You don’t need to have super powers to know that Marvel have been struggling at the box office ever since 2019’s Avengers: End Game.

The franchise has lost its way without its core superhero team, with subsequent films not matching expectation and underperforming.

No one knows this more than MCU overseer Kevin Feige, which is why we’ll be seeing the Avengers back on our screens once again, in the not too distant future.

In the meantime they released this Band-Aid in an attempt to slow the bleeding out of Marvel, with the creation of yet another superhero team.

Out in the field doing a sensitive job for Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh). After completing the mission she informs Fontaine she’s had enough, as she’s still processing the death of her sister Natasha, and she wants a different position. Fontaine tells her that if she does one more job for her, it’s a deal, and Yelena agrees.

It finds her at a secret base where her target should be, but she soon discovers that she’s not the only one there; she is joined by alternative Captain America John Walker (Wyatt Russell) and Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen) AKA Ghost. Oh and a guy called Bob (Lewis Pullman), whose memory is a bit sketchy and he’s not sure why he’s at the facility.

When the base soon comes under lockdown, it all dawns on them that Fontaine sent them all there, with the hope that none of them leave alive.

They manage to escape, and sharing a common enemy – Fontaine. With the addition of Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) AKA the Winter Soldier, and Yelena’s Dad Alexei (David Harbour) AKA Red Guardian, they find themselves a bunch of misfit heroes working together to take down not only Fontaine, but also a mysterious super-powered foe she has created.

This is only the third film that Jake Schreier has directed – with his first being the superb 2012 debut Robot & Frank and 2015’s Paper Towns, continuing Marvel’s bizarre selection process to direct these huge productions. To his credit the US director does well, certainly visually, and the performances are adequate at best.

And although it was greeted fairly warmly at the box office, with audiences obviously drawn by the appeal of a watching a superhero team once again, the script is underwhelming.

It’s not just the fact that The Avengers is a group of superheroes coming together, it’s the sharp and sparky interaction between them that holds the film together. And it’s that personality that just goes AWOL in this one that makes it a little on the flat side.

The action is OK, if somewhat formulaic, and the fact it sees heroes back on the streets of New York once again is a disappointment too, but the bland dialogue really relegates this new superhero team formation to a sub B performance overall.

It will tide us over - just – until next year’s Avengers: Doomsday, but Marvel really need to work on putting the ‘Super’ back into their superhero flicks, and fast.