The Avengers (2012 film)

Marvel's The Avengers (titled Marvel Avengers Assemble in the UK and Ireland) is a 2012 American superhero film about a team of superheroes who come together to form the Avengers to help stop Thor's adoptive brother Loki from enslaving the human race. It is based on the Marvel Comics superhero team of the same name, and is the sixth installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
 * Written and directed by Joss Whedon. Story by Zak Penn and Joss Whedon.

Avengers Assemble! (taglines)

Dialogue

 * Fury: We have no quarrel with your people.
 * Loki: An ant has no quarrel with a boot.
 * Fury: You plannin' to step on us?
 * Loki: I come with glad tidings, of a world made free.
 * Fury: Free from what?
 * Loki: Freedom. Freedom is life's great lie. Once you accept that, in your heart– [puts Eric Selvig under his control] you will know peace.
 * Fury: Yeah, you say "peace." I kinda think you mean the other thing.


 * Malick: This is out of line, Director. You're dealing with forces you can't control.
 * Fury: You ever been in a war, Councilman? In a firefight? Did you feel an overabundance of control?
 * Malick: You're saying that this Asgard is declaring war on our planet?
 * Fury: Not Asgard. Loki.
 * Hawley: He can't be working alone. What about the other one? His brother?
 * Fury: Our intelligence says Thor is not a hostile. But he's worlds away. We can't depend on him to help, either. It's up to us.
 * Malick: Which is why you should be focusing on Phase 2. It was designed for exactly this.
 * Fury: Phase 2 isn't ready. Our enemy is. We need a response team.
 * Malick: The Avengers Initiative was shut down.
 * Fury: This isn't about the Avengers.
 * Malick: We've seen the list. You run the world's greatest covert security network and you're gonna leave the fate of the human race to a handful of freaks?
 * Fury: I'm not leaving anything to anyone. We need a response team. These people may be isolated, unbalanced even, but I believe with the right push, they can be exactly what we need.
 * Hawley: You believe?
 * Malick: War isn't won by sentiment, Director.
 * Fury: No. It's won by soldiers.


 * [after Stark Tower is rendered operational, Tony and Pepper are having a private celebration, when Tony's smartphone rings]
 * J.A.R.V.I.S.: Sir, the telephone. I'm afraid my protocols are being overridden.
 * Tony: Uh–
 * Coulson: [Over the phone] Mr. Stark, we need to talk.
 * Tony: [Picks up the phone] You have reached the Life-Model Decoy of Tony Stark. Please leave a message.
 * Coulson: [Over the phone] This is urgent.
 * Tony: Then leave it urgently. [The elevator nearby opens, and Coulson is in it] Security breach. [To Pepper] That's on you.
 * Coulson: Mr. Stark?
 * Pepper: Phil! Come in.
 * Tony: "Phil"?
 * Coulson: I can't stay.
 * Tony: Uh, his first name is "Agent".
 * Pepper: Come in, we're celebrating.
 * Tony: Which is why he can't stay.
 * Coulson: We need you to look this over, as soon as possible. [hands a laptop to Tony]
 * Tony: I don't like being handed things–
 * Pepper: That's fine, 'cause I love to be handed things, so let's trade. [takes the laptop from Coulson's hand while giving him her champagne glass; she then gives the laptop to Tony while taking his glass] Thank you.
 * Tony: Official consulting hours are between 8 and 5, every other Thursday...
 * Coulson: This isn't a consultation.
 * Pepper: Is this about the Avengers? [Coulson looks at her]...Which I know nothing about?
 * Tony: The Avengers Initiative was scrapped, I thought. And I didn't even qualify.
 * Pepper: I didn't know that either.
 * Tony: Yeah, apparently I'm volatile, self-obsessed, and don't play well with others.
 * Pepper: That, I did know.


 * Loki: [Teleporting to the front of a fleeing crowd] Kneel before me! [The crowd flees the other way; Loki teleports in that direction] I said... KNEEL!!! [Slams the staff on the ground, releasing a thunderous shockwave that scares the crowd into submission] Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? It is the unspoken truth of humanity that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power. For identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel.
 * Old German Man: [Stands up] Not to men like you.
 * Loki: [With a smug smirk] There are no men like me.
 * Old German Man: There are always men like you.
 * Loki: Look to your elder, people. Let him be an example. [fires a blast from his scepter at the old man, only to have Captain America jump in and deflect it back with his shield, knocking Loki down]
 * Captain America: Ya know, the last time I was in Germany and saw a man standing above everybody else, we ended up disagreeing.


