Remember the chairs? Remember when Marvel let a video run forever in which they just gradually showed more and more directors’ chairs with actors’ names on them in order to introduce the cast of Avengers: Doomsday? I have not forgotten (or forgiven). What’s more, Marvel seems to be continuing this marketing approach. The first trailer for the next Avengers film is essentially the chairs video, but in costume. Here is a character! Here is a character! Here is a character! The gang’s all here.
Well, almost all here. Some of us would like to see Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming), thank you.
Avengers: Doomsday is a movie about how despite time-traveling or dying, Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans will return to the franchise. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is scared. He intones, very seriously, that they are going to need a miracle. Chris Evans, shaggy and way less blonde, appears. This might have been more meaningful had we not already been informed that Chris Evans, despite all logic and previous films, would return. (Somehow, Loki also returns?)
The one thing I want to know about this movie is what all these characters are doing in the same place at the same time. That will not be explained (yet, anyway). It is only important that you know that everyone is here and they must come together to face the man in the iron mask Doctor Doom (Downey Jr.). And by everyone, I mean:
- Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby)
- Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal)
- Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach)
- Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn)
- Shang-Chi (Simu Liu)
- Captain America (Anthony Mackie)
- Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez)
- Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan)
- Ant-Man (Paul Rudd)
- Loki (Tom Hiddleston)
- Shuri (Letitia Wright)
- M’Baku (Winston Duke)
- Red Guardian (David Harbour)
- John Walker (Wyatt Russell)
- Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen)
- Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh)
- Bob/Sentry (Lewis Pullman)
- Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía)
- Beast (Kelsey Grammer)
- Gambit (Channing Tatum)
- Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart)
- Magneto (Ian McKellen)
- Mystique (Rebecca Romijn)
- Cyclops (James Marsden)
We are really putting the concept of an ensemble cast to the test. Avengers: Doomsday is directed by Anthony and Joe Russo from a screenplay by Stephen McFeely and Michael Waldron. It’s in theaters December 18.
