Most of the characters Stan Lee co-created during Marvel Comics’ Silver Age have been adapted to cinema and television.
The Asgardian Loki encounters the Other, the leader of an extraterrestrial race known as the Chitauri. In Stuttgart, Barton steals iridium needed to stabilize the Tesseract’s power while Loki causes a distraction, leading to a brief confrontation with Rogers, Stark, and Romanoff that ends with Loki’s surrender’s flying aircraft carrier, the Helicarrier.
Tony Stark, who has inherited the defense contractor Stark Industries from his father Howard Stark, is in war-torn Afghanistan with his friend and military liaison, Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes, to demonstrate the new Jericho missile. Ten Rings leader Raza offers Stark freedom in exchange for building a Jericho missile for the group, but he and Yinsen know that Raza will not keep his word.
Twenty-three days after Thanos used the Infinity Gauntlet to disintegrate half of all life in the universe, Carol Danvers rescues Tony Stark and Nebula from deep space and returns them to Earth, where they reunite with the remaining Avengers—Bruce Banner, Steve Rogers, Thor, Natasha Romanoff, and James Rhodes—and Rocket.
At a New Year’s Eve party in 1999, Tony Stark meets scientist Maya Hansen, the inventor of an experimental regenerative treatment named Extremis that allows recovery from crippling injuries. Stark’s security chief Happy Hogan is badly injured in one such attack at the TCL Chinese Theatre, prompting Stark to boldly issue a televised threat to the Mandarin, revealing his home address in the process.
In 965 AD, Odin, king of Asgard, wages war against the Frost Giants of Jotunheim and their leader Laufey, to prevent them from conquering the nine realms, starting with Earth. The Asgardian warriors defeat the Frost Giants in Tønsberg, Norway, and seize the source of their power, the Casket of Ancient Winters.
In the Eastern European country of Sokovia, the Avengers—Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Thor, Bruce Banner, Natasha Romanoff, and Clint Barton—raid a Hydra facility commanded by Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, who has been experimenting on humans using the scepter previously wielded by Loki.
In Russia, the media covers Tony Stark’s disclosure of his identity as Iron Man. Impressed by Vanko’s performance, Stark’s rival, Justin Hammer, fakes Vanko’s death while breaking him out of prison and asks him to build a line of armored suits to upstage Stark.
On a school trip, high school senior Peter Parker visits a Columbia University genetics laboratory, where he is bitten by a genetically engineered super spider that escaped from containment and seemingly falls ill after returning home.
In a dystopian 2023, Sentinels have been programmed to identify and hunt down mutants and any humans who help them. In Moscow, a small band of X-Men survivors consisting of Kitty Pryde, Colossus, Blink, Warpath, Bishop, Iceman and Sunspot are attacked by the Sentinels, but Kitty sends Bishop’s consciousness back in time a few days to warn the others as to ensure their survival.
In 1944, in a Nazi death camp, Nazi officer Klaus Schmidt witnesses young prisoner Erik Lehnsherr bending a metal gate with his mind when he is separated from his parents. In Las Vegas, CIA officer Moira MacTaggert follows U.S. Army Colonel Hendry into the Hellfire Club, where she sees Schmidt with mutant telepath Emma Frost, teleporter Azazel, and cyclone-producing Riptide.
Thousands of years ago, five African tribes war over a meteorite containing the metal vibranium. He and Okoye, the leader of the Dora Milaje regiment, extract T’Challa’s ex-lover Nakia from an undercover assignment so she can attend his coronation ceremony with his mother Ramonda and younger sister Shuri.
In Kathmandu, the sorcerer Kaecilius and his zealots enter the secret compound Kamar-Taj and behead its librarian. They steal a few pages from an ancient, mystical text belonging to the Ancient One, a long-lived sorcerer who has taught every student at Kamar-Taj, including Kaecilius, in the mystic arts.