 * Thor: [confronting Loki] You listen well, brother. I-- [Iron Man sends him flying]
 * Loki: I'm listening.


 * [Iron Man confronts Thor]
 * Thor: Do not touch me AGAIN.
 * Iron Man: Then don't take my stuff!
 * Thor: You have no idea what you are dealing with.
 * Iron Man: Uh.... Shakespeare in the Park? Doth Mother know you wear-eth her drapes?
 * Thor: This is beyond you, metal man. Loki will face Asgardian justice!
 * Iron Man: He gives up the Cube, he's all yours! Until then? [His mask comes down] Stay outta the way. [Under his breath] Tourist.


 * [Thor and Iron Man's fight has been halted by Captain America]
 * Captain America: Now, I don't know what you plan on doing here.
 * Thor: I've come here to put an end to Loki's schemes!
 * Captain America: Then prove it. Put that hammer down.
 * Iron Man: Uh, yeah, no. Bad call! He loves his ha-- [Thor throws him across the forest with a single swing]


 * Loki: How desperate are you, that you call on such lost creatures to defend you?
 * Fury: How desperate am I? You threaten my world with war, you steal a force you can't hope to control, you talk about peace, and you kill 'cause it's fun. You have made me VERY desperate. You might not be glad that you did.
 * Loki: Ooh. It burns you to come so close. To have the Tesseract, to have power, unlimited power, and for what? A warm light for all mankind to share. And then to be reminded what "real power" is.
 * Fury: Well, lemme know if "real power" wants a magazine or somethin'.


 * Thor: You speak of control, yet you court chaos.
 * Banner: That's his MO, isn't it? I mean, what are we, a team? No, no, no. We're a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We're– we're a time-bomb.
 * Fury: You need to step away.
 * Tony: Why shouldn't the man let off a little steam?
 * Rogers: You know damn well why! Back off!
 * Tony: I'm startin' to want you to make me.
 * Rogers: Yeah. Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?
 * Tony: [casually] Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. [Natasha shrugs condescendingly, but concedes Stark's point]
 * Rogers: I know guys with none of that worth ten of you. I've seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you.
 * Tony: I think I'd just cut the wire.
 * Rogers: Always a way out. You know, you may not be a threat, but you'd better stop pretending to be a hero.
 * Tony: A hero? Like you? You're a lab experiment, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle.
 * Rogers: [Enraged] Put on the suit. Let's go a few rounds.


 * Steve: Was he married?
 * Tony: No. There was a, uh... cellist. I think.
 * Steve: I'm sorry. He seemed like a good man.
 * Tony: He was an idiot.
 * Steve: Why? For believing?
 * Tony: For taking on Loki alone.
 * Steve: He was doing his job.
 * Tony: Ugh. He was out of his league! He should've waited! He should've...
 * Steve: Sometimes there isn't a way out, Tony.
 * Tony: Right. I've heard that before.
 * Steve: Is this the first time you've lost a soldier?
 * Tony: We are not soldiers. I'm not marching to Fury's fife.
 * Steve: Neither am I; he's got the same blood on his hands as Loki does. But right, now, we've gotta put that behind us and get this done.


 * [Iron Man and Captain America are trying to fix the engine]
 * Captain America: [over comms] OK, the relays are intact!'' What's our next move?
 * Iron Man: Even if I clear the rotors, this thing won't re-engage without a jump. I'm gonna have to get in there and push.
 * Captain America: Well, if that thing gets up to speed, you'll get shredded.
 * Iron Man: Then stay in the control unit, it can reverse polarity long enough to dis-engage mag-lev and that should--
 * Captain America: Speak English.


 * Tony: Loki, he's a full tilt diva! He likes his flowers, he wants parades, a... monument built to the skies with his name plastered--
 * [Tony cuts himself off, realizing he's describing Stark Tower to a tee.]
 * Tony: Son of a bitch.


 * Maria Hill: Sir... those cards-- They were in Coulson's locker. Not in his jacket.
 * Fury: They needed the push.


