Is 'Avengers: Doomsday' The Last Hurrah For The Fox X-Men Universe?
Image Source: Yahoo
I'll admit it, I'm mega-hyped for Avengers Doomsday.
I've been experiencing a huge amount of "Marvel Fatigue" for a few years now. I was never the target audience for stuff like The Marvels and Agatha All Along. I was hugely looking forward to Secret Invasion, one of my favourite comic books, which didn't live up to expectations. Even the recent MCU stuff that generally piqued my interest such as Captain America: Brave New World, doesn't live up to the standards prior movies set. My Marvel fatigue is apparent, I haven't even seen Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 yet, and I don't really have a desire to.
But Doomsday has got me back riding the MCU Hype train.
In the insanely long 5-hour cast reveal trailer, Marvel announced some truly surprising names for the next MCU tentpole release. Many might of expected the likes of Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby, as the Fantastic Four are heavily tied to Doomsday’s antagonist, Dr. Doom. The addition of the Thunderbolts to the cast isn't even that shocking, considering Marvel usually does try and get multiple teams in the Avengers movies. What was a genuine shock was the inclusion of members of the classic X-Men films. Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen... Even Channing Tatum's Gambit, whose movie never got produced (but did turn up in last year's Deadpool and Wolverine) all made the cut along with many others from the franchise.
RELATED:
While this announcement was truly shocking and exciting, a shadow looms large over their casting. Will the X-Men make it out of their first MCU film alive?
Even though a large number of classic X-Men have been announced (not all the X-Men, bear in mind, there are some glaring omissions from Doomsday’s cast, most notably Hugh Jackman's Wolverine), they will not be the focal point of the movie. It's hard to imagine they'll even get a lot of screen time, considering the sheer amount of people Marvel has confirmed for the movie (and more yet to be confirmed). The main focus of the film will be its namesake; Downey Jr's Doctor Doom. He has not been announced for this summer's Fantastic Four film, so Doomsday will need to establish him as a credible threat for the Avengers and the god-like beings in its ranks. The easiest way to do this would be to give him a body count, It's the same thing Marvel did with Thanos in Infinity War and the snap. Instantly killing (even if only temporarily) half the MCU established Thanos as a huge threat to the Avengers. Doomsday will need to do the same for Doctor Doom.
On top of this, we have an idea of where the story Marvel wants to tell is going. Secret Wars. A major plot point of the 2015 Secret Wars comic storyline, Incursions (multiple universes colliding, leading to widespread destruction) has already been referenced within the MCU (in Multiverse of Madness). We know Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars are going to be linked in a very similar way to the way Infinity War and Endgame were linked.
Thanos caused the snap at the end of Infinity War, setting up the stakes for Endgame. If Marvel wanted to do something similar with Doomsday, an easy way to show the stakes for Secret War would be showing an incursion.
Following this thought path to its logical conclusion tells us a Universe is going to be destroyed in Doomsday, which is the easiest and best way to establish Doom as a huge threat and to set up the stakes for Secret Wars.
Image Source: Polygon
So will it be the MCU's home universe that gets destroyed? That doesn't make much sense, as that's the home of the movie franchise. The Universe the Fantastic Four (and presumably Doom himself) come from? Maybe. It would be a convenient way to fold them into the MCU. But that is already assuming a lot. We don't 100% know if the new Fantastic Four movie is in another universe to the MCU. We don't even know that bringing them into the MCU is the end goal if they are from another universe.
Which brings us back to the X-Men. With the context around Secret War, what better way to establish Doom as the new big bad of the MCU, than by killing the X-Men’s entire universe? Unfortunately, it does look (at least for the moment) that these are the most expendable characters in the film. I don't see Marvel killing off the Fantastic Four who have just been established with new actors, or the Thunderbolts which Marvel is positioning as its new 'secondary comedy team’ (a la Guardians of the Galaxy).
It's also worth noting that Marvel chose to bring back the 'classic' cast (Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Rebecca Romijn) and not the more modern cast (James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence). Some of the actors from this cast are starting to get pretty old. While I imagine most fans would prefer to see this cast over the newer one, I don't see the likes of Patrick Stewart or Ian McKellen signing up for multi-year, multi-pictures with Marvel at their age, when Mcavoy and Fassbender would have been more willing to do that. If Marvel had wanted longevity out of this X-men cast, I imagine they would have gone for the modern cast, rather than the classic cast.
Granted, at this point, this is all speculation. But a recent set-photos leak has rather fanned the flame. The photos/video seems to be what looks like the front of the X-mansion utterly destroyed, from what looks like energy blasts from above. This photo fits in exactly with the theory that the X-Men will be the sacrificial lambs of Doomsday. While there could easily be other explanations for this set some people are using this photo as conclusive proof the X-Men are doomed.
Image Source: Space.com
I will take a much more skeptical approach. While the stars do seem to be aligning in a certain way, we will not truly know until the film releases next year. But I want to take these final lines of the article to say a few words about Gambit; It took ten years, one canceled solo film, and a cartoon death, but Channing and Gambit will finally get a (proper) MCU debut... only to be likely killed in that first appearance. Marvel’s vendetta against Gambit is starting to feel personal.
READ NEXT:
Latest News
Featured
