What year did the first 'Avengers' film release?

What year did the first “Avengers” film release? The answer is 2012. Marvel’s The Avengers premiered in Los Angeles on April 11, 2012, and was released theatrically in the United States on May 4, 2012, as the concluding film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase One.

Directed and co-written by Joss Whedon, the film brought together heroes introduced in earlier Marvel movies: Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, and Hawkeye. Their first shared mission was to stop Loki, who used the Tesseract to help launch an invasion of Earth by the Chitauri.

The movie was a major crossover event because its story depended on several separate franchises, including Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America. It also established the team dynamic that shaped later MCU films, with disagreements between heroes eventually giving way to coordinated action.

A frequent confusion comes from later Avengers titles. Avengers: Age of Ultron was released in 2015, while Avengers: Infinity War arrived in 2018 and Avengers: Endgame in 2019. The first film is commonly called The Avengers or Marvel’s The Avengers, and its U.S. release year is unambiguously 2012.