I think all of the characters had development and storylines that carried on from the fallout of the previous film and left them in a better place than they were before. It's the second part of the previous film. Not sure how you can look at everything that happened and call it "spinning wheels".
The story wasn’t the best, it went on a little too long, and there was so much plot armor but damn was this fun as hell anyway. Me and my buddy saw it in 3D with that doubled frame rate, it was kinda jarring at times but most the time it felt like I was watching an impossibly high detailed video game with all the CGI going on so it was interesting to watch.