The first trailer for Avengers: Doomsday got fans excited for the next chapter in the MCU but was also quickly picked apart for feeling like an expensive game of “let’s remember some people.”
One of the major critiques was that it felt like Marvel was pushing another Infinity War-style showdown without having done any of the work to build up the stakes. Some fans argued that Thanos was allowed space and time to grow into a major villain while the pivot to Robert Downey, Jr.’s Doctor Doom feels rushed.
The head of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, thinks those fans are misremembering the introduction of Thanos.
π¦Ή Quick Overview: Feige argues that Thanos had minimal screen time before Infinity War β sitting in a chair, pulling a gauntlet, and yelling at Ronan. He insists Doomsday will serve as the proper introduction to Doom, just as Infinity War did for Thanos.
Kevin Feige’s Full Response
“I’m never confident about anything, I just work hard to try to deliver. But I will say I do think β I was just saying to somebody else β that the Thanos buildup has built up in people’s heads over the years. He sat on a chair at the end. He pulled a gauntlet out and said, ‘I’ll do it myself.’ And he yelled at Ronan on a video screen briefly and that was kind of it.”
β Kevin Feige
“And I remember the memes making fun of Thanos for just sitting in a chair, and all he does is sit on a chair, and there was a Twitter feed at the time about him updating every day β ‘I’m still sitting in my chair’ β and when we got to Infinity War, we said this is really the introduction of Thanos to people. That’s really what we’re doing. That’s what we’re doing with Doom. Doomsday is an introduction and the story of Doom. You peel the onion, you learn things about him as you go. And it is very much meant for audiences that know and love him from the comics and audiences who have no clue who he is.”
β Kevin Feige
Thanos vs. Doom β The Build-Up Comparison
| Villain | First Appearance | Build-Up Period | Pre-Movie Screen Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thanos | The Avengers (2012) β mid-credits scene | 6 years (2012β2018) | Brief appearances: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Age of Ultron (2015) |
| Doctor Doom (RDJ) | Comic-Con 2024 announcement | ~2 years (2024β2026) | Mid-credits scene in Fantastic Four (2025) |
Why the Criticism Has Merit
Feige is right that Thanos had no real screen time prior to Avengers: Infinity War. But the MCU had also been pointing to his eventual arrival and motivation for years. The mid-credits scene at the end of the first Avengers back in 2012 was the first cryptic hint about Thanos and the Infinity Stones. Marvel continued peeling back the curtain in 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy (talking to Ronan on a screen) and 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron (“I’ll do it myself”). That was six years of letting the character gestate in the minds of audiences before Avengers: Infinity War in 2018.
By comparison, the first mention of Robert Downey, Jr.’s Doom came at Comic-Con 2024. He then appeared in a mid-credits sequence for 2025’s Fantastic Four. And if it hadn’t been delayed, Doomsday would have already been out in theaters this past May.
While you certainly don’t need to have nearly a decade of multi-franchise build-up for a villain to deliver, there’s no way around the fact that the MCU quickly pivoted from a set of movies oriented around Jonathan Majors’ Kang being the big bad to something different.
Going from Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania to Doomsday in just three years is very different from the plan for Thanos, even if fans at the time mocked that build-up for taking too long.
π¬ Final Word: On one hand, a movie should be able to stand on its own 90β150 minute storytelling, regardless of the breadcrumbs scattered across half a dozen other Disney products. But the first Avengers: Doomsday trailer we got was not for that kind of movie. We’ll see how it all ends up this December β with Avengers: Secret Wars following just a year later.
