As the year slowly winds to a close, now it as good as any time to reflect on some of our very favorite scenes, stunts, and effects from the best films of the year, and few projects had quite as many memorable scenes, stunts, and effects as Joss Whedon‘s The Avengers.The Marvel-made universe of The Avengers was so jaw-droppingly rendered that’s not surprising that audiences just sort of wholesale accepted much of what was on screen, getting caught up in the action instead of wondering how the heck they did that. Until now!

Industrial Light & Magic has shared a new video (via ComingSoon) that breaks down some of the challenges of the film’s epic final battle and how they crafted them with their magic and/or light. As ILM tells it, the film “posed many visual effects challenges, [and] one of the larger challenges was pulling together the ‘tie-in’ shot during the third act of the film. Rather than frames, this single shot is measured in minutes on screen and is one of the longest effects shots in the film. It incorporates both practical special effects and extensive digital visual effects by ILM. The New York City environment that serves as the setting for this shot (and virtually the entire alien invasion) is computer generated by the visual effects team at ILM.” Check it out after the break!

The Avengers sequel will arrive on May 10, 2015. [Industrial Light & Magic, via ComingSoon]