Avengers: Doomsday is putting three Marvel generations in one frame

Avengers: Doomsday is designed as collision rather than simple reunion. Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom sits opposite Avengers, Fantastic Four and legacy X-Men performers in a film that has to make several different histories feel like one present tense.

The secrecy around production is part of the product. Cast members have described working without a complete view of the story, protecting the shape of a film whose surprise depends on how its worlds meet.

The real question is not how many characters appear. It is whether Anthony and Joe Russo can give the crossover an emotional centre strong enough to survive the scale. The film arrives in cinemas this December.

Doctor Doom’s value is not simply power. He gives the film a figure who can make science, monarchy, ego and grief occupy the same silhouette. Robert Downey Jr.’s casting only works if the performance creates a new person rather than asking memory to do all the acting.

The returning X-Men can provide history, while the Fantastic Four offer a family structure the wider Avengers have repeatedly lost. Doomsday’s challenge is to let those different emotional systems collide before the portals and armies arrive.

WATCH FOR / WHETHER THE RUSSOS CAN MAKE SCALE FEEL PERSONAL AGAIN.