 * Loki: Please tell me you're going to appeal to my humanity.
 * Tony: Uh, actually, I'm planning to threaten you.
 * Loki: You should have left your armor on for that.
 * Tony: Yeah. It's seen a bit of mileage and you got the, uh... Glow Stick of Destiny. Would you like a drink?
 * Loki: Stalling me won't change anything.
 * Tony: No, no, no. Threatening. No drink? You sure? I'm having one. [Pours a glass of whisky]
 * Loki: The Chitauri are coming. Nothing will change that. What have I to fear?
 * Tony: The Avengers. [Loki looks confused] It's what we call ourselves. Sorta like a team. "Earth's Mightiest Heroes" type of thing.
 * Loki: Yes. I've met them.
 * Tony: Yeah. Takes us a while to get any traction, I'll give you that one. But let's do a head count here. Your brother, a demigod; a super soldier, a living legend who kind of lives up to the legend; a man with breathtaking anger management issues; a couple of master assassins, and you, big fella – you've managed to piss off every single one of them.
 * Loki: That was the plan.
 * Tony: Not a great plan. When they come – and they will– they'll come for you.
 * Loki: I have an army.
 * Tony: We have a Hulk.
 * Loki: I thought the beast had wandered off.
 * Tony: You're missing the point. There's no throne, okay? There is no version of this where you come out on top. Now maybe your army comes, and maybe it's too much for us, but it's all on you. Because if we can't protect the Earth, you can be damn well sure we'll avenge it.
 * Loki: How will your friends have time for me– when they're so busy fighting you?
 * [Loki attempts to use his Sceptor on Tony, but it clinks harmlessly on the arc reactor in Tony's chest. Confused, he tries again, but gets the same result.]
 * Loki: [Confused] This usually works.
 * Tony: Well, performance issues. It's not uncommon. One out of five– [Loki grabs him by the throat and throws him across the room] JARVIS, any time now!
 * Loki: [Grabs Tony by the throat] You will all fall before me!
 * Tony: Deploy! Deploy!
 * [Loki throws Tony out of the window, but his Mark VII armor reaches him and attaches itself to him before he hits the ground; he flies back to the penthouse.]
 * Tony: And there's one other person you pissed off! His name was Phil. [Loki raises his Sceptor, but Tony quickly lasts him.]


 * Captain America: Stark, you seeing this?
 * Iron Man: Seeing. Still working on believing.


 * Black Widow: This is just like Budapest all over again!
 * Hawkeye: You and I remember Budapest very differently.


 * Black Widow: Guys?
 * Iron Man: Call it, Captain.
 * Captain America: Alright, listen up. Until we can close that portal, our priority is containment. Barton, I want you on that roof, eyes on everything. Call out patterns and strays. Stark, you got the perimeter. Anything gets more than three blocks out, you turn it back, or you turn it to ash.
 * Hawkeye [To Iron Man] Can you give me a lift?
 * Iron Man: Right. Better clench up, . [Flies Barton to the indicated rooftop]
 * Captain America: Thor, you gotta try and bottleneck that portal. Slow 'em down. You got the lightning. Light the bastards up. [Thor flies off on . Captain America continues speaking to Widow.] You and me, we stay here on the ground, keep the fighting here. And Hulk?
 * [Hulk turns to Captain America.]
 * Captain America: [Points to Chitauri] Smash.
 * [Hulk grins and leaps into battle.]

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 * Loki: ENOUGH! You are, all of you, beneath me! I am a god, you dull creature, and I will not be bullied by–
 * [Hulk grabs Loki and slams him into the floor five times like a rag doll, then leaves him lying face-up in the resulting crater.]
 * Hulk: PUNY GOD.
 * [As Hulk stomps off looking smug. Loki groans in pain.]

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 * [Loki is crawling on the floor. He stops crawling, realizing that the Avengers are behind him. He turns around to see them standing before him and Clint aiming an arrow at his face.]
 * Loki: If it's all the same to you– I'll have that drink now.

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 * Malick: Where are the Avengers?
 * Fury: I'm not currently tracking their whereabouts. I'd say they've earned a leave of absence.
 * World Security Council: And the Tesseract?
 * Fury: The Tesseract is where it belongs. Out of our reach.
 * Malick: That's not your call, Director.
 * Fury: I didn't make it. I just didn't argue with the god that did.
 * Malick: So you've let him take it, and the war criminal Loki, who should be answering for his crimes?
 * Fury: Oh, I think he will be.
 * World Security Council: I don't think you understand what you've started, letting the Avengers loose on this world. They're dangerous.
 * Fury: They sure are. And the world knows it. Every world knows it.
 * Malick: Was that the point of all this? A statement?
 * Fury: A promise.

