The Avengers

The Avengers also known as Marvel's The Avengers and Avengers Assemble is a 2012 superhero film based on the Marvel Comics superhero team of the same name. It is the sixth installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It is co-written and directed by Joss Whedon and stars Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America, Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/The Incredible Hulk, Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton/Hawkeye, Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. It was released May 4, 2012 in the USA and was released on April 25, 2012 and April 26, 2012 in the UK.

Plot
The movie opens with Loki negotiating with Thanos, who gives him a staff and the Chitauri army to help him take over the Earth in exchange for the Tesseract. Loki then goes to the S.H.I.E.L.D base to steal the Tesseract, brainwashing Hawkeye and Dr. Selvig in the process. Nick Fury then activates the Avengers Initiative, and gets Black Widow to recruit The Hulk and Phil Coulson to recruit Iron Man respectively.

They then gather on the helicarrier, where Tony Stark, Steve Rogers and Bruce Banner are introduced to each other. Banner starts tracking gammer radiation from the tessearct, while S.H.I.E.L.D trys to find Loki. Loki is found and Captain America and Iron Man are sent to find and capture him. After capturing him, they board the quinjet. A storm starts and Thor comes down to take Loki. Iron Man goes to get Loki back and Captain America follows.

Thor confrunts Loki and tells him about what his has done and what has since happened on Asgard. Thor then is grapped and thrown through trees by Iron Man. The two battle and Captain America soon comes to stop everyone.

Thor goes with S.H.I.E.L.D and tells them what they are dealing with. They soon all come to the room where Bruce is studying the Cosmic Cube and Loki's guards come with Hawkeye there who blows an engine up. Black Widow and Bruce fall and Bruce turns into the Hulk form. Black Widow runs and is hit by the Hulk. Captain America and Iron Man try to keep the other engine running and Thor confrunts Loki who is tricked by making Thor phase through him into his cell. Loki drops the cell and Thor falls in the cell. He breaks free at the very last moment and Hulk falls down from te helicarrier. Black Widow finds Hawkeye and knocks him out. Phil Coulson confrunts Loki and is stabbed from behind. He blasts the gun which he had and which was the first time he new what it did.

Nick Fury uses Coulson's death for motivation for the team. He pulls out the Captain America trading cards with blood on them and said that he never got the signed. Captain America, Black Widow, and Hawkeye took the quinjet. Iron Man came and found Loki on Stark Tower. He got out of the suit and confrunted him. He was thrown out the window and he got the Mark VII suit simular to the Mark V, could go on him by itself. Thor soon came and they all faught some of the Chitauri. Bruce came on a little motorbike and transformed into The Hulk destroying one of the Leviathan's.

They all come together. Captain America says to Hawkeye that he will go up on the roof to attack from above and also worn the team, Iron Man was sent to fly and fight from the sky, Thor was sent to help civllians, Captain America and Black Widow faught on the ground and Hulk was sent to smash. Thor and Hulk also ran into each other fighting some of the Chituari. They came in a room all done and Hulk punched Thor. Romanoff makes her way to Selvig's device, where Selvig, freed of Loki's control, reveals that Loki's staff can be used to close the portal. Fury's superiors attempt to end the invasion by launching a nuclear missile at Manhattan. Iron Man intercepts it and takes it through the portal toward the Chitauri fleet before running out of power and plummeting back to Earth. The Hulk catches him as he falls. Thor escorts Loki and the Tesseract to Asgard, home of the Norse gods. Fury notes that the Avengers will go their separate ways until such time as a new world-threatening menace emerges.

The Other tells his shadowy master that attacking Earth "would be to court death". His master, Thanos turns and smiles.

In a second post-credits scene, the Avengers — gathered at a shawarma restaurant — eat in silence.

