“When the universe starts to settle,” Ultron says, “God throws a stone at it.” Imagine the universe as the Marvel Cinematic Universe and “Avengers: Age of Ultron” as one of the many stones being thrown at it, except it’s bigger, louder, and more ambitious than any other stone before it. On a budget of close to $280 million dollars, along with a massive fan-base, “Age of Ultron” kicks off the 2015 summer blockbuster season with a bang.

It’s predecessor, “The Avengers,” made around $1.5 billion at the international box office, making it a smash hit worldwide. Ever since its release, fanboys have demanded a sequel that would blow the first film out of the water.

Bringing back the original cast. Check. Adding a comic book villain with a darker persona. Check. Add a cameo for every single minor character in all the past movies. Check (Still don’t know how they pulled that off.) But sadly, in the end, “Age of Ultron” ends up being a clumpy, disoriented effort to meet all of the above criteria for a sequel.

The plot, in basic terms, or as the film attempts to tell it through it’s awkward narrative, is that Ultron wants to destroy the world, and the Avengers have to stop him. And where the film goes from there is analogous to a roller coaster stopping in its tracks continuously for maintenance. Fight. Reminisce. Fight. Reminisce.

The cast has the essentials Marvel superheroes such as Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and the Hulk. New faces such as Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver (Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson) join the crowd, but neither of them stay around long enough for admiration. Acquainted minor characters such as War Machine (Don Cheadle) and Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) make sequential appearances throughout, but as always, don’t have enough screen time to actually serve a viable purpose.

And then we have our main antagonist, Ultron, the main robot baddie planning on blowing up the world, believing that this is the only way to save it. Ultron (voiced by the one and only James Spader) is a pretty exceptional and a surprisingly entertaining villain, especially when he’s singing the song “I’ve Got No Strings” from the film “Pinocchio,” while he’s controlling his robot army. He’s not as memorable as Loki from the first film, but he’s got the intimidation factor down, which Marvel should take into consideration for the future of their villains.

In general, “Age of Ultron” isn’t all that terrible, but it plants itself as the epitome of all the Marvel movies up to this point in time. This isn’t a bad thing, but at the same time, it still isn’t good. Sadly, it feels like a colossal step backwards from what Marvel had achieved in 2014. Last year, Marvel impressed audiences with “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” a film with an exciting conspiracy-oriented plot. Along with that, Marvel’s real gem was “Guardians of the Galaxy,” which took off into the stars with Star-Lord and his very own team of superhero’s who we grew to love and care for.

“Age of Ultron” feels like a Mad Libs version of “The Avengers,” with Ultron substituting Loki, and a plot progression that’s nearly identical to how the first film played out. They could’ve named it “The Avengers 2.0” and passed it off as that. Even though “Age of Ultron” is lacking when it comes to being a worthy sequel, and only stands as another addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it still has some value as a film and to the franchise as a whole.

The action sequences are some of the best in the whole series, especially when it comes down to the whole team fighting together, showing off their superhero-y powers in the last battle, which is off the wall absurd, but entertaining at the same time.

In the character realm, Hawkeye gets some personal screen time, which is surprising because he barely uttered a word in the first film. We see a more a human side to him (which I personally enjoyed) showing that the films don’t always to rely on Iron Man and Captain America to give audiences some character arcs to munch on.

Overall, “Age of Ultron” is a mix of emotions, action, and whatever Marvel had coughed up and piled together. There’s both good and bad that comes out of it, but it stands as an example of how Marvel needs to drop the bearings that they’ve been clinging on to for far too long and learn to take different paths. But if you’re in the mood for turning your brain off for 141 minutes to enjoy action-packed superhero fun, be my guest.

2.5/5 McKennas