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 * [Last lines; the Avengers have parted ways…for now]
 * Hill: Sir, how does it work now? They've gone their separate ways, some– pretty extremely far. We get into a situation like this again, what happens then?
 * Fury: They'll come back.
 * Hill: You really sure about that?
 * Fury: I am.
 * Hill: Why?
 * Fury: Because we'll need them to.

Taglines

 * Avengers Assemble!
 * Some assembly required.
 * Every team needs a Captain.
 * Throw down the hammer.

About The Avengers (2012 film)

 * The Avengers, which last week enjoyed the biggest North American opening in history, recasts 9/11 in the Bush years' dominant movie mode, namely the comic book superhero spectacular – albeit with a heavy dose of irony and added stereoscopic depth. But more fundamentally, The Avengers demonstrates how completely 9/11 has been superseded by another catastrophe, namely the financial meltdown of September 2008. To the extent that the movie has any sort of social content (or any content), it offers a flattering view of America's best as a group of eccentric individualists bamboozled into saving the world (economy) by the unflappable Samuel L Jackson's black dude of mystery. But even this Obama-iste reading is a bit of a stretch. The medium is the message. Hollywood felt threatened by 9/11 in 2001 but impervious to financial disaster in 2008. Three days after Lehman Brothers went bust, DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg assured investors that movies were "recession-proof". Of course, the industry did not allow for the simultaneous erosion of the DVD market and the public's discretionary income. The Avengers has less to do with the terror of falling buildings than falling grosses. The palliative for that goes by the name 3D. Bombs away: The Avengers is 9/11 as you've never seen it!
 * J. Hoberman, ”The Avengers: why Hollywood is no longer afraid to tackle 9/11”, The Guardian, (11 May 2012).
 * So the Chitauri were Al-Qaeda? O.K., good to know. A suspicion I had during Iron Man 3 was confirmed during Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (by which we mean the movies starring Marvel comic-book characters that aren't distributed by Sony or 20th Century Fox) has decided to go back and reposition the big battle from Marvel’s The Avengers as its 9/11. On the one hand, this is a “no duh” observation—at the end of The Avengers, New York was blown to smithereens. But the tenor in which Joss Whedon shot and cut the lengthy third act sequence was so zippy and fun that it seemed as if Marvel was “taking back” the iconography of New York’s destruction, from both the terrorists and real life. The key image from Avengers is an adulatory 360-degree swoop of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes assembled in full flex before the sturdy columns of Grand Central. It is not “Falling Man.”
 * Much like the once wide-eyed Captain, I felt a little manipulated. Had I known those whiz-bang scenes from The Avengers were supposed to have more heft, I may have approached them differently as I was strapping that feed bag of popcorn to my face. I would have looked for more pathos in the Hulk flinging Loki around like a rag doll and muttering “puny God.” Perhaps it was less of a laugh line and more of a comment about fundamentalist religion’s unsuitability with liberty-loving New York. Which means I don't even want to think about that shawarma gag!
 * Jordan Hoffman, “Marvel Movies Are Bringing 9/11 Back to Pop Culture, and It’s Still Too Soon”, Vanity Fair, (April 4, 2014).


 * I don't like his other work; I think its shallow and badly written. I mean, I've got kids who like superheroes, and they think the Batman films are boring and pretentious. They like things like The Avengers and Iron Man because they're fun.
 * interview in Skript; as quoted in 'Prestige' Author Slams Christopher Nolan's 'Dark Knight' Trilogy As "Shallow" And "Badly Written", by Abid Rahman, Hollywood Reporter, (11/28/2014).


 * Q: How did you pitch “Avengers” to them in that e-mail?
 * A: I was like, I don’t know if I want to make an “Avengers” movie, so I’ll give you some ideas about where I think you might go with it. If it’s about the origin of a team that doesn’t make sense together, and they really don’t, then you have to use the “Dirty Dozen” model, which is an hour and 40 minutes of training and 20 minutes of Nazi-killing. So I laid out my ideas, the biggest one being, I think it’s a war movie. That’s the only way you can make these people feel like they might lose. You can’t just create six exact matches but slightly bigger, six Abominations – you can’t do that. What you can do is put them through so much that you get that feeling of, I don’t know what’s going to happen to them – they might not all come back from this. And I felt it even more strongly when I watched “Black Hawk Down.” I was like, O.K., that’s the movie I want to make. My first memo was 3 or 4 pages, and from that, they started to get excited about what I was saying and I started to get excited about what I was saying. I was like, Oh, this actually sounds fun. These people are broken. I can write about these people. They’re tortured and strange.


