Kevin Feige, chief of Marvel Studios, surprised Comic Con attendees in San Diego with exclusive footage of Avengers: Doomsday shown only to the lucky fans inside the convention. 
A new trailer for Avengers: Doomsday reportedly reveals more about Doctor Doom’s connection to the Fantastic Four while placing the armored villain at the head of an army of Sentinels.
According to Variety, the footage begins with Victor von Doom (Robert Downey Jr.) seated on a throne as Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm, a.k.a. the Invisible Woman, describes the brilliant but deeply damaged man he became.
“Victor was always the smartest guy in the room. He used to be different,” Sue says.
Though it seems innocuous, this bit of dialogue is our first actual confirmation that the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s iteration of the Fantastic Four already knows Doom.
“Everything he loved was taken from him,” Sue explains.
That relationship closely reflects Doom’s history in Marvel Comics. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Doctor Doom first appeared in Fantastic Four #5 in 1962 and has remained the team’s most enduring archenemy. He is often depicted as a genius scientist on par with Reed Richards, but he is driven mad by familial loss and/or other personal tragedy, leading him to pursue dark arts beyond conventional science.
The trailer then features quick shots of the sprawling cast, including Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Panther (Letitia Wright), Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Cyclops (James Marsden), Magneto (Ian McKellen), Gambit (Channing Tatum) and more.
Another shot shows New York City reduced to rubble, prompting Reed to ask whether Victor is responsible for the destruction.
“All of you have lived stolen lives,” Doom says.
That line may point toward the film’s multiversal conflict. Avengers: Doomsday brings together heroes from different realities, including the primary Marvel Cinematic Universe, the retro-futuristic home of the Fantastic Four, and the universe associated with 20th Century Fox’s X-Men films. Doom may regard those surviving worlds – or the lives preserved within them – as existing at the expense of other realities.
(Spoiler warning ahead for what older comic storyline may be adapted by the next two Avengers films)
This concept resembles the “incursions” that drove Marvel Comics’ 2015 Secret Wars event. During Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers and New Avengers stories, alternate Earths from across the Marvel multiverse began colliding, forcing heroes to confront the possibility that one reality would have to be destroyed for another to survive. When the multiverse finally completely collapsed, Doom emerged having succeeded in some scheme to usurp the power of the Beyonders – godlike beings who exist “outside” the multiverse – and assembled fragments of destroyed universes into a singular space called Battleworld.
(End spoilers)
The trailer then shows Thor confronting Doom, but Doom catches Stormbreaker, his battle axe forged during Infinity War, throwing it aside with ease. Doom uses his magic powers to throw Thor aside and raises an army of Sentinel robots, the imposing killer robots from the X-Men series, from the ground.
Designed by Bolivar Trask in the X-Men comics, the towering robots serve to identify, capture, and typically hunt and kill mutants. Trask’s creations quickly exceeded their original programming, concluding that controlling humanity was the most efficient way to protect it, causing the Sentinel threat to run rampant.
Sentinels made their first significant live-action film appearance in the opening Danger Room sequence of 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand. Only part of a giant Sentinel was shown, with Wolverine decapitating the simulated machine and its severed head crashing to the ground.
They played a much larger role in 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past. Peter Dinklage portrayed Trask, whose 1970s Sentinel prototypes eventually developed into nearly unstoppable future machines capable of adapting to mutant powers. Those advanced Sentinels exterminated much of the mutant population, forcing the surviving X-Men to send Wolverine’s consciousness into the past and prevent the program’s creation.
The trailer ultimately sets up Doctor Doom as the clear central villain, as Robert Downey Jr.’s Victor Von Doom is shown controlling an army of Sentinels presumably to take down the Avengers, Fantastic Four, and X-Men.
New poster for Avengers: Doomsday
Watch the official trailer for Avengers: Doomsday, which releases in theaters on December 18, 2026. Marvel has described the movie as a collision between heroes from three distinct universes who must confront an existential threat.
Anthony and Joe Russo, who previously directed Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame, return to direct. Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige is among the film’s producers.
Domestic tickets for Infinity Vision theaters will go on sale July 20. Disney announced Infinity Vision, a premium large format theater certification, earlier this year. They will also offer Infinity Vision tickets for a re-release of Avengers: Endgame in September.
The runtime for Avengers: Doomsday is 165 minutes or two hours and 45 minutes. This is subject to change but not by much since they’re already selling tickets.
The movie will be followed by Avengers: Secret Wars, currently scheduled for December 17, 2027.
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