Avengers: Doomsday‘s strategy of bringing things back to the beginning is big for the MCU. In a way, though, it’s also a reminder of what went wrong.
During a recent appearance at SXSW London, directors Joe and Anthony Russo talked about the plan for the upcoming Doomsday. Specifically, the pair recalled a conversation with star Robert Downey Jr., and said their plan is bring things back to “phase zero” of the MCU.
“That serial shifting and changing and surprising you and then reinventing itself and then shifting and changing and then surprising you — that’s exciting and I think you’re going to see some shifting and changing [with Doomsday],” said Joe Russo (via THR). “So, get ready for it. Look, we were with Rob [Downey Jr.] earlier today. We were both talking about this concept that we are back to phase zero. This is starting over from scratch. We want to make sure everybody feels like this isn’t leaning on anything from the past.”
Avengers: Doomday’s plans are an admission of past MCU mistakes
The Russo” comments come as a bit of a surprise. While many assumed that the upcoming Avengers game would feature tons of throwbacks and cameos to past eras (and it still might), it seems like they’re going in a different direction. It’s no surprise that the upcoming movie and sequel, Avengers: Secret Wars, will likely be resetting or ushering us into a new era of the MCU. However, with the Russo’s directly noting that this is essentially starting over from scratch, it acknowledges a very key failure of the past phases of the MCU.
Prior to Doomsday’s announcement, the MCU had seemed set up for the foreseeable future. The generational run of projects Marvel Studios released culminated with 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, and seemed ready to continue from there. Instead, things got rocky. Following the end of MCU’s Phase Three, Marvel Studios released a number of projects that never lived up to the hype of them, including Eternals, Thor: Love and Thunder, The Marvels, and more.
Instead of a new world filled with younger and fresher faces taking up the mantle in the MCU, we instead had a near seven-year window where people began questioning the MCU in its entirety. Fans didn’t seem to connect with the new heroes, and the multiversal story Marvel was telling never took off, and led famously to 2023’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania flopping and kickstarting the change that led us to now.
Now, we’re left in a bit of a limbo state in terms of what to expect from the MCU. Prior to 2019, every Marvel movie was met with immediate excitement by the majority of its fans. That’s no longer the case, now, and as a result, Marvel Studios finds itself having to essentially build back a lot of the belief that fans had in it. In that regard, it’s good to see the Russos acknowledging as much with the upcoming Doomsday.
However, the company still has a long way to go before fans are bought back in fully. With successful projects like Disney+‘s Daredevil: Born Again and the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day, though, they seem ready to take on the challenge, and show fans what made the MCU as fun as it was in the first place.
