Avengers: Doomsday Is Reportedly A Disaster

By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated 10 seconds ago

On paper, Marvel is on track to have an absolutely fabulous year. Season 2 of X-Men ‘97 premiered to universal acclaim, and Spider-Man: Brand New Day is on track to become the highest-grossing film of the summer, if not the entire year. And on December 18, they’ll complete the hat trick with the release of Avengers: Doomsday, an ambitious sequel that brings back countless characters in a full-court press to revive the franchise. If all goes well, Doomsday will be a well-earned victory lap. There’s just one problem: it’s not going well at all.

Concerns about the film began when popular YouTuber John Campea claimed that Marvel was having trouble editing this behemoth blockbuster and “finding the movie in the edit.” Since then, others have chimed in with their own insider reports echoing claims that the Russo Brothers are having trouble getting a workable movie out of everything they have shot. All of this has caused concern among the fandom that Marvel’s big comeback may already be, well, doomed. Such reports have underscored even larger concerns with the studio’s creative process, which includes regularly beginning shooting without having a finished script.

It’s All Falling Apart

Right now, the marketing for Avengers: Doomsday has begun in earnest, with the first full-length trailer dropping earlier this week. While this is meant to get fans hyped for Marvel’s biggest blockbuster yet, it seems that there’s some serious trouble in paradise for this ambitious crossover sequel. On his podcast, John Campea claims that sources told him the Russo Brothers were having trouble “finding the movie in the edit.” Elaborating on this, he claimed, “When they shot the movie, everything felt great, everything looked great… but now that they’re editing, they’re discovering some issues.” 

Soon afterward, World of Reel’s Jordan Ruimy made another astonishing claim: one of his sources had told him months ago that Doomsday’s production woes were bad enough that “some people internally at Marvel [wondering] whether it would make its intended December 18, 2026, release date.” Those same sources more recently confirmed that although Marvel is now confident about the release date, there is still “friction” in the editing room. That friction has likely been made worse by something that Mystique actor Rebecca Romijn shockingly admitted: that Avengers: Doomsday began shooting without a completed script. Even more shocking? The movie was being written and rewritten into its final week of shooting.

The Movie Is Already Doomed

Given this information, it’s not really that surprising that Avengers: Doomsday is a hot mess to edit. It’s a film with 60 actors that we know about, and there are almost certainly some high-profile surprise cameos that we don’t know about. This creates a very cluttered movie, and it will take some finesse in the editing room to turn it into more than a collection of disconnected fight scenes. Editing becomes that much more difficult with the constant rewrites, which presumably made it difficult to achieve consistent characterization or to give our favorite heroes and villains satisfying arcs.

Obviously, it’s possible for great editors to assemble a sloppy shoot into a great final cut. The most famous example of this is the first Star Wars movie, which was reportedly a disjointed mess that George Lucas’ ex-wife, Marcia, helped shape into the perfect summer blockbuster. However, editing Avengers: Doomsday will be that much more challenging, both because of the high number of characters and the sheer weight of audience expectations. Nobody knew what to expect from Star Wars in 1977, but fans are now expecting Marvel to deliver something worthy of a cinematic universe that has been blowing us away for nearly 20 years.

As a Marvel fanboy (yeah, yeah, you can steal my lunch money later), I hope the Russo Brothers manage to pull it off. Avengers: Doomsday is definitely the most ambitious Marvel movie ever made, and it’s adapting some of the greatest comic stories of the last two decades. With any luck, the movie will successfully reenergize the fandom and pave the way for an MCU filled with new heroes like the X-Men. However, the clock is ticking, and there’s not really any time left for rewrites or reshoots. Unless Avengers: Doomsday can be saved in the editing room, Marvel’s most expensive movie may be destined to become its biggest flop.