Disney Reportedly Panicking Over Avengers: Doomsday? Why It May Not Be Time to Panic Yet

A new rumor claims Disney is reportedly panicking over Avengers: Doomsday after early reactions described the film as a "completely humorless, harrowing bloodbath with a massive superhero death toll." I'm going to break down exactly what was said, and maybe why it's not time to panic just yet.

The report has spread quickly over the last two days. It's been re-reported by almost every outlet on social media and covered by others with even bigger audiences than mine. It paints a picture of a very bleak outing, and maybe not exactly what the execs at Disney were hoping to see from this Avengers film. It's a pretty scathing review.

Avengers: Doomsday's presales have already settled the box office question

A couple of days ago I covered the latest rumor that we might get the next Avengers: Doomsday trailer at the end of next week. That would make sense, since it would land less than two months before Doomsday actually hits theaters. Alongside that, I looked at the box office tracking. Months ago, a Disney exec claimed presales were already upwards of $50 million, a record in its own right. Since then, that number has crawled north of $100 million in presales.

My big takeaway is that whatever fears Marvel Studios' top brass may have had about how the next Avengers film could do, after the misfires of the Multiverse Saga and with the growing shadow of Spider-Man crushing it this summer, were easily assuaged by these presales. Rest assured, that means this movie will easily break the $2 billion mark, a number coveted during the Multiverse Saga by films like Deadpool and Wolverine and the most recent Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

Marvel still has to nail the movie itself

That's only half of the battle, pun totally intended. Now that we're all going to the theaters to see it, Marvel has to nail the movie. It needs to take all of these characters and storylines, give them enough time and dialogue to make the story compelling, make us care about characters we might not care about yet, and leave us in exactly the right place to fuel anticipation that should only grow over a yearlong wait for Avengers: Secret Wars.

That would be a tall order on its own, even if the film weren't going to be compared to Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, with the obvious bar being that you can't repeat those films. So it seems for now, Marvel Studios can stop worrying about how many tickets it's going to sell and worry about whether the film resonates with audiences the way we expect an Avengers crossover to resonate. That's exactly where this new rumor comes in.

The rumor claims the film feels like a mass execution of the franchise

The rumor going around is that Disney is reportedly panicking over Avengers: Doomsday. Early reactions reportedly describe it as a "completely humorless, harrowing bloodbath with a massive superhero death toll," and the insider claims it "feels like a mass execution of the franchise."

There are really two levels to this. Whenever a test screening reaction comes out, it's worth remembering that for a movie as big as Avengers: Doomsday, there will be no external test screenings. Marvel isn't running this through test groups the way it did for Captain America: Brave New World, where we did get negative reports. I've been part of Marvel Studios test screenings myself. I was in one for New Mutants, and in test groups I saw the first 30 minutes of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and the first 15 minutes of Wakanda Forever. They do that type of thing, but not for an Avengers film.

Why an executive panic report is harder to believe

The only people who have seen a cut of Avengers: Doomsday, in whatever state it's been in over the last six months, are the top brass at Marvel Studios, executive producers who have money on the line, and maybe top execs at Disney. When we heard a report months ago from John Campea that they weren't finding the film in the edit that they thought they had shot, basically that they thought they were getting something awesome but editing had become a little bit trickier and they maybe didn't have exactly what they needed, that was plausible. That's the type of feedback you would assume could come from the people who have seen it.

A bunch of Disney execs panicking because they've suddenly seen the film, there's no humor and everybody's dying, just isn't the type of report or reaction you would expect to get out there. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. It has, in the 10 years I've been doing this. But one or two people from an external screening saying a movie isn't as good as hoped, or plausible feedback from those involved, is a lot more believable than Disney executives who aren't involved with the project all disliking it.

Usually, a higher up exec's opinion about art is never exactly congruent with the fans. In most cases they're diametrically opposed. Someone wants something watered down and bland that can go mainstream and make a lot of money, while the fans want something interesting and compelling that they can sink their teeth into. That's the type of film we're going to need to fuel the anticipation, because it's literally Doomsday and then a year's wait for Avengers: Secret Wars.

The trailers already showed Doomsday wouldn't bring the usual levity

Perhaps a couple of people who saw it asked where the jokes and the Avengers vibe were. But then they haven't been paying attention to the marketing. We knew from those very first preview trailers last December, which is crazy to say was 10 months ago, that there wasn't going to be the normal comic levity.

The goal isn't to remake Infinity War and Endgame. Those weren't punctuated by a ton of humor, but they did have some of the normal goofy Avengers feel to lighten the mood, especially in Endgame when the tone was about as serious as it could be. This film is taking that tone to the next level, and quite honestly, I think this is what Marvel fans have been asking for for quite some time: "Take yourself seriously. Take this seriously and give us something that actually means something." That's the tone I get from Avengers: Doomsday. You can't have one without the other. If you don't want a remake of Infinity War and you want Marvel to take itself seriously, you're going to get a serious film.

Character deaths in Avengers: Doomsday were expected all along

Calling the movie a bloodbath that feels like an execution of the franchise is weird to me, because didn't we know going in that all the X-Men were going to die? They're going to clear the slate so they can bring in the new Jean Grey and the new X-Men about a year and a half later. This is widely rumored to be Patrick Stewart's last film, not his last Marvel film, his last film ever. Over a year ago it was pretty much assumed a lot of characters weren't going to make it out of this film alive. Whether some find their way back in a reformed universe or are resurrected in Avengers: Secret Wars, maybe, but not all of them.

Some characters are ones fans might not care about as much, or at all. I care about Sam Wilson's story, Bucky's story and Thor's story. I even care about Yelena Belova's story. I'm not really going to care as much about Red Guardian's story. Red Guardian and Ghost dying at Doom's hands, versus watching Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart die at Doom's hands, are two totally different things, and none of that would live up to watching, say, Bucky die at Doctor Doom's hands. While some of these actors in their 30s and 40s could play these characters for much longer, there need to be some character deaths to make the movie a bloodbath that feels like an execution of the franchise, because that's what the film is intended to do.

Either way, this is the film I expected

I look at this update from either point of view. If it's an accurate description from someone at Disney who saw the film and wasn't expecting this, who hadn't been keeping up with what Marvel is doing and just sat down to watch Avengers 5 and thought, what is this, I'm not surprised. And if it's complete nonsense, this is the film we were expecting to see in the first place.

I've always said that, not so much with industry insider reports and leaks but with early reviews and test screenings, whenever someone makes a claim about the quality of a Marvel movie, there's just no way to trust it in a vacuum. If you hear it from a hundred mainstream sources, the way everybody said VisionQuest was awesome the night before it came out and it was, you can trust that. But Marvel has become so pervasive that even people who don't like or never watch these films have an opinion, and it's become a huge industry to hate on it all of the time. Maybe some of that hate is deserved, and that's okay.

You never know what one person thinks of Marvel Studios before they see one movie, or what some exec at Disney thinks an Avengers movie should be. That doesn't mean the movie's bad. In fact, to me, that makes me even more excited. For the lay moviegoer who has an aversion to superhero movies or knows nothing about Doom or the Multiverse Saga, sitting down to something serious and dark where people are dying off left and right might be jarring and doesn't sound like a good time. But that's the time we're in for. "It's dooming time."

Would a darker, more serious Avengers: Doomsday make you more or less excited to see it?