AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON (Rated PG-13)

The summer season has arrived in early May and if there is a guaranteed box office hit, both for domestic and global audiences, it’s director Joss Whedon’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” a spectacular action film impervious to the opinions of film critics.

Just three years, Marvel Studios delivered the ultimate comic-book film in “The Avengers,” tying together for a single purpose mission such awesome superhero characters as Iron Man, Captain America, The Hulk, Thor, Black Widow and Hawkeye.

An organization named S.H.I.E.L.D., headed by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), assembled these various Marvel superheroes into a shaky team to take down Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Thor’s megalomaniac adoptive brother, and to defend Earth from an alien attack.
 
This time around in the “Age of Ultron” S.H.I.E.L.D. has been dismantled and is out of the picture, though its fearless leader Nick Fury is still lurking in the shadows. He’ll show up at an opportune time, but regrettably the raving lunatic Loki is nowhere to be seen.

It may not count for much where things left off the last time, or that “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” came along after 2012’s “The Avengers.”

But there is the matter of the Avengers having to dispense with the wicked Hydra organization holed up in Eastern Europe.

With an assault on Hydra’s mountainous retreat, the Avengers encounter two new adversaries, the twins Pietro and Wanda Maximoff (Aaron-Taylor Johnson and Elizabeth Olson), known as Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch respectively, possessing the psychic powers to induce mind-altering visions for their enemies.

After an arduous battle, the Avengers take refuge in a bunker, celebrating their victory with one of the very few moments of merriment and down-time. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) amuses himself with a challenge to his heroic colleagues to lift his mighty hammer.

Romantic interludes are rare for our busy heroes, but there’s a tentative relationship developing between Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner, aka The Hulk, and Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha, aka Black Widow. The tricky part is to keep Bruce Banner’s emotions in check.

Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, proves his worth financing operations and delivering the humorous quips and barbed observations.

On the other side of the spectrum, Chris Evans’ affable Captain America gently chastises his colleagues for any off-color remarks.

The most fallible member of the team is Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton, known as Hawkeye for his sharpshooting skills with a lethal crossbow.

In the heat of battle, Hawkeye is obviously more vulnerable than his comrades, which is clear after the first skirmish in the remote forest.

The clash in the Eastern European mountains looks like a breeze in hindsight when the creation of artificial intelligence known as Ultron (voiced with eerie menace by James Spader) lets known his evil plan to bring global peace by eliminating every trace of mankind.

It was supposed to be this way. Tony Stark invested heavily to jumpstart a peacekeeping program, but recovering Loki’s powerful scepter from the clutches of Hydra yielded the surprise of an artificial intelligence in Ultron that developed an army of robot warriors.

Entering the fray against the villainous Ultron puts the Avengers crew at a significant disadvantage in the early goings, so much so that they repair to Hawkeye’s farmhouse in the Midwest to lick their wounds and regroup for the inevitable showdown with Ultron.

Along the way, a new character to help the Avengers arrives with the appearance of Vision (Paul Bettany), an artificial life form that, as far as I can tell, is an android designed by Ultron for nefarious purposes, but turned out to have a sweet soul with a soft spot for humans.

Globe-trotting adventure is the name of the game as the Avengers bounce around several continents before settling back to the climactic fight in the fictional Eastern European country of Sokovia, where the war-torn streets provide an exciting backdrop to the epic final battle scene.

The climactic action puts the Avengers in a difficult bind as the robot army seems nearly indestructible. With Tony Stark in over his head, his old pal Colonel James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) is once again ready to bring some military hardware to the fight.

Though “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” filled with great battle scenes, could benefit from more judicious editing to cut down the running time a tad, director Joss Whedon delivers the action goods that fans of this emerging franchise (two more films are in the works) are gleefully expecting.

What does it matter if, by chance, this second “Avengers,” in the mind of doubters, shines no brighter than a distant meteorite?

All of the elements of success for a superhero franchise are in plain view, and “Age of Ultron” is an action-packed juggernaut that won’t be derailed.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.