 * Q: On some level, you just want to see famous actors playing these characters you’ve so dearly for so long.
 * A: You want to see Captain America and Tony Stark not like each other, articulately. Writing them was where I started. They represent two polar opposites and I’m basically Tony and I wish I was Steve [Rogers, Cap’s alter ego]. I believe everything that Steve says, but at the end of the day, I’m more like Tony, without the brilliance and the billions.
 * Joss Whedon, "Joss Whedon on Assembling ‘The Avengers’" by Dave Itzkoff, The New York Times ArtsBeat, (April 11, 2012).


 * Q: We saw a lot of art before, but is there one sequence that you’re really proud of or really excited to work on?
 * A: I’m not sure there’s any one particular sequence that I would say, “Well yeah, nailed that!” For me, honestly my favorite moments are the scenes where I have two of the characters, where I get to pair up two characters you might not expect to see together, and see them go at each other. Whether they are getting along or not, there’s always friction.  And those scenes are probably not why everybody might rush to the theater, but they are the most fun when you really get to explore it with the actors and the space. That’s the stuff that I feel the proudest about. The action is not small and some of the gags we’ve come up with are enormous and delightful and I’m proud of them and excited by them, because I like to live in that world too.  But when you are in those quieter moments, that’s when I am just in heaven.


 * Q: I would think Bruce Banner and The Hulk is the toughest part, because we have scene two other movies with two other actors playing him. Chris [Hemsworth], Chris [Evans], and Robert [Downey Jr.] have already been playing the characters. We know their characters. How have you been working on that and trying to develop your own Bruce Banner with Mark?
 * A: Well I had a very clear conception of what I wanted Bruce Banner to be and part of that was Mark Ruffalo. I was like, “I want somebody who just opens himself to an audience, who can’t help it, and who just takes you along everywhere he goes.” The other was Bill Bixby. That’s something that Mark and I both talked about. I felt that the performances in the other movies were very internal. And the movies themselves led to that, because they were all about Bruce Banner. The TV show was, “I have a problem and I help other people and I live with that problem.” So that’s sort of the way I wanted to approach it and the way… Mark and I spent a lot of time at the very beginning talking about rage, how it feels, how it manifests, what causes it, what it feels like afterwards—the nuts and bolts of the emotion itself. But in terms of the character, it was very clear that we wanted to have somebody who had gotten past where he was in those movies, so that when you meet him he is somebody who has internalized what went on in those movies to the extent that he’s someone you like and are interested in. If you’ve seen those movies, this would be a natural next step. If you haven’t, you’ll get the guy. You’ll get why he’s a good guy.
 * Q: How much of that polish was you prepping for The Avengers and specifically the Steve Rogers character? Were you building something in there that was going to lead into this?
 * A: I didn’t like sneak any particular Avengers easter eggs in. But I did spend a lot of time with the character, which for me was important, because Steve’s perspective in this world is very much, as much as anybody’s if not more, the audience’s. He is looking at this world with fresh eyes and he is not impressed. His feeling of disconnection is something that’s going to be laced throughout the film. It’s a film about lonely people, because I’m making it, and my pony only does one trick. He’s a classic man out of time in the very literal sense and so to have worked on his 40s incarnation, even a little bit, was a nice introduction to this and kept be grounded in his perspective.
 * Joss Whedon in "Director Joss Whedon THE AVENGERS Set Visit Interview" by Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub, Collider, April 2, 2012

Cast

 * Robert Downey, Jr. – Tony Stark / Iron Man
 * Chris Evans – Steve Rogers / Captain America
 * Mark Ruffalo – Dr. Bruce Banner / Hulk
 * Chris Hemsworth – Thor
 * Scarlett Johansson – Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow
 * Jeremy Renner – Clint Barton / Hawkeye
 * Tom Hiddleston – Loki
 * Clark Gregg – Phil Coulson
 * Cobie Smulders – Maria Hill
 * Samuel L. Jackson – Nick Fury