Avengers (team)

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

- Nick Fury to the Avengers after Phil Coulson's death.

The Avengers are a team of superheroes 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 feature all the heroes of Marvel Studios' independent productions. They first appeared as a team in 2012's The Avengers.

The team currently consists of Captain America, Black Widow, Wanda Maximoff, War Machine, Vision, and Falcon. The original team consisted of Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, Thor, Black Widow and Hawkeye in The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron and shifted when Tony Stark, Thor, Clint Barton, and Bruce Banner/Hulk left the team after the events of Age of Ultron. They were initially 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".

Iron Man
"You think you're the only superhero in the world? Mr. Stark, you've become part of a bigger universe. You just don't know it yet."

- Nick Fury

In a post-credits scene, Tony Stark is unexpectedly visited by S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Nick Fury who notes that Stark is not "the only superhero in the world" and states he wants to discuss the "Avenger Initiative".

Iron Man 2
"I told you I don't want to join your super-secret boy band."

- Anthony Stark

Fury informs Stark that his Iron Man persona is assigned to the team, but due to certain conditions, Stark himself is deemed unsuitable. Stark agrees on the condition that Senator Stern present him and Col. Rhodes with their medals for bravery.

Marvel One-Shot: The Consultant
"So, on the Council's orders, we have to send one of our people down to Ross to ask for Blonksy, who we don't even want?"

- Jasper Sitwell

Agents Coulson and Sitwell conspire to thwart the Security Council's directive that Emil Blonsky be added to the Avengers roster.

The Incredible Hulk
"What if I told you we were putting a team together?"

- Tony Stark

General Ross is drinking in a bar when he is approached by industrialist Stark, who casually reveals that a "team" is being put together.

Thor
"Know this, son of Coul. You and I, we fight for the same cause: the protection of this world. From this day forward, you can count me in as your ally, if... you return the items you have taken from Jane."

- Thor Odinson

Agent Coulson notes Thor's strength while he is in his mortal form, trying to reclaim Mjolnir. After Thor defeats the Destroyer, Thor tells Coulson to consider him an ally to S.H.I.E.L.D., but speeds away before he can be debriefed, indicating that he has been considered for the Avengers Initiative.

Captain America: The First Avenger
"You came here with a mission, sir, trying to get me back to the world? Trying to save it."

- Steve Rogers and Nick Fury

Steve Rogers was woken after 70 years on ice and later meets Nick Fury, who recruits him to the Avengers intiative.

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
The team was mentioned by Loki.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier
The team are mentioned by the World Security Council and Wolfgang von Strucker.

Avengers: Operation HYDRA
To be added

Avengers: Age of Ultron
After the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. Loki's Scepter fell into the hands of HYDRA. The threat it posed drew the Avengers back together in a desperate worldwide hunt. The Avengers had the financial backing of Tony Stark. Using the former Stark Tower, now renamed Avengers Tower, as their headquarters. After many months they tracked it to a HYDRA research facility run by Wolfgang von Strucker in Sokovia and launched an all out assault to recover it. The Avengers also noted that they were being harassed by two "enhanced" during the operation, but together with Stark's Iron Legion the team soon overthrew the HYDRA soldiers and reclaimed the sceptre. Tony appealed to Thor to have two days to study the alien device before it was relocated to Asgard, which Thor agreed to, and then the team unanimously agreed to celebrate their victory.

Back in New York at Avengers Tower, Tony began to unravel the mysteries of the sceptre. Tony and Bruce Banner discovered that its core held something akin to a powerful computer and deduced that HYDRA had been trying to use it to create artificial intelligence. With this knowledge he had the epiphany that he might be able to provide real adaptive thought to his Iron Legion in what he called his Ultron Program. He and Bruce then left J.A.R.V.I.S. to continue investigating while he rejoined his team for a night of celebration. The party was huge and the Avengers gathered many of their friends for the night. When the revelry had died down, and most of the guests had left, the remaining men took turns trying to lift Mjölnir. This activity was interrupted by the appearance of a wrecked Iron Legion drone. It quickly became apparent that this was being operated by a rogue artificial intelligence, and the name it claimed for itself was "Ultron". Ultron and a number of other Iron Legion drones, then attacked the small group. They rallied and beat it back, but not before one of the Iron Legion made off with the sceptre during the confusion. Thor promptly turned on Stark demanding to know why he had created such a thing, to which Tony pointed out that they needed a way to deal with threats on the scale of the Chitauri.

