You usually don’t go to watch a superhero movie such as Avengers: Age of Ultron with expectations of a great score, art-house direction, or even intelligent dialogue. On the contrary, you watch these movies simply to enjoy some action, and perhaps the visual effects. And unless you’re one to buy into the Marvel universe, you recognise them for what they’re supposed to be: fun, mindless, popcorn movies. But second time round, even that isn’t the case. While the first part of the Avengers was an entertaining watch, Age of Ultron was bland, tiresome to sit through — basically an overall snooze-fest.

The opening scene of the movie might be the best in terms of action and the way it’s filmed, when the entire gang of do-gooders are fighting off the bad guys in a stunning forest somewhere in Europe. Other scenes of the movie don’t quite hit the mark, such as the unnecessary fighting scene between the ever-broody Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and the irritatingly arrogant Iron Man (played by handsome Robert Downey Jr), which just causes complete and utter destruction — for nothing. We know they’ll reconcile soon after, and maybe the fight was a method to knock sense into each other, but really they should have used up all that energy fighting off the movie’s boring, robotic villain: Ultron.

The visuals for the fight sequence between them was as impressive as it can get for a mindless, 3D movie. The CGI was of course up to par, as it should be. It’s a 3D film after all, and that is seriously all this movie had going for it — but that too, only to a certain degree.

The audience is introduced to quite a few new characters, two of which are Quicksilver — a two-toned blonde-haired boy who moves faster than wind, and Scarlet Witch — a greasy-haired (she could give Professor Snape a run for his money with those locks) girl who has the power to mess with one’s mind to a point of complete and utter paranoia. The pair are siblings who turn from bad to good, reducing the chance of a potentially interesting threat to the Avengers. They initially support Ultron, until they realise his plan of action is to make the human race extinct. Cobie Smulders, who plays agent Maria, describes each as: “He’s fast, she’s weird.”

And of course all such movies have the cheesiest dialogue and cringe-worthy “jokes” in between fight sequences. The love story, which lacked any sort of chemistry — whether it was the lifeless, unconvincing flirtation or the kiss – between Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and The Hulk, had ridiculous dialogue about the two wanting to “disappear” to which one would think, “Just disappear already, please.” And there was the banter of Captain America’s usage of the word “shit” in the opening scene, which later became a painful running joke between The Avengers throughout the movie.

Ultron himself is quite dreary, and doesn’t seem too threatening. Neither does his army of evil robots. Maybe if he had the twisted siblings on his side he’d have had a more foreboding presence.

Confusing, bland, overkill, Ultron is not a fun movie to watch.