For much of its running time, Avatar: The Way of Water resembles nothing so much as one of those screensavers from the early 2000s that turned your computer monitor into a simulated aquarium. Remember? Fish floated by, there were some bubbles, it was very colorful and completely unrealistic. Soothing, though.
For a solid hour of The Way of Waterโitโs the movieโs second in a complete running time of 3 hours and 10 minutesโwe are treated to tall blue and green cartoon characters swimming and diving and riding on the backs of alien seahorses and having sign-language conversations with whale-like creatures. Itโs like a nature documentary, only thereโs no actual nature, just the worldโs most unimaginably expensive computer-generated imagery blended with live-action performances...