Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige pushed back this weekend against criticism that “Avengers: Doomsday” rushed its villain onto screen without the years of setup that preceded Thanos in “Infinity War.” Speaking after Marvel’s San Diego Comic-Con panel, Feige argued that fans have inflated their memory of how much groundwork actually went into introducing the Mad Titan.
“The ‘Thanos build-up’ has built up in people’s heads over the years,” Feige said in an interview following the panel. He ran through the character’s pre-“Infinity War” appearances to make his point: a brief scene where Thanos sits on a throne, a moment when he grabs a gauntlet and declares he will act alone, and a short video call in which he berates Ronan the Accuser in “Guardians of the Galaxy.” “That was kind of it,” Feige said, recalling that online jokes at the time mocked Thanos for doing little more than occupying a chair.
The comparison stems from backlash to the first “Doomsday” trailer, unveiled exclusively for Hall H attendees, which some viewers felt leaned heavily on Robert Downey Jr.’s return as Victor von Doom without establishing the character the way earlier films slowly built toward Thanos. Doom has appeared only once before in the current MCU timeline, in a brief cameo at the end of last year’s “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.”
Feige maintains that “Infinity War” functioned as Thanos’s true introduction for casual viewers despite his prior cameos, and he intends “Doomsday” to do the same for Doom. “It is very much for audiences that know and love him from the comics, and audiences that haven’t any clue who he is yet,” he said.
The footage shown at Comic-Con opened with Doom seated on a throne while Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm narrates his fall from brilliance into ruin, and it wove in glimpses of a cast spanning the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and the X-Men.
Downey previously spent eleven years playing Tony Stark before his character’s death in “Avengers: Endgame,” making his casting as the franchise’s next central antagonist one of the more unexpected turns in the studio’s history. Directors Anthony and Joe Russo, who also helmed “Endgame,” are back behind the camera. “Avengers: Doomsday” opens in theaters Dec. 18.
