It is impossible to talk about “Avatar: The Way of Water” without sounding hyperbolic. But James Cameron’s sequel is a truly dazzling cinematic experience that will have you floating on a blockbuster high.

No matter if you’ve spent a second of your life in the past 13 years thinking about what’s happening on Pandora or how Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) are getting on, assuming you remember their characters’ names. “The Way of Water” will make awe-struck believers out of even “Avatar” agnostics like me, at least for three hours and 12 minutes. The film isn’t just visually compelling, either, it’s spiritually rich as well — a simple but penetrating story about family and the natural world that is galaxies better than the first.

About that run time: Three hours and 12 minutes sounds excessive, but there is something decidedly decadent about really committing that much time to a movie in a theater. When the filmmaker is purposeful with that time, as Cameron is and many others have been before him, it’s a uniquely rewarding experience. In other words, it’s not a big ask. And you’ll forget all about checking the time from the first shot of Pandora and Jake’s earnest exposition about what’s been going on in the past decade.