'Avengers: Doomsday' Trailer Drops the Space Angle — Is the MCU Done With Sci-Fi?

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The first trailer for "Avengers: Doomsday" dropped yesterday, and while it’s jammed full of superheroes , surprises, and our first extended look at Dr. Doom, it is missing one big thing that has been a constant in the MCU ever since "Avengers" was released and the Infinity Stone saga kicked off: outer space.

Believe it or not, the MCU has been very sci-fi heavy for the past decade as the universe expanded into space with "Guardians of the Galaxy", "Captain Marvel", and the entire throughline of Thanos’ quest to bring balance to the universe.

Entire films took place in space, and extended exposition was delivered inside the hulls of spaceships. Alien heroes and villains swung around made-up planets and lived in the skulls of dead space giants. That whole "Eternals" thing. It's safe to say that the Marvel movies were into outer space in a big way. The MCU leaned heavily into science fiction and space for much of its life, but judging from this trailer, that may be coming to an end.

This is a very Earth-based trailer, and while the remnants of years of science fiction still permeate throughout the MCU (superhero comics are almost always dabbling in the genre), the focus on it is clearly gone. This trailer is all about the Earth and superheroes, pulling back hard on the bigger universe. Sure, it opens with the Fantastic Four exiting their spaceship — probably an unintentional visual metaphor for the MCU’s abandonment of the cosmos — but we’re kept mainly on Earth otherwise.

We have absolutely no alien heroes appearing on screen in this trailer outside of Thor and, of course, our main villain is decidedly earthbound even if he may be from a different multiverse (for those not in the know, that’s Robert Downey Jr. behind Dr. Doom’s mask).

(Image credit: Marvel Studios) There are plenty of reasons that the MCU may be pulling out of space. Introducing all of the X-Men means you’ve got plenty of Earth stuff to mess around with anyway, and there’s very little reason to need space travel when you’ve got time travel, quantum realms, and multiverses expanding your universe in other ways.

To be fair, all of those are sci-fi as well, but it’s not the same as outer space. We do know from casting that some of our favorite space-based heroes will be returning, but what is clear is that space is no longer the focus here. The MCU has been pulling back on space ever since Thanos fell, and this new trailer for "Avengers: Doomsday" just hammers another nail into the coffin of that universe.

Of course, Marvel is a master of misdirection and fake-outs, so anything could change as we get more details and the film finally releases, but for now it seems that the Marvel Cinematic Universe isn’t so interested in the universe part.

"Avengers: Doomsday" will hit theaters on December 18.

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