Recent word confirming that Avengers: Endgame was getting another cinematic re-release in September came with a warning that it will include new footage connected to this December’s release of Avengers: Doomsday. At the time, during CinemaCon, it was unclear if this was just a bonus teaser or something more significant. Unfortunately, Deadline reports that co-director Joe Russo told an audience at the Sands Film Festival this weekend that it’s “critically important,” suggesting that re-watching a seven-year-old, three-hour-long movie is required homework before the franchise reawakens. For fuck’s sake.
One of the ongoing criticisms of the colossal Marvel Cinematic Universe at its late-2010s peak was the volume of so-called “homework” needed to be able to understand what was happening in many of the movies. This didn’t only include every previous movie in the franchise, but multiple Disney Plus TV series too, some of them a real slog to get through (perhaps none more-so than The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which introduced vast amounts of key storyline but offered little entertainment in the process). The choice was to either force yourself through all the B- and C-grade content to truly understand what was happening in the latest tentpole movie, or be alienated from the plots as characters sprang out of nowhere. Hey, guess what, we’re here again.
Pencils ready
The MCU, after years of bombarding us with movies, has gone awfully quiet of late. 2024 saw just one entry and that was the mostly disconnected Deadpool & Wolverine, and there’s been a year-long gap between 2025’s three OK-ish films and this year’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day. That’ll also be the first Spidey movie in five years, and the only other 2026 title is Doomsday, the first Avengers movie in a whopping seven years. Bizarrely, Doomsday is said to be begin immediately following the events of Endgame, despite the stretch of time since and indeed the 12 movies that have chronologically occurred in the interim! (You have to assume they mean it’ll pick up on the stories of Captain America and co. after the climax, and then do a huge time-jump forward.)
According to Joe Russo, “It’s critically important to re-release the movie [Endgame], and, in fact, we’ll be re-releasing the film with footage that is set in the Doomsday story that we have added to Avengers: Endgame.”
Oh great. “It’s an opportunity to create a bridge from Endgame to Doomsday in a very unique way,” the director continues, “and because that movie was so successful, we have an opportunity to re-release it. You don’t always get the chance to re-release because it costs money, so the fact that we can enhance the story of Doomsday by bridging it to Endgame and these characters that we worked with for years that we love so much, and continue their story: It’s a really unique opportunity.”
Or, and here’s an idea, you could attach that new footage to the beginning of Doomsday so we only need to pay to watch the one movie. It’s wild to suggest that fixing their own writing holes is this wonderfully “unique” opportunity for us, the moviegoers, to pay to see the same film again. But Russo is adamant. He continued calling the new footage a “critical companion story,” and a “setup for what you’re gonna watch in December.”
God I hate this. Pay to re-watch the old movie or you won’t be able to follow the new one! What an amazing piece of marketing. What a way to treat an audience. You really have to assume that this stunt isn’t going to be so cynical as to not release the new version of Endgame onto Disney Plus ahead of Doomsday, right? They wouldn’t be that unbearably stupid?