{"id":1108747,"date":"2026-07-24T15:22:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T15:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1108747\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T15:22:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T15:22:16","slug":"winners-losers-avengers-doomsday-trailer-underwhelms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1108747\/","title":{"rendered":"Winners & Losers: ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ Trailer Underwhelms"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tLOST<\/strong>: Avengers Doomsday Trailer<\/strong>: I recently re-watched Marvel\u2019s terrific core string of superhero team-up movies (my ranking: Infinity<\/strong> War<\/strong>>Endgame<\/strong>>Avengers<\/strong>>Civil War<\/strong>>Thunderbolts<\/strong>>Age of Ultron<\/strong>). But as plenty of fans have pointed out, this week\u2019s highly anticipated Doomsday teaser (below) felt like a muddled step down from previous trailers in Marvel\u2019s Avengers franchise. It shows clusters of random characters standing around looking like confused holograms trying to figure out their eye-lines in round rooms (one baffled trailer viewer wrote<\/a>: \u201cEvery room IS round! WTF?!\u201d). It\u2019s like they\u2019re stuck in that classic Twilight Zone episode, \u201cFive Characters in Search of an Exit,\u201d where the twist reveals the characters are all stuck in a trash can, except Doomsday is more like 60 actors enduring a headache-inducing exercise in stage blocking.<\/p>\n

\n\tDoomsday production designer Gavin Bocquethas has said the film actually uses\u00a080 percent practical sets. But a wildly off-script Gold Derby<\/a> interview with Alan Cumming<\/strong> (who reprises his X-Men role of Nightcrawler) might haunt the film since the movie looks like an expression of fans\u2019 CG slop gripes (\u201cI did the entire film in isolation. Lots of green screen, face replacement. They even gave characters fake names. I don\u2019t know who I was acting with half the time.\u201d). Cumming added that he thought Nightcrawler fought Pedro Pascal\u2019s<\/strong> Mister Fantastic, but in retrospect wasn\u2019t sure.<\/p>\n

\n\tPart of this is simply unfortunate timing for Marvel, which had to launch its trailer in the wake of Christopher Nolan\u2019s<\/strong> The Odyssey<\/strong> and its cast\u2014including Avengers regular Tom Holland<\/strong>\u2014being evangelical about practical effects and on-location filming.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe larger problem is that Marvel masterfully constructed the MCU\u2019s storylines over a decade to deftly lead into its previous Avengers films while Doomsday feels like a character dump that\u2019s happening only because the studio desperately needs this to happen. Will any such criticisms matter? Probably not. Doomsday already racked up $16.5 million in domestic advance sales during its first 24 hours.<\/p>\n

\n\tTwo trailers that were really well received this week were DC\u2019s hey-this-keeps-looking-better horror film Clayface<\/strong> (watch it here<\/a>) and Universal\u2019s Rob Savage<\/strong> horror film Other Mommy<\/strong><\/a>, which stars Jessica Chastain<\/strong> in a dual role. The Mommy trailer will give unsuspecting audiences one heckuva jump-scare when it plays before other films. Bonus: The rooms in the trailers are not all round.<\/p>\n

\n\tWON<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>:<\/a> Ed Harris<\/strong>. You gotta love a wonderful actor who saunters onto a red carpet and opens fire on his own hit show without a care in the world. Harris wasn\u2019t very pleased<\/a> with his \u201cinconsequential\u201d first-season arc on Paramount+\u2019s Dutton Ranch<\/strong> \u2014 which is a TV show and not a steakhouse or Doritos flavor. \u201cMidway through the first season, I was ready to say, \u2018get me the fuck out of here,’\u201d he growled, adding that he felt \u201cmisled\u201d about the size of his part. Harris\u2019 role was still bigger than Demi Moore\u2019s<\/strong>, which consisted of swimming laps in a pool for the entire first season of Landman<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\n\tHarris will be back for his second (and likely final) season on the show next year. One can imagine creator Taylor Sheridan<\/a><\/strong> reacting in one of three ways to his actor\u2019s comments: \u201cI got that sort of whining from Kevin Costner<\/strong>, I\u2019m not going to take it from Harris, let\u2019s grant his wish to get him off the show in the season two premiere.\u201d Or: \u201cHe had a point and I can\u2019t exactly fault somebody for being blunt when I\u2019m the exact same way.\u201d Or, most likely: \u201cI\u2019m too busy writing that entire Call of Duty<\/strong> movie script this week to care.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLOST<\/strong>: The Television Academy<\/strong>. The Academy caused quite a stir by deciding to cut five categories from this year\u2019s primetime Emmy telecast. I would list the cut categories, but it would mean writing the phrase \u201cin a limited or anthology series or movie\u201d four times in a row, which, as everybody knows, is a powerful spell that sends you into an enchanted slumber. The unions are mad about this change. Nominees, agents and managers are mad. Studios and awards strategists are mad. You know who won\u2019t be mad? Viewers.<\/p>\n

