The first official trailer for the new Avengers: Doomsday is here, and audiences are finally getting to see the new era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe taking shape.
It's been 18 years since Tony Stark first built a suit in a cave with a bunch of scraps, and RDJ's now swapped Iron Man's mask for another one, teasing the MCU's new villain with a rather ominous opening taunt in the trailer.
Of course, we're down a few more supes than just Stark since then, and the latest instalment in this next phase of the MCU is starting to look like the 5th or 6th season of that show you used to like.
Thor's still carrying the flag – the central thread that connects every film, rallying the troops of the new era. Somehow he's joined by Chris Evans' resurrected Captain America, and a host of familiar faces seen throughout the extended universe.
Perhaps it's the millennial in me, but seeing Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen together again as Professor X and Magneto was enough to confirm my attendance across the opening week – before the Avengers, before Fantastic Four, before Spider-Man (all three of them), X-Men was blazing the trail for the genre, seemingly alone on its own revered pedestal as the most important (and therefore most marketable) superhero franchise of the century.
As we saw in Deadpool & Wolverine – where Blade, Elektra, even Chris Evans' Johnny Storm had their final swansong – audiences are rather fond of nostalgia. So seeing Charles Xavier and his gifted youngsters back in the frame, even fleetingly, hits a nerve that fifteen years of the MCU has never quite managed to.
Elsewhere, the Thunderbolts* are back, a film I genuinely loved on the big screen, and this latest trailer suggests Yelena and the gang aren't being sidelined now that the roster's swelled to Avengers-scale.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Marvel pulled off a blinder casting Florence Pugh in that one Black Widow spin-off that I'm not sure many people watched.
The indie darling's star power was still growing then, but the Florence Pugh of 2026 is a completely different asset entirely. I still remember seeing The Thunderbolts* in the cinema for the first time and felt like I spent the entire movie waiting for Pugh's next scene. Authentic, convincing, with an incredible depth and presence whenever she's on screen, she absolutely has to (and no doubt will) carry whichever phase of the Avengers we've found ourselves in.
A December 18 release date puts Doomsday on a direct collision course with Dune: Part Three, a fight neither studio is walking away from despite a full year of speculation that one date would move.
Robert Downey Jr.'s Doom warns at the beginning of the trailer that "something's coming, something we may not be able to deter." After seeing that the studio is staying firm, perhaps Marvel's new (old) villain is looking ahead to Denis Villeneuve's Arrakis.
Warner Bros. isn't playing nice about the crossover date either. Dune: Part Three's marketing has planted its flag on "Only in theaters and IMAX," and the studio has reportedly locked up close to 400 North American IMAX screens for three weeks spanning the Doomsday opening weekend. That's the format Marvel has leaned on for its biggest openings for a decade, gone from the board entirely on the one weekend it matters most.
Downey coined "Dunesday" himself, joking about it alongside Timothée Chalamet on stage at a Marty Supreme screening back in January, then adding that he wasn't sure the two of them would still be friends by the time December rolled around. The optimist in me would like to believe it was an organic moment, though seeing the billion ways that “Barbenheimer” performed at the box office, I’m not prepared to put a wager on it.
Whether audiences split their day between IMAX Arrakis and multiversal New York, or pick a side outright, remains the only genuinely open question left before December.