What an insult to the artform that cinema has devolved into something so brutish, so ungainly, so irredeemably shallow? With eight eyes on the franchise, Marvel swings into its latest cacophonous crowd-pleaser, a melee of the most pristine cinematic filth you can find, trussed up to pass as entertainment. In Marc Webb's overlit, wide-eyed, drug-addled superhero world, there's undeniably a degree of unpretentious fun to be had, in escaping to a comic-book movie that's more comic-book than movie. It's pop culture turning back onto itself, a pastiche of pap, inglorious and/or uproarious. With a surplus of special effects and a scarcity of style, Webb launches full pelt into this sequel, which maintains its predecessor's featherweight frivolity whilst amping up the ante. That's a bizarre blend of flippancy and intensity, and he fails to reconcile these duelling elements. Not that he has the time to try - forget about all of the axed characters, this bloated beast is so concerned with so many people and plotlines that it has more of the feel of an expository piece than the film it follows; sure, isn't it only now that Marvel realises what it must do to enable this specific (flagging) series to survive in the current blockbuster landscape? Webb flits between these vaguely inter-connected plot threads, which keeps interest at a low but staves off clutter. However, the script's obsession with establishing both a satisfactory standalone storyline and one that will sustain it for the upcoming Spider-Man films they have planned deprives it of space to adequately develop this film's (and the former's) greatest asset - the relationship between Peter and Gwen. The chemistry between real-life couple Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone is head and shoulders above everything else on display here, yet it is given dispiritingly short shrift. As a result, this installment is reduced to what else it has been provided with: a lack of original ideas and designs, hastily painted over with brash effects work. An insult to cinema, and an insult to the audience.
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