The news came, as such news so often does, at that annual summit of studio hype and intellectual property promotion, San Diego Comic-Con. Robert Downey Jr. — newly minted Oscar-winner, a star emancipated from green-screen duty — will be returning to the franchise that revived his career, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Not, mind you, to the role of Tony Stark, the mogul-turned-superhero he played for about a decade, starting with the first MCU installment, Iron Man. No, Downey will be stepping into the armor of a different character: arguably the most iconic Marvel supervillain of them all, Doctor Doom.
The fans there in Hall H naturally went wild. How could they not? It was like a live version of one of the cameo appearances we’ve come to expect in an actual Marvel movie: From the studio that brought you John Krasinski as Mr. Fantastic and Chris Evans as a different superhero he played for a different studio comes… Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark as Victor Von Doom. Or something like that.
At the risk of sounding like a total party pooper, isn’t there actually something kind of… desperate about all this? Luring Downey back with a boatload of money ($100 million, if estimates are to be believed), coaxing fellow Marvel alums the Russo brothers to direct another two Avengers movies — these are the moves of a studio in retreat. Beneath the roar of applause, you could hear the panic of executives convinced that the only way to climb to the summit of Hollywood again is to move backward, to transparently strain for the victories of the past.
Not so long ago, it felt like Marvel could only look forward — to the next crossover, to the next summer, to the fun you’ll have later if you keep tuning in. The most damning case you could make against movies like Iron Man 2 was that they operated like glorified previews for other movies: a cinema of coming attractions, always teasing what’s on the distant horizon. Of course, that paid off big time with Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, the one-two punch culmination of every MCU blockbuster that came before, rewarding the patronage of the faithful with an all-purpose climax that smashed together every toy Marvel had dropped into the sandbox over the prior decade.
But how do you keep audiences invested in a story that reached such a natural endpoint it was called Endgame? The Marvel movies released in the wake of that box-office phenomenon have lacked the sense of forward momentum that defined the first three “phases” of the MCU. If the mosaic plotting of the franchise has always been a triumph of branding more than anything else, recent entries have failed to create the impression of a larger story worth tracking. It doesn’t help that the series has lost its most appealing anchors of personality: Iron Man and Captain America. And the characters introduced since, like Shang-Chi and the Eternals, haven’t exactly filled those massive boots.
Since 2019, it’s been quantity over quality for Marvel. Little more than a month ever passes without a movie or a Disney+ series hitting the market. That oversaturation may have satisfied stockholders (and saved the jobs of executives who only have to avoid risks), but it hasn’t necessarily grown or even entirely held onto the audience. Rushed through production — and sometimes into theaters with unfinished effects — the movies themselves have gotten worse. And that’s been reflected in the soft turnout for cruddy blockbusters like Eternals, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and The Marvels. As Deadpool tells Wolverine in last month’s please-let-this-work team-up, “You’re joining at a little bit of a low point.”
Marvel is, of course, still churning out plenty of hits — Deadpool & Wolverine being the most recent example. But the studio’s grasp on the imagination (and wallets) of the moviegoing public has undeniably slackened. So it’s no huge surprise to see Kevin Feige and company looking to yesterday. In that respect, the Multiverse has proved a useful gimmick. If you’re hemorrhaging popular characters and failing to replace them with popular new ones, why not go digging around in movie history for some ringers? It’s mostly paid off so far. Spider-Man: No Way Home, with its trio of web-swingers, nearly equaled the success of Endgame. And the recent Doctor Strange and Deadpool sequels have both drawn audiences to theaters in big numbers with the promise of seeing familiar faces from other universes.
As for bringing back Downey, that will almost certainly get butts in seats, too. There’s no reason to conclude that it can’t work creatively as well. Any comic reader will tell you that turning the good guy into the bad guy is a reliably entertaining twist on formula. And given how much Tony Stark looms over this entire franchise, there’s a lot the filmmakers can do to toy with the associations of the audience and the characters alike — assuming, of course, that Downey’s Doctor Doom is a version of Stark and not a whole different character. That would be odd.
Still, Downey’s return betrays uncertainty about how to proceed. It says that everyone in charge is sweating the future of the MCU and banking heavily on its past. The overall impression is that Marvel is in its ouroboros era, devouring its own tail to keep from starving. That doesn’t seem like the soundest strategy for long-term success. Avengers: Secret Wars, coming in 2027, will likely play like one giant contract negotiation, arranging for appearances by every recognizable actor who’s ever slipped on the costume of a Marvel superhero. But then what? Once the cameo supply is exhausted, how do you keep people hooked?
For this giant, ongoing, ungainly franchise to survive, it’s going to have to do more than simply retrace its own steps and arrange periodic hits of spot-the-reference dopamine. Feige will have to make people remember why they fell in love with Marvel in the first place — with new characters worth following, with new stories worth telling, with new movies worth lining up around the block for. Otherwise, sooner or later, it really will be doomsday for the Avengers.
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