"Avatar: The Way of Water"

SPOILERS AHEAD.  Swiss Family Robinson meets Poseidon Adventure meets a documentary about the ocean meets, strangely, Avatar 1.  In this THREE HOUR AND TWELVE MINUTE film, we kind of get it all.  A massive story with a bunch of plotlines, the film ironically covers little new territory.  Tell me if any of this rings a bell:  Evil American military comes to a peaceful planet of nature-loving blue folks.  Some of the soldiers turn themselves into blue folks and battles ensue.  There is exploration of a new culture (this time we have water people instead of forest people) and a tragic loss.  The "new thing" (other than the water scenes) is the focus on a bunch of teenagers.  Okay.  But that still didn't draw me in emotionally.  I didn't feel a thing when there is a significant death.  The closest emotional reaction I had was when a beloved whale-like creature was hunted down.  To say the movie is bloated is an understatement.  I get it.  You put your actors through hell, you have hundreds of digital artists working for months and months to create a single scene, you don't want to cut a thing (film took three years to make, and yes, they shot in the water and taught the actors to increase their lung capacity).  But 20+ minutes on a whale hunt?  A "final battle" which lasts more than 45 minutes?  And here's the thing -- nothing is resolved.  Not really.  Himself, James Cameron, has two more sequels in the mix, so we can't wrap any of it up.  The bad guy, the sky people, it is just a continuous, ongoing slaughter.  Which won't end for at least three or four more years.  Enough.  I got it.  Environment good, humans bad, big bloody digitalized fights, yadda yadda yadda.  I very much want to go snorkeling right now, but that's all I got out of it.  PS -- Ironic that both "Avatar 2" and "Wakanda Forever" went for water civilizations.  "Wakanda Forever" did it SO MUCH BETTER.