THREE years after saving the Earth — and breaking a few box office records — “The Avengers” are back with a power-packed punch with their latest blockbuster adventure. The movie will open May 12 in China.

    Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Hulk and Hawkeye take on a new baddie who wants to wipe out humanity, in “Avengers: Age of Ultron.”

    Returning director Joss Whedon pits the superhero gang against their own shortcomings as they take on their ultimate enemy — but also plays with the chemistry that developed between them in their first run-out.

    The original 2012 “The Avengers” became the third-highest grossing movie in cinema history, taking over US$1.5 billion at the box office, only beaten by “Avatar” (2009) and “Titanic” (1997).

    The pressure on Whedon was therefore enormous — but the 50-year-old said he drew the most inspiration from amidst the first film’s very success, and from the interplay between the main characters.

    He looked for “what little moments are there between these characters that I haven’t gotten to do yet, what conversations they haven’t had yet, what haven’t I shown?” Whedon told reporters in Los Angeles.

    Relationships are indeed richer between Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner).

    The main thing was “to make sure that everybody had their moment, that it’s all connected to the movie, to the main thing,” said the filmmaker, who spent hundreds of hours editing the movie.

    The result is two hours of turbo-driven action, superhero fist-fights and technology at the service of a story full of surprises, which U.S. critics have already hailed as a huge hit.

    Industry journal Variety called it a “super-sized spandex soap opera that’s heavy on catastrophic action but surprisingly light on its feet, and rich in the human-scale emotion that can cut even a raging Hulk down to size.”(SD-Agencies)