Cast

 * Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America
 * Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man
 * Chris Hemsworth as Thor
 * Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/The Hulk
 * Lou Ferrigno as the voice of the Hulk
 * Tom Hiddleston as Loki
 * Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton/Hawkeye
 * Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow
 * Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury
 * Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson
 * Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill
 * Stellan Skarsgård as Erik Selvig
 * Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts
 * Paul Bettany as J.A.R.V.I.S.(voice)
 * Jenny Agutter as a S.H.I.E.L.D. Council Member
 * Alexis Denisof as The Other
 * Damion Poitier as Thanos
 * Stan Lee

Videos
Video:Marvel's The Avengers- Trailer (OFFICIAL)|Trailer #1 Video:Marvel - The Avengers Super Bowl XLVI Commercial|Superbowl Comercial Video:Marvel's The Avengers Super Bowl XLVI Commercial (Extended)|Extended Superbowl Comercial Video:Marvel's The Avengers Trailer 2 (OFFICIAL)|Trailer #2 Video:The Avengers Black Widow FIRST LOOK clip US (2012)|Clip 1 "Black Widow"

Merchandise

 * Fury's Big Week
 * Road to the Avengers
 * The Avengers (film) Home Video
 * The Avengers (film) Soundtrack
 * The Avengers Assemble

Trivia

 * Joe Carnahan was in talks to direct the film before Joss Whedon got the job.
 * Edward Norton was originally set to reprise his role from The Incredible Hulk (2008) but negotiations between him and Marvel Studios broke down. Norton was replaced with Mark Ruffalo.
 * Jeremy Renner was said to be taking archery lessons for his role as Hawkeye.
 * The film is the first Marvel film to be distributed by Walt Disney Pictures.
 * Before Mark Ruffalo was cast as The Hulk, Joaquin Phoenix was rumored for the part.
 * Morena Baccarin, Jessica Lucas, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Cobie Smulders screen tested for the role of Agent Maria Hill. Smulders was eventually cast.
 * Lou Ferrigno returns as the voice of the CGI-made Incredible Hulk. His voice was blended with Mark Ruffalo's in the Hulk's screams, while Mark Ruffalo spoke alone in the Hulk's only line "Puny God". Lou Ferrigno, in turn, played the Hulk in the classic televison series and voiced the role in various incarnations, incuding a number of animated versions and 2003's Hulk, which has no connection to The Avengers.
 * Chris Hemsworth had to increase and expand his dietary/food intake in order to maintain the physique he built up for Thor.
 * Mark Ruffalo describes Bruce Banner's role in The Avengers as "a guy struggling with two sides of himself, the dark and the light; everything he does in his life is filtered through issues of control." He furthermore describes Banner's alter ego, the Hulk, as "a loose cannon - he's the teammate none of them are sure they want, it's like throwing a grenade into the middle of the group and hoping it turns out well!"
 * Mark Ruffalo himself portrayed the Hulk through virtual-camera motion-capture, which allows him to actually portray the Hulk. Previous live-action versions have had Bruce Banner and the Hulk be played by separate people (Bill Bixby and bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno ), or had the Hulk rendered into the film in computer-generated imagery.
 * Director Joss Whedon had earlier been considered to direct X-Men in the 1990s. A big fan of the X-Men, he even wrote a script, from which only two lines made it into the film.
 * Producer Kevin Feige compares the film to Transformers: Dark of the Moon: "It set a standard for that level of ZOMG-awesomeness and scale. We're working to try to outdo that."
 * Mark Ruffalo states it was an honor to take over as Bruce Banner from his friend Edward Norton: "Ed has bequeathed this part to me, I look at it as my generation's Hamlet."
 * The Science and Entertainment Exchange provided a science consultation for the film.
 * According to Joss Whedon, the film is strongly influenced by the early 1960s Avengers comics, which he was a fan of while growing up: "In those comics these people shouldn't be in the same room let alone on the same team - and that is the definition of family." The film also has many connections to the more adult-themed contempory-Avengers-adaptation The Ultimates by Mark Millar.
 * Tom Hiddleston spoke of his role as Loki in an interview by saying, "I can tell you that it's all of them against me. I am the super villain. So it's Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Hawkeye, Black Widow and Nick Fury forming a team because I've got so bad ass."
