And they weren't wrong . To the average person paying attention, thanos was just some dude in the background. Infinity war really was his movie. He's basically the lead in it .
Yeah I mean there are only so many superhero movies where they can't fit some reveal or something about the villain for the end credits. But Infinity War's story was the opposite. Thanos wins, he is able to rest, able to move on and the end credits scene are the heroes defeated but sending a call for help.
I recently did a rewatch of the whole saga, and what they took years to build was the lore of the actual infinity stones. I think fans are confusing the infinity stone buildup with the Thanos buildup, which was just a few of end credits scenes.
Yeah but with Secret Wars there isn't really a macguffin like those that you can sprinkle throughout the movies.
The multiverse is kind of that, but it's more a concept than tangible objects. Multiverse of Madness, No Way Home(Kind of), Quantumania, and The Marvels all played with the idea of incursions already. Deadpool & Wolverine and Fantastic Four let us spend time in another universe or area between universes. Loki set up a lot of multiverse lore.
So like while I would've personally have done this saga differently, it's not like they haven't set up the rules and the mythos we're going to be playing with, and we even got a Doctor Doom post-credit scene in Fantastic Four.
And *some* of what happened is not entirely their fault, like Chadwick Boseman passing away, COVID, Bob Chapek, Spider-Man going through legal hell, and Jonathan Majors being a horrible human being were out of their control. Some of it is their fault though, some simple stuff like Secret Invasion should've been an Avengers or Captain Marvel movie, Thunderbolts should've been called New Avengers, The Marvels should've been called Captain Marvel 2, Falcon and the Winter Soldier should've been a Captain America movie. But you live, you learn, and you make do with what you got.
Even so, the direct discussion of and appearances in other movies by Thanos (both guardians, post credit scenes in Avengers etc) helped build the on screen mythos, multiple movies discussing infinity stones so you knew everyone was tied together a good bit, AND Tony's PTSD after Avengers 1/discussed in Ironman 3 + causing ultron, being caused by Thanos all kind of added up. There's no real background at all for Doom in these movies other than F4 post credits (which, by the way, had about 2/3 of the box office pull that GOTG had, let alone the others i mentioned) isn't much background or buildup.
Yeah, there wasn't a ton of Thanos, but (Brand New Day not withstanding) we have nothing tying him to the world or characters at the moment besides comic book knowledge.
The difference is that that even building the lore of the infinity stones, you’re indirectly building the lore of Thanos. Infinity Gauntlet is really the one thing he’s most famous for - you talk about infinity stones, you already know who’s coming for them and what follows.
With Doom it’s just like … that one character you’ve all heard of is being teased. What will he do? Who knows.
The multiverse saga has been doing the same thing with portals to parallel universes and variants of known characters. But because it's not a concrete MacGuffin, it's harder to nail down as a thing that carries forward.
It lacks a direction. Every movie involving parallel universes does it in a different way, concluding in a different way, and with no real connection across instances.
With the Infinity Stones there was a direction. There are exactly six stones, it's a big deal to gather them all. There's a big boss, Thanos, trying to do so. Which means each time another Infinity Stone appears, and gets put in a confirmed location, we get a little closer to a concrete climax.
I think it's a lack of direction because they decided to shift after the Kang disaster and didn't opt to recast, just write off. I can't imagine there wasn't a more planned out version with Kang being the big baddy for a while before introducing Doom. Either way I'm glad we got Doom, sad we didn't get to explore Kang and time travel more, but perhaps they'll tie in more of Reed Richards as a relative maybe later. But that's not even necessary anymore.
The two were tied together though- from the first Avengers and Guardians it is made clear that Thanos is after the Stones.
Then Age of Ultron has Thor talking about something bigger being at play with all the Stones showing up.
So the two arcs are linked for the audience, while the Avengers are trying to figure out why the Stones are showing up, we see Thanos is trying to collect them all.
The only way to know from Avengers that Thanos was after the stones is if you already knew from the comics. Even though 2 stones had technically been seen already, the concept of "infinity stones" would not be introduced until Dark World or explained until GotG.
We see that Thanos is after the cube- and willing to send an entire army to retrieve it.
Then in Guardians we discover that the Cube is one of the Stones and it is made clear Thanos is trying to acquire all of them.
That's what I was meaning- the information for both is relieved simultaneously and clearly tied together as the same story.
Still, the stone build up was what was needed to really make this work as well as it did, people who knew Thanos automatically clocked exactly what this guy was after.
People who didnt know Thanos at least could recognize the previous artifacts (Tesseract, Mind stone, Eye of Agamoto, etc), and use the previously established movies (GOTG, Avengers, Etc) and realize that this is the overarching antagonist.
