Avengers

"And there came a day, a day unlike any other... when Earth's mightiest heroes found themselves united against a common threat... to fight the foes no single superhero could withstand... on that day, the Avengers were born."

- Nick Fury The Avengers are a team of super-heroes assembled by Nick Fury and the intelligence agency S.H.I.E.L.D. through the Avenger Initiative. They exist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Marvel Animated Universe. They first appeared as a team in 2012's ''The Avengers. ''The Avengers were formed to combat threats that could not be dealt with alone.

The team currently consists of Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, Thor, Black Widow, Nick Fury and Hawkeye. They were intitially brought together by S.H.I.E.L.D. to combat Loki, Thor's adoptive brother. The Avengers are based on the superhero team created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and feature a similar roster to Mark Millar's Ultimates, the Ultimate Marvel Universe version of the team. The team was initially formed by Nick Fury to "fight the battles that S.H.I.E.L.D. never could".

The Avengers
"There was an idea, Stark knows this. Called the Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they become something more. See if they can work together when we needed them to. To fight the battles that we never could."

- Nick Fury

Nick Fury assembles the team when an unexpected threat associated with Thor's brother Loki and the Tesseract appears. The team initially have difficulty and refusal to obey each other; for example, Tony Stark is reluctant to working under the command of Captain America, Thor demands that Loki is his responsibility and the team is uncomfortable with the presence of Bruce Banner. When Loki attempts to destroy the team and promote his godlike supremecy to Earth in a public way, the Avengers depart from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s command and rally in defense of New York as it is invaded by the extraterrestrials known as the Chitauri.

Captain America takes command of the team and they each work to supress the invasion force. The Hulk beats Loki into submission and Iron Man sends a nuclear weapon fired by the World Security Council into the portal through which the aliens enter Earth and their fleet is destroyed, breaking the neural connection with their ground troops and instantly killing them. The team take Loki as their prisoner and Thor takes both Loki and the Tesseract back to Asgard. The team disbands but agrees to reassemble when another global threat requires their combined efforts.

Iron Man 3
The team was mentioned by Harold Hogan as the "Super Friends" and were mentioned once more by Harley Keener.

Thor: The Dark World
To be added

Captain America: The Winter Soldier
To be added

The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes
The team was formed during a massive breakout in the supervillain prisons the Vault, the Cube, the Big House and the secret fourth prison, the Raft. Iron Man faced the inmates of the Vault, Henry Pym and Wasp did the same at the Big House, and the Cube inmate Hulk saved Leonard Samson, then all them plus Thor fought together against the Raft escapee Graviton. After seeing how well they worked together, they decided to become a team and Wasp suggested the name Avengers.

Shortly after the team was formed, Amora the Enchantress created distrust between Hulk and the other Avengers, causing him to resign the team. Following him, the Avengers find the frozen Captain America, who joins the team.

After the Avengers help Black Panther to recover Wakanda, he returns to New York with them, as a new member. During a Gamma crisis caused by Hulk's Enemy the Leader, the jade giant rejoins, alongside new member Hawkeye.

The Avengers' enemies also form their own team, the Masters of Evil, led by Baron Zemo and the Enchantress. The Masters of Evil defeat the Avengers one by one and capture them, but Black Panther and Hawkeye cause a diversion so Hank can find a weapon to get the upper hand, and the Masters of Evil are forced to retreat.

Among other menaces, one of the greatest enemies the Avengers faced was Ultron. The robot created by Henry Pym tricked Radioactive Man, the Serpent Society and Red Ghost to follow his plans, and then attacked the Avengers with their own technology. He was finally stopped when he was about to wipe humanity with S.H.I.E.L.D's arsenal. However, Pym, feeling guilty, resigned the Avengers.

When the Masters of Evil tried to use the Norn Stones, each Avenger faced a Master and destroyed the stones, but they were transported throughout the Nine Realms, where they found Loki Laufeyson was the mastermind behind the Masters of Evil. The Avengers helped the Aesir against Loki's forces and saved the Nine Realms. After returning Earth, Captain America was captured and supplanted by a Skrull.

The Avengers had more adventures not knowing about the Skrull spy. When facing Ronan the Accuser, they got a new member in Ms. Marvel, who got Kree powers during a previous crisis. When the Avengers found one of them was a Skrull imposter, not knowing who, distrust made several of them leave, and Skrull-Cap remained as leader.

The real Captain America and other prisoners of the Skrulls managed to escape and returned to Earth to help the Avengers against the Skrull invasion. While the Avengers faced super-powered Skrulls, Cap defeated his doppelganger in single combat.

Behind the scenes

 * Joss Whedon talked about the power levels of the various Avengers: "I had to find a way to service all the characters, to figure out why they're in the room in the first place. My biggest concern was that if I didn't pay enough attention to minutiae then the film would become generic in its concepts and visuals. Or that I'd be so concentrated on those things, I'd look around and the film wouldn't be about anything."
 * On the action scenes and what Whedon terms "the hierarchy of power". "If this guy hits someone, he falls down. If this guy hits someone, he flies backwards. Its very complicated."
 * Whedon commented on Mark Ruffalo's 'Hulk' actions: "It's fun to say that Mark Ruffalo and I fought a great deal, because he's the sweetest man that I may ever have met. Yes, we did actually lay out some mats and tussle but just trying to figure out what the Hulk would be doing, what a person does in a real fight. Once he gets angry you have to keep asking "well what's making him angry now..." and go moment-to-moment. That's been the hardest thing in this movie. Mark is tremendous, I think he's going to blow people away - again - and we've gone where nobody has. We [have] Hulk in the house and everything pisses him off."

Trivia

 * The roster of the team is similar to that of the Ultimates roster in the comic book miniseries The Ultimates. The Ultimates were conceived as the Ultimate Marvel Universe's equivalent of the mainstream Avengers. The Avengers of the Marvel Cinematic Universe bear a strong resemblance to the Ultimates in that they were formed by S.H.I.E.L.D. as a government-sponsored team to combat the threat of the Chitauri. Like in The Ultimates 2, the team leaves S.H.I.E.L.D. employ and becomes independent.
 * Henry Pym (Ant-Man) and The Wasp are on the original Avengers roster in the mainstream comics, as well as their Ultimate universe versions being in the first roster of the Ultimates, but are absent from the live-action film.
 * The speech in the first teaser trailer was taken from the introduction of many Avengers comic books since the 1970s. In the TV series The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the new intro features Nick Fury stating a speech similar to this one.
 * The movie's roster was seen in the sequel series Avengers Assemble with Falcon.
 * the first line up in The Avengers: Earths Mightiest Heroes is the same as the line up in the first comic. it stayed that way with the absence of Hulk and the inclusion of Captain America.