We finally have our first true look at Avengers: Doomsday and the first trailer isn’t quite blowing people away. In fact, many are downright disappointed or struggling to summon any strong emotion after watching Robert Downey Jr.’s Doom and Chris Hemsworth’s Thor lay out the stakes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s latest extinction-level showdown.
It’s been eight years since Avengers: Infinity War, and if you haven’t watched every new MCU movie and streaming TV show since then, you might find yourself at a loss for what’s going on in the new Doomsday trailer. In fact, you might feel that way even if you have been keeping up with all of Marvel’s annual blockbuster cash-ins. Instead of starting small and lowkey, the trailer kicks off at 11 with a sizzle reel of chaotic action sequences and knowing nods between random Marvel characters we’ve never seen interact with one another before. It feels like the setup for the third movie in a trilogy that Disney forgot to make.
Here are some of the initial takes and reactions online:
Guys…. Am I the only one who feels that Avengers: Doomsday trailer was completely underwhelming? I’m not trying to be an asshole. I’m really not. But it felt so weirdly edited and lacking. I felt nothing… I mean, Doom looks cool. But if you compare this to the IW teaser…
— RJ (@ResonantJustice) July 20, 2026
Just watched the first Avengers: Doomsday trailer.
Maybe AI has completely ruined my perception, but a lot of the action honestly feels like AI generated battle sequences with the actors’ faces composited in 😅
Everything is there on paper: the scale, the characters, the… https://t.co/rRRn0QvCzs
— Ben Geskin (@BenGeskin) July 20, 2026
That Avengers trailer is so funny because it’s literally just Things Happening with no buildup, there’s no momentum or anything to carry you to a feeling of this being THE movie like Infinity War’s trailer, it’s just Shit Happens, because that’s what Doomsday is gonna be
— Red From Boulder Punch 2.0 (@RedLReviews) July 20, 2026
you dont really appreciate how practical nolan went with the odyssey and how real it looks until you see something like the trailer for avengers doomsday
— doctor idk (@bigmonkeong) July 20, 2026
watching the doomsday trailer like why are 80% of yall even fighting? Are we showing them doing the thing where they meet up and think each other is the enemy initially or something
— paul (@paulswhtn) July 20, 2026
New Avengers movie releases were time-delineating events in the 2010s, and after years of sub-par MCU spin-offs and shows of mixed quality, there’s clearly a section of the audience pining for the highs of the last decade and hyped to see Chris Evans and the rest of the gang get back together. Others, including myself, hope Doomsday can be a launching pad for a revitalized X-Men franchise at the box office.
If all of the celebrity cameos, greenscreen action set-pieces, and hard-to-visually-parse VFX can’t offer fresh hope for the MCU’s future, at the very least maybe it can offer an entertaining last gasp of its past. I’ll take anything other than a sprawling multiverse box-office event struggling under the baggage of its past and the expectations of fans, which is certainly the vibe given off by the first Doomsday trailer. It’s now five months until the movie’s December release. Marvel has a long and expensive marketing campaign left to try to get people excited. It can start by making sure the next trailer is better lit.