I finally saw Avatar: The Way of Water, the sequel to Avatar. It’s made almost $2 billion internationally so far. That means it’s not only on track to break even — quite an achievement considering writer-director-maniac James Cameron’s tendency to burn through immense amounts of money that could actually do some good in the world — but it’s setting all sorts of box-office records as well.

Here is my question: Why? For the love of all that is holy and cinematic, why? Why are you all going to see it? I had to go see it — in fact, I was supposed to review it ages ago, but my natural reluctance made me grateful for every possible excuse to put it off, including a deadly snowstorm that crippled the Northeast. But most of you aren’t under any kind of duress and are buying tickets willingly.

There should be a new word invented for these terrible new films that produce in the spectator an emotional combination of fury and resentment and impatience and misery as they drag on for over three hours, sucking every minute of that time. The Germans probably already have one. The literal translation in English would be something like “sickeningly long nightmare boring crap films.”