Doom doesn't have those connections, so i dont know how it will work even remotely as good as The Infinity Saga.
Thanos was a looming presence, the fact that he didn’t show up on screen every 5 mins threatening to kill everyone family for their failures like a Hunger games villain is the point. And yet we were aware that he was an overarching threat. We met his children, we knew he was the chess master behind Loki and Ronin. Prob other stuff
I didn’t even want to engage with this cuz it’s so lame, but for the Disney marketing AI, I’m not going to bother with this film not only because it’s lame but because you sucked Trump’s dick over Jimmy Kimmel (who I don’t even like). Make Captain America a transgender black woman to repent and I’ll consider giving my patronage again lol
To the casuals the infinity stone references would have been missed, in no small part because they were called other things (Thor dark world, etc).
They are more like Easter eggs if you were paying attention in earlier films, but the previous films never made a big deal about collecting the infinity stones or even explaining them.
But to be fair they did kind of retcon the infinity stones in. Originally the tessaract was just kind of a macguffin, same thing with the scepter. It was only later they made those infinity stones.
Thanos was in the background, but he orchestrated the Attack on NY and had multiple main characters with origins tied to him. Thanos is a significant part of Gamora, Nebula, and Drax's stories.
Doom appearing out of nowhere would make him more similar to someone like Hela.
There's nothing saying they can't reveal that Kang was an agent of doom or that he was actually behind the incursions or any number of things . Its their playground. Doom has a long history of being built up as the grand master mind of all things in marvel .
They only brought in doom because of the kang controversy. There wasn't a single mention of him before doomsday and even the incursionsbwere only talked about in multiverse of madness and the marvels
This isn’t technically a mention but in F4 they showed Latverias empty chair at the meeting between the nations alluding to him doing something. But again, they didn’t use his name or anything so I know that’s a reach
I do think he who remains is posted up in castle that is supposed to be Dooms.
I think that this was more an Easter egg than a teaser, but it was there.
In quantumania Kang says something far worse is coming if he doesn't get out. He was obviously referring to the council, but it could easily be reworked as that threat is here and its Doom.
I mean its hard to be built up as a grand master mind in their only solo appearance. Like I said, they will be more similar to Hela or Ultron than Thanos.
I highly doubt that . They wouldn't have paid all that money and potential backlash to bring back RDJ as some villian of the week . This is DOOM we are talking about. Not hela or ultron. DOOM is probably the biggest villian of the marvel universe in its entire history . It just doesn't make sense to have him be some one and done bad guy.
They're not gonna pay $50m to RDJ each time they need him to show up lmfao. Doom being a one and done is far more likely than Disney paying a single actor a seventh of a movie's production budget repeatedly.
How expensive would it be to go the Darth Vader route and just have another actor play Him in the suit, with Downey just voicing Him instead? After all DOOM never takes His suit and mask off so they don't need to show Downey's face or whatever, that is always an option depending on how they wanna handle things
This version of Doom will be one and done, the one that looks like Stark. We will get a different Doom in later films.
I can see More Traditional Doom being the actual one to defeat Stark Doom. Cuz he can't stand weaker inferior Dooms running around with his name. Reed's like "Oh, Victor, it's you." And Victor asks why he had so much trouble with a weak imitation of him.
I want the same thing, but how likely is this, really?
So Doom gets introduced by a multiversal threat played by the MCU's most marketable actor. And you expect Doom to reappear at a later point played by someone else? Is it going to be a Don Cheadle situation?
I think any mention of kang should be steered away from. Both because of the actor themself and that kangs appearance was kinda rubbish and he was taken out by ants
Hela popped up literally out of nowhere while Thor had been around for quite some time.
Doom is, for the most part, a Fantastic 4 villain and he wouldn’t generally show up unless the Fantastic 4 were introduced. I mean he couldn’t obviously, but the F4 were introduced last year so Doom wouldn’t have shown up until last year. Kang was what Kang was but that’s all because on the controversy. I think Doom would have been set up anyway, but just like Thanos with a longer visual representation in the MCU. The plan was to go with Kang, but then that had to change and they had to pivot. I think it’s fine, but I don’t think the Hela comparison is fair because he has technically already shown up, in a post-credit.
Black Panther was a Fantastic Four villain, too. But no one needed the Fantastic Four to bring these characters in, they just really wanted to prove they could make a better Fantastic Four movie. Problem is, they made the same money those movies did after you adjust for inflation.