The Avengers traced Ultron's movements to a salvage yard on the coast of Africa where Ulysses Klaue dealt in the lucrative end of black market trading. So began a three way battle between Klaue's men after Ultron severed his arm, the Avengers, and the Ultron Sentries. Ultron also had the advantage of the pair of enhanced that the Avengers had encountered in Sokovia, the siblings Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. Pietro's speed allowed him to devastate the ranks of Klaue's men, while Wanda ravaged the minds of the Avengers themselves. When she at last reached Banner, her illusions caused him to fly into a rage that he then directed towards the populace of Johannesburg, and then she Ultron and Pietro made their escape. With most of the Avengers out of action fighting their own inner demons, Tony was left to attend to the problem of a rampaging Hulk on his own. He asked Veronica, a shuttle that could deploy numerous pieces of a heavy duty Iron Man armor. Tony in the Hulkbuster Armor afforded him the physical power to subdue the Hulk, but the public relations damage had been done, leaving Bruce in a morose state. Clint Barton took the group to a safehouse to recover, soon revealing that it was actually his family home. There they met Nick Fury, who began reorienting their thinking and fomenting new strategic considerations within the shattered ranks. Banner and Romanoff had both been psychologically scarred by their encounter Wanda and contemplated simply leaving. Tensions ran high between Tony and Steve Rogers, and Thor had been given a glimpse of something very troubling and departed the group to investigate further.

Ultron's plan to use the sceptre to create a final evolutionarily pure form for himself had become clear, and the last piece of that puzzle was with Dr. Helen Cho in South Korea. They raced for Seoul, and found Ultron deep into an attempt to load his consciousness into a new android body. Their interference forced Ultron to flee, but the group managed to separate the android body from the robot before he escaped again, and Stark, and Barton, took it back to New York. Rogers on the other hand, found himself joined by the Maximoff twins on the street of Seoul after Wanda had discovered Ultron's true intent. Romanoff had not been so lucky, and having been rendered unconscious in the confrontation soon found herself imprisoned by Ultron in Sokovia. Once they were back in New York, Stark and Banner bickered over the android body. Stark wanted to load J.A.R.V.I.S. into it, but Banner didn't trust his judgement. The dispute continued until it was interrupted by the arrival of Rogers and the Maximoff twins, whereupon Pietro ended it by simply unplugging the entire system. Then Thor made a surprise appearance and promptly bathed the android in lightning. It awoke in the surge and cast him aside. The Avengers and the Maximoff twins all moved to counter the android but halted when it stopped by a window to gaze out upon the city. It quickly became apparent that the android was no threat, especially fostering trust in Thor when it hefted Mjolnir with ease. The assembled group then compared stories, and Thor reported news of his vision that the energy core of the sceptre had actually contained the Mind Stone, an item of incredible power and one of the legendary Infinity Stones. That gem was now resting in the forehead of the android, which soon began referring to itself as the Vision.

The Avengers and their three allies turned their attention back to Ultron and Sokovia. Banner went alone to extract Romanoff from her prison, and the others faced off against Ultron. While Ultron's plan to divide and exterminate the Avengers had failed, its plans for the human race were about to be fully revealed. Devices planted within the city engaged, drawing a sizeable portion of it into the sky. The assembled heroes, with Banner and Romanoff back amongst them, fought back against the amassed ranks of Ultron's robot legion. James Rhodes, suited up as War Machine, and a recently repaired helicarrier with him, also eventually joined the battle. After clearing most of the Ultron robots from the city now risen above the cloud layer, the heroes began evacuating the trapped populace in personnel transports sent from the helicarrier. Barton was caught under the guns of the Avengers' own quinjet however, with Ultron at the controls, and only the intervention of Pietro saved him. Pietro had saved both Barton and a boy with this final act, but at the cost of his own life when the quinjet's gunfire tore through his chest. The Vision finally confronted Ultron alone after the Hulk had flung the robot from the quinjet. Heavily damaged, Ultron was no match for the android, and fell to the Vision's power. With Ultron's defeat, the group began an inevitable dissolution. The Hulk switched off the quinjet's communications, leaving it to fly him clear of the scene. Thor and Stark each had their own agendas to pursue, with Thor needing to investigate the matter of yet another Infinity Stone coming within reach. Barton meanwhile had a new baby to attend to and left to return to his family.

