I say it feels like Barry Lyndon because that film was acclaimed for filming with literal candle light. With the equipment of the time, this was quite a technical achievement.

Great, but who cares?

If you're making a technical achievement, super, but the story still has to pass. The underwater motion capture is the candle light.

I'm a big fan of Cameron and always marveled that I could pick a random scene from his movies and be entertained.

This one: no. It feels like a tired retread and nearly the same plot as the first one.

In a broader sense, there are way too many characters for a 7 hour movie. The rivalry between the teens should have been cut to the bone.

The Spider/Quarrich story was really the most interesting angle here, yet it seemed to be cut to nothing.

I always have admired Cameron vs Lucas because it always seemed he was striving to make new great stuff. If it were Lucas, we would have no new movies after the Terminators. Lucas would have remastered the original Terminator to get rid of the painful stop motion.

This one... I'm no filmmaker, but it feels like we should get back to fundamentals.