 * In the preview, Robert Downey Jr.'s character of Tony Stark can be seen wearing a Black Sabbath T-Shirt. Black Sabbath performed the unrelated single "Iron Man" which is on the soundtrack from the first Iron Man film.
 * Has an unusually high number of Academy Award nominees in the cast for any movie which includes the folowing: Robert Downey Jr.; Samuel L. Jackson; Jeremy Renner; and Mark Ruffalo. However, it still falls short of the five in Iron Man 2: Downey Jr.; Jackson; Gwyneth Paltrow; Mickey Rourke; and Don Cheadle.
 * The cast became good friends while filming so if all the actors happened to be filming scenes together in the same place, they would go out together after. Chris Evans once sent a text message to Clark Gregg simply saying "Assemble", which is the tagline for the movie. Gregg stated that this was his favorite text message ever sent to him.
 * Tom Hiddleston describes Loki in this film as having evolved since Thor: "How pleasant an experience is it to disappear into a wormhole that was created by some super-nuclear explosion of his own making? I think by the time Loki shows up he's seen a few things and has bigger things in mind than just his brother and Asgard ..."
 * Actors Mark Ruffalo and Scarlett Johansson share the birthday November 22.
 * Despite the fact that the studio had no involvement in producing the film, neither in marketing or distributing, the Paramount Pictures logo still appears in advertising. Despite Disney buying the distribution of Marvel films from Paramount (as Marvel is a Disney company), the latter studio will still receive partial box-office royalties for these projects.
 * The film was converted to 3D during post-production for the theatrical release.
 * Two founding members, Henry Pym (Antman/Giantman) and his wife Janet (Wasp), of the avengers are not included in this movie.
 * Tony Stark describes his group as "Earth's mightiest heroes, that kind of thing." This refers to the bold label that has appeared on "The Avengers" comic books since its 1963 publication. The phrase has also been used as the subtitle for The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the most recent animated series before the live-action Avengers film.
 * This is the second time that Bruce Banner/Hulk and Thor have appeared together in a movie. They previously appeared together in The Incredible Hulk Returns.
 * Legal rights issues prevented a number of "Avengers" characters from their inclusion in this film. Most notably, these include Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch (the twin children of X-Men), villain Magneto, and frequent adversaries Doctor Doom (nemesis of the Fantastic Four) and Norman Osborne/Green Goblin (the primary antagonist of Spider-Man). Though all characters are owned by Marvel/Disney, the "X-Men" and "Fantastic Four" characters had all been licensed to Fox Studios, and those of "Spider-Man" to Sony before work began on an "Avengers" film. Marvel has said that in the future they hope to regain the rights to all licensed properties, that the aforementioned characters might have a role in subsequent "Avengers" films.
 * This movie marks the third time Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson have appeared in the same film. The previous two were Avengers prequel Iron Man 2 and The Spirit. On further coincidence, both have previously worked with actor Ewan McGregor, with Johansson being his co-star in The Island and Jackson playing a fellow Jedi in the Star Wars prequel trilogy in which Ewan McGregor starred.
 * According to Director Joss Whedon, the original cut of the movie was over 3 hours long. There will be about 30 minutes of the excised footage included in the DVD Release, most of which revolves around Steve Rogers (Captain America). Whedon revealed that one of these scenes involved Rogers struggling to adjust to the modern world in his Brooklyn apartment and another revealed Steve Rogers' reunion with Peggy Carter, his love interest from Captain America: The First Avenger.
 * Both Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson have work together in The Perfect Score and The Nanny Diraires.
 * With Samuel L. Jackson's role as Nick Fury in this film, he is now the third actor after Christopher Reeve (in the DC Comics-based Superman films) Hugh Jackman (who has appeared in all X-Men movies) to play the same comic book superhero in five different movies.
 * Tom Hiddleston revealed in an interview with the Guardian that the code name for the film early in its production was 'Group Hug'.

Reviews
Critics and fans responded with high praise and jeers to The Avengers. It's final grade at rottentomatoes was a 93% rating.[1]