\n\tUnfortunately, the idea doesn\u2019t seem to be \u201clet\u2019s make the Emmys telecast shorter.\u201d TV Academy chair Cris Abrego told Variety<\/a>, \u201cWe\u2019re really excited to flex more creativity into the show\u201d and \u201cwe really want to find time to create an incredible night of entertainment.\u201d Except that\u2019s precisely what awards shows are terrible at \u2014 those hammy yuk-yuk sketches, or weepy maudlin moments, that struggle to celebrate the industry by interlacing the show with a theatrical insert. <\/p>\n

\n\tHere\u2019s a question: What do you actually remember from any awards show? A few speeches and, sometimes, the host\u2019s monologue. The rest? Weak and unmemorable. Not because the people involved aren\u2019t talented. But because non-awards segments during an awards show are inherently a little weird, awkward and frustrating because the awards presentation is The Thing you\u2019re trying to watch and any brief, non-sequitur piece of entertainment the producers throw on stage isn\u2019t The Thing.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe comparison that comes to mind is the Super Bowl Halftime Show, which actually works as an interruption of The Thing you want to watch because it\u2019s a real break point in the game and an impressive, star-filled, cohesive half-hour production (except when FIFA does it). But what if, after a random play, the NFL shoved Jason Bateman<\/strong> and Will Arnett<\/strong> onto the 50-yard line to exchange some stilted banter and introduce a clip about the history of the penalty kick while you wait for the game to resume? Fans would hate that. Which is why the TV Academy should either stick those five awards back into the show or keep them out and shorten the show.<\/p>\n

\n\tWON<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>: Sony\/Alamo Drafthouse<\/strong>: Resurrecting the Cinerama Dome<\/strong> is a heroic move everybody can feel good about, and plays into the whole \u201ccinema is back!\u201d narrative that we\u2019re all happily enjoying right now. It also gives Alamo some desperately needed positive press amid the ongoing drumbeat of \u201cQR code ordering has ruined the user experience\u201d backlash headlines (\u201cFrom Big Show to S**tshow\u201d read the latest, from D Magazine<\/a>). Ironically, the chain recently named a theater in San Francisco after Christopher Nolan<\/strong> and a month later the director praised Quentin Tarantino\u2019s <\/strong>theater instead for having a \u201cwonderful\u201d no phones rule. Not sure I\u2019ve ever seen a company so stubbornly keep doubling down on a customer-experience decision that\u2019s received such a universally negative reaction. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe bummer part of the Dome news is the Alamo-ification of the Arclight<\/strong> theaters (not the Dome itself), which will be remodeled to have in-theater food service. What was cool about ArcLight was that its theaters were perfect black boxes with ideal projection and sound, where you could focus on the movie without distractions. Likewise, what was cool about Alamo was its cinephile-geek personality and strict no-talking\/no-texting policy. It\u2019s wonderful that Sony is investing in theaters. Maybe they should also keep an eye on what people like about going to the theater.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOST: Avengers Doomsday Trailer: I recently re-watched Marvel\u2019s terrific core string of superhero team-up movies (my ranking: Infinity…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1108748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3935],"tags":[3983,77,3943,137538,16,15],"class_list":["post-1108747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-avengers-doomsday","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-taylor-sheridan","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1108747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1108748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1108747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1108747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1108747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}