Doomsday’ Leaks Are A Good Thing

A wild situation unfolded this week as a currently employed (for now) artist at Marvel posted a number of concept images from Avengers: Doomsday, revealing the concept of the story and a large number of characters who would be appearing.

While the fate of that specific artist is currently unknown, one interesting thing has happened in the wake of this. Disney does not seem to be on some sort of crusade to stamp out these images from the internet through copyright claims or other means.

I can’t say for certain that has not happened to any instance of these photos, I haven’t seen it yet among dozens and dozens of tweets that have shared them, which is probably more like hundreds or thousands. It seems like one of two things, or probably both of them, are happening here:

This is one of the biggest leaks in MCU history, and Disney realizes that with how widely and how quickly the images spread, it was likely pointless to try to track down every instance as the cat’s out of the bag. Hardcore fans have seen them but the general public who will help this movie earn a billion dollars are probably not plugged in enough to know they’re out there.

And/or, Disney quickly realized that this was a good thing, and the images were well-received among the fanbase quite widely. The concept of a God Emperor Doom-ruled, medieval-themed Battleworld sounds awesome, and so does the roster, so far, of characters we’ve seen. So far that includes: Doom, Doctor (Sheriff) Strange, Sue Storm (as Doom’s wife?), an imprisoned Reed Richards held by Yelena Belova. Bucky Barnes in a dungeon somewhere. A possibly recast Black Panther in Wakanda. Hulk and She-Hulk strolling about Latveria. Then a separate slate of images showing Star Lord hanging out with White Vision, Wong and the Young Avengers, Kate Bishop, Cassie Lang, Speed, Wiccan and Ms. Marvel. Most everyone thought this looked rather fantastic.

Of course there are caveats here that had some people concerned, namely a slate of missing big-name characters like Scarlet Witch, Spider-Man, Captain America, Thor and others. But again, this is just concept art, and who knows who else may appear. Though who knows how much of this will actually be realized in the film itself.

I am not sure I believe the conspiracy theories that Disney leaked this on purpose in order to either generate hype or use the concept as a trial balloon that they’re going in the right direction. But both of these things have happened, and I think that’s why we’re not seeing some sort of mass crackdown on the sharing and posting of these.

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