Looking at the box office results of every Marvel movie makes The Avengers and how its results hold up all these years later even more impressive to me. Without the early successes of Phase 1, it’s hard to say whether the MCU timeline as we know it would have been possible. The MCU’s success relied not only on audiences connecting with Marvel heroes in their own debut appearances, but also on their engagement with stories that brought these characters together, mirroring the comics in a way that had been seen on-screen before, but arguably never quite in the same way.
With tens of releases to the MCU’s name – and tens of billions in terms of box office results – the franchise’s early risks have clearly paid off when looking back at things now. However, it’s still sometimes easy to lose sight of just how major some of these early successes were, and how important they came to be in terms of helping the MCU decide its trajectory going forward. Given the staggering results of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, this can sometimes be the case with the series’ first Avengers movie, despite its own success.
The Avengers Is The Movie That Really Defined What The MCU Was Capable Of In Terms Of Its Story & Its Success
While Iron Man is the movie that kicked off the MCU and made what came afterward possible, The Avengers was vital in terms of establishing that the more ambitious aspects of the franchise could work, and that having solo hero movies lead into crossover team films could pay serious dividends when it came to both critical and box office results. After establishing Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor with their own separate releases, The Avengers brought them and the rest of the original MCU team roster together, with the group quickly coming to define the MCU for many fans.
The positive reception of The Avengers also established the format that the series would follow for much of its runtime, with the more disparate releases being connected via these ensemble installments and their ability to bring several different major heroes together. With the combined star power and character roster that only these ensemble movies could provide, every Avengers movie has ended up with a generous box office result thus far, as each release in the series has earned itself over $1 billion in its cinematic release alone.
However, it’s the original film that holds up in some ways perhaps the most impressively against the tests of time, since its results are now over a decade old. With a huge number of newer releases having come out in the time since then, The Avengers‘ box office is all the more historied, and its place in the rankings of Marvel’s respective box office results all the more significant.
The Avengers’ Box Office Is Still In the MCU’s Top 5 To This Day
As a movie that in many ways pushed the boundaries of what a superhero movie could be and brought one of Marvel’s biggest hero teams to life, it’s not surprising that The Avengers did well for itself. In the end, The Avengers‘ worldwide box office earnings came in at $1.5 billion (via The Numbers and Box Office Mojo), which made the 2012 release the first MCU movie to net over a billion dollars in terms of its box office takings, though Iron Man 3 would follow this up in the next year.
This $1.5 billion result places The Avengers‘ box office above over almost 30 MCU films, and the vast majority of Marvel’s movie catalog, including every Fox X-Men movie, every Sony Spider-Man Universe movie, and every Spider-Man movie bar Spider-Man: No Way Home (The Numbers). With that said, Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s $1.9 billion box office results make it one of only three MCU movies to best The Avengers‘ worldwide box office earnings.
Given the other two movies to have achieved this are Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame – which is to this day one of the highest-grossing movies of all time – the fact that only these three releases bested The Avengers at the box office really underlines just how successful the film was in the first place. Indeed, the years following The Avengers‘ debut have served to only continually cement its status as one of the most important superhero movies of all time, and one of the most financially lucrative even when looking back some considerable time later.
Seeing How The Avengers’ Box Office Compares To Newer Marvel Movies Makes It Look Even More Impressive
Looking at Marvel’s movie timeline only reinforces how notable the box office success of The Avengers really was. After The Avengers‘ release, it took 6 years before its worldwide box office results were beaten – and even then, it took Avengers: Infinity War and its universe-changing Snap to break this record, with Avengers: Endgame and its climactic conclusion to the Infinity Saga then beating these heights, and Spider-Man: No Way Home calling on both previous versions of Spider-Man and a range of prior Spider-Man movie villains to also rise above this margin in 2021.
However, this also means that it’s been 4 years since an MCU movie made more than The Avengers, despite the film having been released for now over a decade, and inflation logistically making its box office results slightly easier to achieve. Even wilder still, the biggest recent MCU success in the years and 8 films to have released since Spider-Man: No Way Home – that of ᴅᴇᴀᴅpool & Wolverine, which earned itself a healthy $1.3 billion (The Numbers) – still earned around $177 million less than The Avengers, despite being such a mᴀssive and celebrated movie in its own right.
The fact that only 3 movies in 13 years have risen above The Avengers‘ worldwide box office is impressive without any further context, but the fact that these 13 years have featured the release of around 40 Marvel Studios movies really drives home that it was an event that defined both the MCU and the wider superhero genre ever since its release. While there’s plenty of reason to hope future MCU movies can at least match The Avengers‘ success, it’s safe to say that the film’s results emphasize why it was so important for Marvel and the MCU.
Upcoming MCU Movies
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Thunderbolts*
- Release Date
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May 2, 2025
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The Fantastic Four: First Steps
- Release Date
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July 25, 2025
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Avengers: Doomsday (2026)
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Spider-Man: Brand New Day
- Release Date
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July 31, 2026
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Avengers: Secret Wars
- Release Date
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May 7, 2027
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