If you smelled something truly fresh wafting across the country from San Diego this weekend, it wasn’t just the sweat-filled costumes of all the cosplayers airing out on hotel balconies across the city: it was fresh, hot, news out of this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. That’s right, the annual celebration of nerdery that has been almost wholly co-opted by studios and other companies actually had some real weight to it — there were big announcements by Marvel and… uh, a lot of smaller ones from WB, Amazon and Paramount. We’ve rounded up all of the relevant trailers and snippets from all of the panels, because look, we know you weren’t able to get a hotel room (they sell out so quickly!), and you might have actually had shit to do this past weekend. And by “important shit,” we mean recording a reaction video to all of the cameos in Deadpool and Wolverine. Let’s get started.
Marvel/Disney
Out of all the studios at SDCC, Marvel had the biggest impact. We’ll get to the meat of the announcements in a minute, but they did, after all, had to acknowledge that they have two movies coming out before they can get to the projects that people are really excited about. Harrison Ford showed up to do Red Hulk impressions for Captain America: Brave New World, and the first footage from Thunderbolts* debuted. You can read recaps of the relevant bits from the people who were there at IGN.
As for the more exciting news — a test footage reel for Matt Shakman’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps was shown (and to be real, if you really want to see it, you probably can find it somewhere online), which gave a first look at the retro-futuristic vibes of the setting, as well as our first shots of the cast in action, including Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards teaching a class about parallel universes, The Thing on a Dating Game-like show, and we even got a tease of Ralph Ineson as Galactus (talk about awesome casting) at the end. The film starts shooting this week, so we might see and hear more from relevant sources soon. Read more here.
And, of course, the biggest news of all: The Kang Dynasty is no more. Your next Avengers film will be called Avengers: Doomsday, which will debut in 2026 as a lead into Secret Wars, with is still slated for 2027. They’ll be helmed by The Russo Brothers, who are making their return to the MCU after making a bunch of disasters for streaming services. Fitting, eh?
And, finally, the biggest news of the entire con: Robert Downey Jr. will be returning to the MCU… as Doctor Doom. See the reaction to his green-clad and metal-masked entrance here:
So, how the hell is this going to work? Well, it’s pretty clear that he’ll be playing some sort of multiversal variant of Tony Stark, and it’s not like this is without precedent in the comics — just as recently as six or seven years ago, there was a whole arc about Doom taking over the Iron Man mantle in the mainline Marvel Universe. Personally, we believe this was the plan all along (one of the Kangs would have eventually revealed themselves to be Doom ala Iron Lad in the comics, but Jonathan Majors’ legal trouble prevented that from happening), so the pivot happened in a way that kept the overall throughline in place. This is idle speculation — it’s perfectly reasonable for Marvel to have gotten high on their own supply and thought that a bunch of Kangs would have been a big-ass draw given all the bad choices they’ve made since Endgame — but it’s just genuinely hard to believe that people would have cared that much, and they’ve done similar things in the past. Anyhow, to quote Blades of Glory, this is provocative, and it certainly got the people going online. Who knows how it’ll pay off, or if it will, but it’s certainly bold as fuck.
DC/Warner Bros
The new DCU wasn’t a huge presence at this year’s SDCC. Aside from a reveal of DC Studios’ new logo (it looks like the one we all grew up with), the only major announcement from James Gunn and company was that Creature Commandos is, in fact, coming out, and that there’s a trailer for it. It’s a cartoon about the other team-of-rejects-not-named-the-Suicide-Squad, and it look pretty fun, all things considered. It’s coming out in December on Max, and will hopefully make up for Superman not being at this year’s event (maybe an NYCC trailer debut is in the cards?)
In other related-yet-unrelated news, Matt Reeves is gearing up to shoot The Batman: Part II next year, and don’t think that Max and company have forgotten about The Penguin, which got a brand new trailer and a release date. It’ll be airing on HBO as well for those who don’t want to plunk down extra cash beyond a cable subscription to check out the adventures of Colin Farrell in the world’s best make-up job, and that’ll arrive on September 19th.
Finally, while Adult Swim was decently quiet this year compared to years past in which they did a bunch of crazy Rick and Morty-themed shit, they did drop a new trailer for the anime adaptation of Junji Ito’s Uzumaki, which will premiere on September 28th on Cartoon Network and then hit Max the next day. It looks fucking dope, and we’re hyped for this (and the Colin Sexton score):
Paramount
Paramount had a big presence, yet it mainly served to hype up large existing fanbases rather than excite the general public. Case in point: this new trailer for Transformers One, which is somehow not set to U2. Once again, it’s a prequel about the time in which Optimus Prime and Megatron were best buds, a full-on CGI cartoon. This’ll hit theaters on September 20.
Next, there was lots of Star Trek news, including the first teaser for the Michelle Yeoh-led Star Trek: Section 31, about the CIA-like apparatus within the Federation that takes care of dastardly threats. It’s been a thorn in the side of Trekkies for years ever since the conspiracy-team of Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci hooked up to write the reboot in 2009, and it’s hard to imagine anybody getting excited about this aside from Yeoh being back in her role from Discovery. It’ll hit Paramount+ in 2025, should that streaming service continue to exist.
There’s plenty more Star Trek news, including information about the last season of Lower Decks, a first look at season 3 of Strange New Worlds, and lots of other little tidbits that the truly devoted might find interesting. Check it all out at TrekMovie.Com.
Amazon
Despite being on a roll with Fallout and The Boys, Amazon mainly used their time at SDCC to premiere a new trailer for season two of the walking-talking example of the Sunk-Cost Fallacy also known as The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. A billion dollars, folks. That’s what a billion dollars gets you these days. It’ll hit Prime on August 29, which we imagine will just tide people over until War of the Rohirrim (we got that right on the first try, nerds) hits theaters this Christmas.
And, finally, there’s a Boys prequel in the works, entitled The Boys: Vought Rising. It, you guessed it, focuses on the origins of the Superhero company known as Vought, which will bring back Jensen Ackles’ Soldier Boy and Aya Cash’s Stormfront. If you can’t go forward — and they can’t, given that the mainline show is going to end after its next season — go backwards, we guess. That’ll enter production sometime soon.
And that’s all for SDCC, though we’re sure we’ve missed some important shit like the Monty Python set of Magic cards. That’s the Eye of the Beholder for you, eh?