Multiverse of Madness
Disney
Everyone has been clamoring to know who exactly is going to be showing up in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday, with a new rumor every day and now that filming has started, inevitable set leaks starting to build out the cast without Disney’s permission.
So, the idea was to get ahead of the game with a cast list announcement, which in theory, could have been fun. Instead it was the opposite of fun, and both the presentation, who is on the list, and who isn’t is just exceptionally bad on every level.
The Stream – Marvel had a stream that ran for hourxs, slowly panning over chairs with the name of each actor that would be showing up in the film. It was about as interesting as watching grass grow. There had to have been about fifty better ways to do this, and the only good thing to come out of this absurd format were the internet memes that spawned from it. This was just awful.
Avengers: Doomsday
Disney
The Cast – I’m not going to post a giant list so you can just take a look at the image above. The main development here was that the largest group featured here are a slate of somewhat random FOX X-Men, with a full six of them added to the cast. Between those X-Men and what appears to be the full cast of Thunderbolts, that’s 13 out of the 27 spots by themselves (plus Gambit). Not to mention this just spoiled Thunderbolts, as we now have confirmed all these cast members survive the Suicide Squad-ish film (RIP Taskmaster), even its villain. The movie is out in a month, they couldn’t wait until then? And they sure better hope it’s a hit.
I have no idea what Marvel’s plan here is with the X-Men going forward. The original X-Men film where most of these characters debuted was in the year 2000. A lot current MCU fans weren’t even born yet, and given that this was so long ago, the ages of the cast now range from 50 to 85 (McKellen) and the only one outside of that is Channing Tatum’s Gambit, but he’s not a real part of the FOX crew. The main question I have is that the goal, no doubt, is to introduce a new slate of X-Men after these Avengers movies with recast, younger actors, as again, you cannot continue forward with a cast led by 84 year old Patrick Stewart and 85 year old Ian McKellen from here, as amazing as they may be. Deadpool and Wolverine felt like the tribute that the FOX universe needed. This? I don’t know what this is supposed to be. (Also, where are Deadpool and Wolverine).
Spider-Man
Disney
Who’s Missing – It’s kind of insane that there is only one core Avenger in this entire list, Thor. While sure, we were always going to be missing Steven Rogers and Tony Stark. There are some huge characters missing here, including Doctor Strange, Bruce Banner, Star Lord, Captain Marvel (and Ms. Marvel, for that matter), Hawkeye (and Kate Bishop), Scarlet Witch and above all else, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man where it seemed he was supposed to be one of the linchpins of the MCU going forward. And he’s not even here?
I am sure that there are some cameo parts being hidden here, but those huge characters should not be cameos in the first place, so I doubt many will be. It just strikes me as exceedingly strange this movie would be missing such key characters when half the cast will be coming from the last three (non-Deadpool) MCU movies and seven more slots going to FOX X-Men. None of this seems good, and given the Russo Brothers’ recent track record outside of the MCU, I’m not sure how much faith I have in them to make this work.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
