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With these concerns at the forefront, Marvel Studios formulated a strategy for The Avengers movie. The character of Nick Fury would be utilized to tie the independent characters together. And Ed Norton would not be asked to return to the role of The Hulk. Even though his performance was better received than the all but forgotten work of Eric Bana, nobody liked Norton enough to deal with him again. This was important because team chemistry is an important component of The Avengers. Creating the same atmosphere behind the scenes was crucial to the ultimate fate of the project. Key to the group chemistry would be the leader behind the lens.

In Hollywood, there are few auteurs in the industry today more accomplished at handling a disparate cast of characters than Joss Whedon. The beloved director is so popular that actors from his shows constantly return to his later works. Such loyalty in Hollywood is rare. Even better, he had written a popular story arc for The Avengers comic book, providing his tremendous familiarity with the source material. While Whedon had never directed a movie that earned more than $25.5 million domestically, he was the clear choice to helm Marvel’s most important project.

Suffice to say that Whedon delivered in a manner that made even Christopher Nolan jealous. Actively running away from the current trend of darkness in comic book adaptations, Whedon crafted a delightful, family-friendly tale. The Avengers is a story of overpowered, flawed people (and demi-gods) joining together to save the world from…some sort of robotic alien thingies. Look, the details don’t matter.

What is important is that from the moment the first trailer aired, The Avengers was obviously going to be a blockbuster. The primary question was whether its popularity would match or possibly even exceed that of the Iron Man movies. This was a viable debate in early 2012 as three of the four main characters in the movie had produced respectable but modest results as titular leads. The other two, Black Widow and Hawkeye, were presumed to be supporting players whose presence would add little to the bottom line of the movie.

As always, Joss Whedon shocked us all. He delivered an even better than best case scenario product. In the process, he removed all doubts about whether The Avengers would be better than the sum of its parts. Early reviews gushed about the quality of the film. 92% of Rotten Tomatoes critics recommended it, a reception that surpassed the other summer comic book heavyweight, The Dark Knight Rises. And audiences would later laud The Avengers with the ultra-rare A+ Cinemascore.

By opening weekend, the question was no longer whether The Avengers would surpass the best Marvel opening to date, Iron Man 2. The only debate was by how much. Iron Man 2 had debuted to $128.1 million. The Avengers earned $80.8 million on its first day, the second best single day of box office in history. The single day amount also exceeded the opening weekends of both Hulk movies as well as Thor and Captain America. The Avengers was in rarefied box office air.

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