Marvel’s big cast reveal for Avengers: Doomsday earlier this week was like something out of an avant garde endurance piece curated by Andy Warhol, a five-hour extended live stream during which a row of empty director’s chairs stood solemnly under the harsh glare of studio lighting. The names kept coming with metronomic regularity: Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Anthony Mackie (Captain America), Paul Rudd (Ant-Man), Letitia Wright (Black Panther), Simu Liu (Shang-Chi) – each new label slapped on to the backrest by some unseen intern just off camera. This was internet performance art as corporate spectacle.
Five solid hours of vacant upholstery, culminating in Robert Downey Jr, who will play Doctor Doom in the new film, appearing just long enough to gesture for silence, as if warning the universe never to speak again of the utter boredom of what they had just witnessed. The sheer, glacially paced anticlimax of it all was so profound it almost achieved a state of absurdist nirvana.
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