Continued leaks of Marvel’s Avengers: Doomsday marketing plans have left fans convinced they know everything in next week’s Thor-focused trailer, prompting a stream of lookalike AI versions to hit the internet.
The past week has seen a flood of leaks and industry whispers detail Disney’s Doomsday marketing, which officially kicked off yesterday with the reveal that Chris Evans will return as Steve Rogers, confirmed via a theatrical trailer attached to Avatar: Fire and Ash.
The Hollywood Reporter has stated that this Doomsday trailer will be swapped out for three others over course of the next three weeks, while FeatureFirst reported that these four would feature Steve Rogers, Thor and Doctor Doom in turn.
Another supposed leak has spilled the audio for Thor’s trailer, which has since been widely-shared on reddit, and seemingly corroborated via Marvel tipster Daniel Richtman. The trailer apparently features a solemn prayer from Thor to his father during a quiet moment in a forest, as if reflecting on the eve of some fiercesome battle.
“Of all the crowns, the kingdoms, the pride, I ask for none.
“Father, hear your son. I am not worthy of life, but still I beg you to let the thread lengthen.
“Not for thunder, not for war… let me remain long enough to see my love once more.”
Fans have noted — with no small amount of relief — that this version of Thor is clearly being pitched as more sober and less wacky than the character’s last appearance in Taika Waititi’s goat-screaming chucklefest Thor: Love and Thunder. There’s not a sniff of the Russo Brothers’ mopey takeaway-chomping, Fortnite-playing Infinity War version here either. Instead, the dialogue is spoken with a more mature and world-weary tone.
The other main point of discussion here is Thor’s use of the word “love,” which many fans have taken to mean his adoptive daughter Love seen in Love and Thunder. Without an official transcription, it’s impossible to say for sure if Thor is using a capital L here or not, though it’s likely intended to be ambiguous. Alternatively, it could also be a reference to Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster, who now resides in Valhalla, or some character we haven’t yet met.
Still, the reference to Thor’s daughter would also be an obvious spark for a separate point of speculation: what is going on with the Avengers’ kids, and why does Doctor Doom want them? Our first glimpse at Doom came at the very end of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, where he turned up seemingly to kidnap Reed and Sue’s son Franklin. This week’s reveal that Steve Rogers is now a dad has prompted fans to immediately expect Doom to turn up at his door too. Could Thor now be mourning the similar disappearance of his daughter?
Anyway, put all that discussion aside and fans have been left feeling pretty confident they know what next week’s Thor trailer will look like, and if you head to YouTube right now it will serve you up a string of videos showing just that: Thor in a forest saying his prayer to his father, referencing love (or Love) at the end. One such trailer on the MCU Talk channel has 259,000 views. Another on the Snap Saga channel has 285,000 views. A third on the Everything Always channel has 154,000 views. A quick scroll downwards shows at least a dozen more.
Of course, none of these are real — and if they were, they’d likely be removed, as happened with the many, many uploads of the leaked Steve Rogers trailer. Instead, all of these videos are made with varying levels of poor quality by AI. Most are designed to look bad, shakily recorded on a potato phone at the back of some non-existant theater, in order to add to their ‘authenticity.’
While fake trailers are certainly nothing new, it’s still remarkable to see a situation where so many fakes have been made, all of which are near-identical to what fans believe the real thing will look like, when it arrives in theaters in less a week’s time.
This week, it emerged that YouTube had killed two of its biggest channels dedicated to creating fake movie trailers. Both Screen Culture and KH Studio, whose fake movie trailer videos had collectively generated billions of views, are now unavailable, ending their ability to mislead fans into believing what they were watching was the real thing. As for Doomsday’s next trailer, the real thing featuring Thor is now believed to be six days away. It’ll be interesting to see how close those AI versions were when it does arrive.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
