Hell Answers to Doom in the New Avengers: Doomsday Trailer

Marvel has spent months showing us who is going to be in Avengers: Doomsday. The new trailer finally gets around to the more important question: what the hell are they all supposed to do about Doctor Doom? This is easily the most revealing look we’ve had at the movie yet, not because Marvel throws another dozen superheroes at the screen, although there are plenty of those, but because this trailer finally belongs to Victor Von Doom.

More importantly, we’re starting to understand what he wants. The footage opens on Doom sitting alone on his throne while Sue Storm describes a Victor who wasn’t always this man. He was brilliant, kind and caring before everything he loved was taken from him, and Sue admits that while she knew he was lost, she didn’t realize just how broken he had become. That gives this version of Doom something more interesting than simple conquest as a motivation. Whatever happened to Victor appears to have convinced him that something fundamental has gone wrong with reality itself.

Reed Richards eventually asks the question everybody else is probably going to spend the movie asking: “Victor, did you do this?” We hear Doom tell them that they have all lived stolen lives and now they have to give them back, while the trailer cuts through different characters scattered across whatever remains of these colliding worlds.

That line is doing a lot of work. We see Steve Rogers with a child, Johnny Storm protecting Franklin Richards, Thor and Love, Loki, Shuri, Cyclops, Magneto, Professor X and others. Doom doesn’t appear to see these people as heroes who happen to be standing in his way. He seems to believe their lives themselves are wrong, that reality has been reshaped into something it was never supposed to be and that perhaps he is the one person capable of correcting it.

Then Thor threatens him, and the trailer stops explaining Doom and starts showing us exactly what kind of problem he is going to be. Thor tells Victor, “I swear, you will beg for hell long before I grant it.” Against almost anybody else, that would be a pretty damn good threat. Doom responds by stopping Stormbreaker. Victor simply catches the attack, sends Thor flying and answers with the line that sells the entire trailer: “Hell answers to me... for I am Doom.”

Then the Sentinels wake up. That image of Doom standing between them may be the single best visual Marvel has released from Doomsday so far. We already knew the movie was bringing together the Avengers, Fantastic Four and X-Men, but the trailer makes it clear Doom isn’t waiting around for all of those people to decide whether they can work together. He has an army of his own, and the presence of Sentinels immediately raises a whole new set of questions about where they came from, who built them and why they are answering to Victor.

The trailer also finally lets Doctor Doom look like Doctor Doom. The mask, armor, hood, throne, massive architecture and green light all feel unapologetically comic-book accurate without looking like Marvel is embarrassed by any of it. There’s no attempt to modernize him into some generic guy wearing tactical armor or strip away the theatricality because somebody might think it’s too much.

Good. Doctor Doom should be too much.

What I’m also not getting from this footage is Tony Stark in a green cape. Robert Downey Jr. returning to Marvel was always going to carry that concern with it, but nothing here feels like Marvel is asking us to remember Iron Man every time Doom walks into the room. The posture, voice, arrogance and sheer contempt for everybody around him are all pointing in a completely different direction. This guy doesn’t want to save the world and he doesn’t need anybody’s approval. He appears to believe the world has already been stolen from him.

The D23 material helps put that into a larger context. Marvel has described Avengers: Doomsday as bringing heroes from three different universes into conflict against an existential threat, and the trailer finally starts showing us what that means instead of simply throwing character names at us. The collision between these worlds doesn’t appear to be background noise. It may be the entire reason Doom believes he has to act.

That is where this trailer finally got me interested in more than the cast list. Marvel has assembled an absurd number of characters for Doomsday, but a giant roster means nothing if the guy standing in the middle of it isn’t worth assembling against. This footage makes Doom feel like somebody who could actually justify bringing all of these people together.

And if Thor is any indication, they may still not be enough.