The Avengers

Movie
STUDIODisney
RELEASED2012

Loki, the adopted brother of Thor, teams-up with the Chitauri Army and uses the Tesseract's power to travel from Asgard to Midgard to plot the invasion of Earth and become a king. The director of the agency S.H.I.E.L.D., Nick Fury, sets in motion project Avengers, joining Tony Stark a.k.a. the Iron Man; Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America; Bruce Banner, a.k.a. The Hulk; Thor; Natasha Romanoff, a.k.a. Black Widow; and Clint Barton, a.k.a. Hawkeye, to save the world from the powerful Loki and the alien invasion.

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The AvengersSource

Mark Ruffalo Played Both Banner and the Hulk

Thanks to how far motion capture had come by 2012, Ruffalo wasn't just voicing the Hulk in cutaways, he actually performed the majority of Hulk's physical movement himself in a mocap suit. It's the first time in a live action film that both sides of Banner were played by the same actor, and you can genuinely see Ruffalo's mannerisms in the big guy if you look closely.

The AvengersSource

Coulson's Death Nearly Got the Movie an R Rating

Marvel actually had to go back to the MPAA three times to lock in a PG-13. The sticking point was Coulson's death - the first cut had Loki's staff bursting clean through his chest, which was way too gory. Whedon dialled it right back to just a stab sound effect and Thor's reaction selling the horror of it, and honestly it hits harder for being left to your imagination.

The AvengersSource

Robert Downey Jr.'s Snack Stash

Downey Jr apparently kept snacks hidden all over the lab set so he'd never go hungry between takes. In one scene where he offers Chris Evans some blueberries, that wasn't scripted at all, it was just Downey munching on his stash and deciding to share, and Whedon liked the moment enough to leave it in the final cut.

The AvengersSource

Life Model Decoys Are a Deep Comics Cut

When Fury mentions Life Model Decoys to explain away Coulson's supposed 'death', it flew right over most audiences' heads back in 2012. It's actually a proper deep cut reference to the comics, where LMDs are robotic doubles built to stand in for real people - Whedon dropped it in years before it would matter to anyone paying attention.

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