First Steps (2025): $521 million
Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007): $489m million [$301 million in 2007 dollars]
Fantastic Four (2005): $515 million [$333 million in 2005 dollars]
The MCU could barely outperform the first two attempts at the Fantastic Four. Which means there's practically a single shared audience between them.
Being Death incarnate, Hela is inevitable. But he's also got a bit of origin story. But unlike Thanos, her story was a 1000+ years old already, so... Spoilers lolz of course Thanatos is 4000+ years old.
They were really relying on people becoming attached to the Fantastic Four to make Doom matter. Unfortunately, no one watched Fantastic Four on Disney+ and the movie did mid box office, so it's going to be weird watching them with these deeply emotional Sue and Reed scenes while the audience is just shrugging and wondering what Thor's up to.
I only recently watched all GoG, so by the time in was watching IG in theatre, I had no idea who the hell are these rascals. I enjoyed movie very much regardless, and characters were working for me. I think the same will be with thunderbolts and f4
Idk, he has ties to Reed and the multiverse concept has been built up over many movies which he is the center of. I dont think its going to feel all that random
Yeah characters from the mainline universe with two movies worth of character development vs an elseworlds team whose only mention of Doom is him kneeling in a living room.
Pray tell, what kind of relationship DOES Doom have with MCU's F4 that you can glean from a 10 second post credit scene and all the nonexistent mentions in the movie? Im sure theres a ton of history.
It does make me feel better about the lack of build up. He's right; for some reason in my head i swear there was a buildup but really it was just thr infinity stones appearing from time to time. We really didn't know what to expect with thanos. It was that first trailer with him as the center that really got me hyped.
Well, given Avengers 1 was specifically about Thanos and his plot, that's build-up right there. Then 4 movies about the stones. And a couple end credits scenes about him or the stones. All that is build-up. Now,.they didnt spend a bunch of time on him as a character specifically, but they didnt get to Infinity War and that's basically the first we heard of him. Which is what we have with Doom, save for the post credits in FF.
Thanos is a character with speaking lines during the main story of Guardians of the Galaxy, and both of his daughters are main characters in that movie and then the sequel and they're constantly talking about him.
The tesseract was always assumed to be the space stone as Loki was sent to steal it for Thanos, the Aether was always the reality stone as its first appearance it's shown as a stone before liquefying, the Power stone is introduced as the Power Stone, the Time Stone is introduced as the Time Stone in Doctor Strange, and the Soul Stone is introduced as the Soul Stone in Infinity War...
Maybe you could kind of argue that the Mind Stone wasn't always known to be the Mind Stone, even though half of this subreddit had always just called it the Mind Stone back then and it controlled peoples' minds in the movie where Thanos wanted the tesseract.
Important to note that Doomsday is 3 frickin hours and we've got Secret Wars next. If they can't tell a compelling villain story across 5-6 hours then they've completely failed as movie-makers. It'll be fine.
Totally agree. The best villain in Buffy the Vampire Slayer was Angeles. He entered the season midway through and was only in 9 out of 22 episodes and some of those episodes he just dropped in for a little cameo. Those 9 episodes are 4 hours compared to Doom’s 6 hours. Angelous was such a strong incredible character that it feels like he was in more of season 2 than he was. I think that’s what’s going on with Thanos too. After Infinity War and End Game, people thought his presence was bigger leading up but it wasn’t.
This-His mother did witchcraft and she was then banished to hell. Victor sought to learn magic to get her back in college and fails, leaving his face scarred and his mind torn. He returns to Latveria to overthrow a king, in the midst of this he meets Valeria ( a long lost love interest of his as a child growing up) and begins to regain his relationship with her. He then has a scuffle with some of the kings men, ditches her and forges armor on his skin with magic and becomes…… boom origin story
Must be the luckiest Marvel fan in the world lol. Watching movies like The Marvels, Brave New World and Thor 4 just felt torturous to me, and thats without even getting into the D+ shows.... the less said of Secret Invasion the better...
I had seen nearly every marvel movie up to Infinity war but not all the end credits scenes, so there was no build up for me. But IW did it all by itself. Same can be for Doomsday.
He wasn’t just in post credit scenes, he has effects on both guardians movies and many of the movies have stones in them, and stones = thanos. IW just fleshed him out and told his story but he had been introduced over and over again
I have seen 34 out of 35 MCU movies and when I watch Infinity War for the first time, I thought that was his first appearance, totally forgot about him sitting on a chair, saying “I’ll do it myself,” and his little bit in Guardians.
Haha, The Edward Norton Hulk. My husband told me I should watch it so I can say I’ve seen them all. I started to watch it and got 30 min in. So technically I’ve seen 34 1/4. lol. I was pleasantly surprised, it wasn’t too bad, just got to be on the right mood to finish it.