Despite their losses, the Avengers were also to be born anew. Steve and Romanoff proceeded to a new Avengers facility in New York, and welcomed a new quartet to the fold. They were joined by the Vision, Wanda Maximoff, James Rhodes aka War Machine, and Steve's recent companion, Sam Wilson aka the Falcon.

Ant-Man
When Henry Pym was debriefing Scott Lang about his mission, Lang remarked that they should call in the Avengers. Pym scoffed at the idea, claiming that they were probably too busy "dropping cities out of the sky". Later in order to ensure the accomplishment of the heist, Pym requires a device he had constructed for S.H.I.E.L.D. that lay in storage in what he knew to be an abandoned Stark Industries warehouse in Upstate New York. Ant-Man is sent in to retrieve the package only to make a unexpected discovery upon arrival that the warehouse had become The New Avengers Facility where he encounters Falcon and engages in battle against him, while managing to acquire the device.

Captain America: Civil War
To be added

Avengers: Infinity War, Part I
To be added

Avengers: Infinity War, Part II
To be added

Members

 * Steve Rogers/Captain America (leader)
 * Tony Stark/Iron Man  (leaves in Avengers: Age of Ultron)
 * Thor Odinson  (leaves in Avengers: Age of Ultron)
 * Bruce Banner/Hulk  (leaves in Avengers: Age of Ultron)
 * Clint Barton/Hawkeye  (leaves in Avengers: Age of Ultron)
 * Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow
 * Pietro Maximoff/Quicksilver (joins breifly, later killed in Avengers: Age of Ultron)
 * Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (joins in Avengers: Age of Ultron)
 * Vision (joins in Avengers: Age of Ultron)
 * James Rhodes/War Machine  (joins in Avengers: Age of Ultron)
 * Sam Wilson/Falcon  (joins in Avengers: Age of Ultron)

Allies

 * Sharon Carter - CIA Liason
 * James Barnes/Winter Soldier - Ally to Captain America's faction in Captain America: Civil War
 * Scott Lang/Ant-Man - Ally to Captain America's faction in Captain America: Civil War
 * Peter Parker/Spider-Man - Ally to Iron Man's faction in Captain America: Civil War
 * T'Challa/Black Panther - Ally to Iron Man's faction before offering refuge to Captain America's faction in Captain America: Civil War
 * Thaddeus Ross - Enemy of the Hulk turned US Secretary of State
 * S.H.I.E.L.D.
 * Nick Fury
 * Erik Selvig
 * Phil Coulson - Considered a member of the team by Nick Fury
 * Maria Hill
 * Jasper Sitwell - Ally turned enemy
 * Helen Cho

Enemies

 * Loki
 * Thanos
 * Helmut Zemo
 * Brock Rumlow/Crossbones
 * Chitauri
 * The Other
 * Leviathans
 * Ultron
 * Ultron Sentinels
 * Wolfgang von Strucker
 * List
 * Ulysses Klaue
 * Alexander Pierce
 * Arnim Zola (Targeted several members with his Project Insight algorithm.)
 * Emil Blonsky/Abomination (Desired for membership by World Security Council, Thaddeus Ross denied the request after being manipulated by Phillip Coulson and Tony Stark.)
 * HYDRA

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 will be seen in the next animated series Avengers Assemble with Falcon joining the roster.
 * With Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch appearing in Avengers: Age of Ultron, the roster continues to closely follow the comics as they both joined The Avengers along-side Captain America and Hawkeye (both of whom are founding members in the first film) after the original lineup disbanded, thus forming the second.
 * Unlike most of the traditional superheroes, all members of the Avengers don't have secret identities