one more shot of Doom at 0:41 as Sue notes “I did not know he was broken,” that guttural sound repeats with other sonic effects reaching a climax at 0:43, leading to an audiovisual blackout. At 0:45 we get what looks like a version of New York City in ruins, or at least substantially altered, as Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) confronts Doom—“Victor… did you do this?”

“All of you… have lived… stolen lives,” a very convincing (and unrecognizable) Robert Downey Jr. growls, as the soundtrack ramps up its intensity. We see a montage of various Avengers and related heroes who have saved others through arguably unnatural means—often with time travel, or by bringing someone back from the dead. “But now you must give them back.”

“Hell… answers… to me… for I… am… Doom,” he declares, perhaps a small callback to Downey Jr’s previous signature line (“I am Iron Man”). The parallelism is hard to ignore.

At 1:42 we finally get a melody—and of course, it’s a round of Silvestri’s now-classic Avengers theme, as the title appears. We’ve been waiting/hoping for it, and it picks up the key of the bass drone we’ve been hearing all along, Notice how the Avengers “A” is architecturally situated in the same throne room that the trailer opened with—has Doom taken over Avengers tower in New York?

Overall, the soundtrack—if you want to call it that—defers more to sonic design and atmosphere, with much more attention ceded to the visuals and dialogue. In particular, it’s understandable that special attention is paid to every line Downey Jr delivers—both because Doom is the central, titular figure on this outing, and due to our hyperawareness that this is the same actor who portrayed the leading hero. Indeed, Iron Man and Doom are curiously similar yet vitally different. As Downey Jr said once his new role was announced in 2024, “new mask, same task”.

It will be interesting to see whether Doomsday’s future trailers spend more time on musical flourishes, or if atmospherics will rule the campaign.

Doomsday is December 18th.

— Curtis Perry