When coming to write about the latest entry in the Marvel Universe’s magic box of tricks, known of course as Avengers: Age of Ultron, I got a bit stuck. Rather than bounding out of the box with utterings of an entertaining, thoughtful post about the one billion plus money making film with the lovable cast we last saw all together in the first Avengers, I actually sat down at the keyboard and drew a massive blank. In fact, it was more akin to dribbling a little bit and making an errrrrr noise.

Which in itself may also perhaps be one way to describe the film. Another is; it fills the time with an episode before we see the much bigger saga unfold.

Now given this is the internet where people are destroyed by the masses by daring to do something different or well, anything really, let me get a small chance to explain what I’m talking about before you kill me anyway.

First of all, what happens? Well, in the country of insert eastern European sounding name here, we begin with the lovely heroes raiding a Hydra outpost led by Baron “Bloke from the end of Captain America: The Winter Solder”, who we know had been experimenting on humans using the sceptre that Loki had before he was defeated all that time ago.

So far so good and the team succeed while getting a glimpse of the two “not-mutants because of the deal Marvel and Fox did with X-Men” that we saw again from the end of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. It’s Loki’s stick of destiny which all the problems stem from, when Tony Stark (again happily played by Robert Downey Jr. who is clearly just having fun with the role at this point) apparently wants to use it to make an artificial intelligence for some form of global defence thing.

Bruce helps him with this despite saying it’s bad probably. They all bugger off for a party with the cast of all the Marvel films and oh dear, it’s appears in the meantime, an AI is indeed born and is greeted by Jarvis, Stark’s own computer happy helper.

We then hear James Spader’s voice as Ultron for the first time which seems confused and disorientated to begin with, whose first act is to download the internet. He decides to kill everyone after this, though my guess for why is perhaps stemming to the filth he found on RedTube more than anything else.

And so, he proceeds down this path of destruction, aided by the two “not-mutants” we saw glimpses of before, QuickSilver (somehow he appears due to fudges with the aforementioned X-Men deal with Fox) and the Scarlet Witch, who have a beef with Tony Stark because his weapons blew up their stuff (or and family, I actually can’t remember…).

But they learn Ultron is going to do naughty against humanity at some point and then they will seek to help the Avengers too when Ultron reveals his end game on how the world is going to end. Surely then the stage is set for a wonderful couple of hours where we see heroes kick ass and save us all? Well, sort of.

I have to remark on the confusion I felt with parts of the film; Let’s start with Ultron himself as a bad guy. With Loki coming into threaten the entire world in order to get revenge for what happened to him, you knew what his motivations were. With Ultron, it seems he just came into being, and decides; “F**k it, may as well kill everyone, then there will be peace.” Really?

At least James Spader’s gets off some silly one liners which are funny but even then they just seems oddly out of place given what he is supposed to be, again confusing. It also must be said that In a ridiculous sort of way, Ultron may be one of the most disposable bad guys Marvel has thrown at us to date, which is really at odds with how you see the build up during trailers. He was just there to fill time before we get the real bad guys later in other Marvel films.

The other amount of confusion realistically came to both Thor and Nick Fury. With Nick, how he just magically manages to get one of the flying aircraft carrier things which you would have thought all would have been destroyed during the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier to appear just in time to save people. Oh and they just so happen to have a brand new base too, it’s like what happened in previous Marvel films didn’t matter.

Those two moments made myself feel like “what the f**k” which really took you out of proceedings for a few moments and just served to be a “Oh look, we just needed something like this in the nick of time” device.

Thor had a vision and then wandered off for a bit to swim in some water where he had it again somehow. Err…ok? Hang on, was this just a bad attempt of setting something up for Thor 3?

Granted coming back to writing about the film weeks after seeing it at the cinema with everyone else will not help matters, but whereas we had the wonderful stand-off between Iron Man, Thor and Captain America, to The wonderfully played villain Loki to content with, to the loss of Phil Coulson before he got better for the first Episode of Agents of Shield. When it comes to Avengers: Age of Ultron, it took an internet search to remind me what had actually happened a lot of the time, save for one thing. But the feeling that this was just filling a gap before we see further films has not gone away.

But that’s certainly not to say that the film is a utter steaming pile of stuff which fell out of a dog’s bottom, no no no. Marvel will still take my money at a moment’s notice when this is out on Blu-Ray further down the line. What Avengers: Age of Ultron does best is a lot of wonderful set-pieces of action, character interactions which was what made the first Avengers film so good, and the love angle between Bruce Banner and Black Widow being well, kind of a new twist on office relationships you could argue!

But hang on Bruce, aren’t you forgetting about that other lady you love, Betty? Where was she then? Oooh, he’s being a naughty hulk, ladies, you won’t like him when he’s angry, but you’ll love him when he’s horny! Woof.

The comedy factor of Marvel remains present with the on-going joke with everyone taking the p*ss out of Captain America when he was calling people out when they use bad language was a very nice touch, and the fight scene with “Mega” Iron Man vs. the Hulk out of his mind with fear, just wonderful to see.

But would I recommend anyone seeing this who of course has taken the time to know what’s happened so far?

Well in order to tide you over till Ant-Man which will be the next Marvel film to hit the screens which looks like it’s making the most of such a stupid premise and will probably make Marvel / Disney another billion or so, yes. If only to get the tiny bits of continuity required for when the next phase of Marvel’s planed cinematic world domination continues.

But this is ultimately just a filler film for us to see until someone else takes on the mantle of actually progressing the overall story forward. It was sadly a very well produced burp of a film, in kind of the same way that Thor: The Dark World was too and in some ways, perhaps wasted what they could have done with those heroes, some of whom, the actors contracts are up after another film and then they will be free to wander off then and thus we don’t see them any more.

Change the villain, make the story actually make sense as far as comic book plots go and maybe they would be back onto a winner. Oh, who am I kidding? They’ve already got my money for whatever they make next!