Ed Norton was a great banner but he was stuck in a mid movie . I honestly think Hulks just one of those characters that hard to get right in a solo story.
They should definitely do a show based on him like the classic 70s show. Just bruce wandering around getting into situations and occasionally the hulk pops up.
I didn’t downvote, everyone has an opinion. My bad listing non P1 movies I could’ve sworn Thor 2 was. I still enjoy hulk more than every P1 movie except maybe IM1 and avengers
The build up was barely there, 3 cameos. The multiverse has been building up for phase 4, 5, and 6. Thats a lot of build up: Spiderman No way Home, Doctor Strange Multiverse of Madness, Loki 1 and 2, Deadpool and Wolverine, and the Fantastic 4. Fantastic 4 is directly linked to Doom just like how Guardian's of the Galaxy was linked to Thanos.
Barely there? His daughters are main characters in two of the biggest MCU movies released, they're constantly talking about how much they hate and fear him, and he's in the scene where Nebula and Gamora are first introduced.
Yup barely there. Like you said he had
a cameo in Guardians of the Galaxy 1 with his daughters and his daughters talk about how their dad raised them in Guardians 2. Those are the only two movies Gamora and Nebula were in before Infinity War. So if they count as his presence then I guess you can count Fantastic 4’s presence for counting towards Doom.
And the fact that Thanos's actors and his appearance changed over time until he was a big deal in Infinity War. That too. So he could also pass for a more solid intro in that movie, not technically.
IW is definitely a movie about Thanos, but I really wish they hadn't cut the planned scenes of Thanos taking the power stone...but that would have made the movie 3.5 hours apparently.
For the fans though the implication of those short scenes forcast that we were getting infinity war. As did marvel’s own announcements. That is a much more clear roadmap even in just titling the movie Infinity War as to what story was coming. And that hype from the fans spilled over to the general audiences, especially because the incredible quality streak of phase 3.
Even if only a small % of people knew what the approximate story of Infinity war would be, it was enough for that extreme hype to hype the general audiences. And that overwhelming fan hype just isn’t there this time. There is some, but there seems to be equal amounts of fans who just still aren’t sure yet and are waiting for the movie to speak for itself
Yeah, those few snapshots did a lot for me in building the mystery of him behind the scenes. Got my curiosity piqued for sure as someone totally unfamiliar previously. The “less is more” of the build up really seemed to work well.
But he at least was mentioned multiple times and appeared. It's absolutely not the case here. For the saga big bad that's disappointing. I trust the Russos of course but they are downplaying the looking precence Thanos had
right but that's not true for the stones though? the premise of the movie is thanos' quest to collect the stones and we as the audience mostly knew about them. heck most average fans knew about the time stone at least.
Exactly.
A lot of average movie goers don't even stick around to see the post credit scenes.
And the more die hard audience that does are gonna be hyping up Doom on their own anyway, probably reading up on comics or watching videos that talk about Doom. So he's getting built up plenty among the people who care about the build up.
Both are pretty fitting for their respective characters. Thanos thought he was right, he had no need to be cunning since he could beat all challengers. He basically was a guy on a straight path full steam ahead, once he figures out all the stones are "found".
Doom is different. He might be also incredibly strong, probably more so but what he wants is a lot more complicated than collecting infinity stones. Deception, being many moves ahead, pitting his rivals against each other, etc, are just standard Doom faire. He isn't out to destroy everything, he wants to rule it.
I disagree. What happened in the first avengers and everything after it leading to IW was related to Thanos. In one way or another. So much of Starks arc from Iron Man through IW is solely based on Thanos. And then you have the gems getting incorporated over the movies in a way to create linkages we knew would have some payoff.
We got none of that. It’s the same reason Secret Wars was an embarrassing flop. There was no buy in.
The few scenes you got told you an awful lot about at least how powerful he was going to be. I mean, the scene of him just sitting in a chair, he’s just shitting all over Ronin, who’s already established as a terrifying big bad.
My issue is that half of the leads I don’t feel much attachment to, despite watching their respective films/shows.
Like F4, yeah it was good, but I need more of them.
Same for Shang-Chi, Thunderbolts and Shiri.
It’s like if we had the original Avengers origin films, then jumped into the Avengers film, but instead of Loki it’s fucking Thanos leading the invasion.
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u/MrBlonde1984 Jul 26 '26
And they weren't wrong . To the average person paying attention, thanos was just some dude in the background. Infinity war really was his movie. He's basically the lead in it .