ICYMI: Latest ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ Teaser Offers An Unexpected Team-Up
by Erik Amaya
The timing of the Avengers: Doomsday teasers left us mostly ignoring them. They arrive online a week after their theatrical debut and, often, online scammers pollute the feeds with AI recreations of the previews, stealing all of the surprise and possible wonder.
Also, to be honest, we’ve been uninspired by the way the marketing is focusing on the return of characters versus the actual plot of the film.
But the above teaser caught our attention for exactly one reason: King M’Baku (Winston Duke) shaking hands with Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach). The Fantastic Four and Wakanda have long been linked, thanks of course to the country and Black Panther both debuting in Fantastic Four shortly after the arrival of Galactus. It’s hard to say if Marvel Studios or directors Anthony and Joe Russo are intentionally calling on that connection or just going for a certain surprise factor within the meeting of seemingly unlikely allies. Either way, it’s the first teaser to really intrigue us.
Also intriguing: the appearance of Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejia) — another character with deep ties to the Fantastic Four — as Shuri (Letitia Wright) discusses the afterlife of her people.
Based on this and the other teasers, Doomsday is poised to be a true crossover event film in the spirit of comics like The Infinity Gauntlet and, of course, Secret Wars. But with so many characters to serve or kill off, will the film have anything of its own to cover? That is always the risk with event storylines and while it worked for Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, the various story threads may be too much this time. It also needs to introduce Doom (Robert Downey Jr.), after all.
All of which is the long way of saying we’re unsure about Doomsday. But that may be the film’s true cliffhanger: will we care?
Avengers: Doomsday arrives in theaters on December 18th.
