> filmmakers have learned to make more exciting films

Filmmakers have learned how to optimize for a very specific kind of "excitement", but I disagree that movies are more exciting now than they used to be.

The most exciting and engaging movies I can think of are all pretty old.

There's a fun little fact most don't know. The typical meme is that modern movies suck, but they're being made that way to pander to "the masses." But the numbers don't support this! When you see headlines like record breaking sales, it's measured in gross revenue. When you actually look at tickets sold, movies have been dying for decades. Here are the data (US only): https://www.the-numbers.com/market/

Peak movies in terms of both tickets sold and total real revenue was 2002. Everything since then has been a rapid decline, paired with lots of inflation and ticket prices going up even faster than inflation. I'd also add that those data don't consider another aspect. Since 2002 the US population has increased by more than 45 million. Seeing ticket sales plummet alongside this is especially telling!

So, while you may personally find what passes for a movie now a days as "more engaging", even "the masses" would beg to differ!

Oddly, the rate of change seems to be a fairly consistent rate of change at around 3 frames per shot per year since 1930[1], with changes like MTV, the reduction of the role of the studio in the 60s and more creative freedom having not much change in the overall rate. Non-English films have also for some reason only had a 40% decrease in shot lengths over the same period. My hunch is that video literacy has increased as people are exposed to video with faster cuts than their parents, and we'll reach a bottom eventually. A rough comparison can be made to the word count of NYT best seller books steadily decreasing.[2]

[1]http://cutting.psych.cornell.edu/pubs/cutting&candanProj15.p...

[2]https://wordsrated.com/bestselling-books-have-never-been-sho...

They are more dumb tho, scripts and dialogues are so much simple. They rarely give you the feeling of once a lifetime seeing experience. Most of them have too much CGI and sometimes not even looking rea at all.

more exciting != better

you’re right, we are living in an era of incredible technology, and there are still plenty of good films nowadays, but you’re arguing with an imaginary figure you’ve invented. pretty much all they said was that attention spans are shorter nowadays - observably true - and that modern films cater to that - which the profit motive ensures

that isn’t “maximum cynicism” or “whinging” or even an attack on modern life

why are you jumping to such an argumentative posture? is this a debate you’ve had elsewhere that infuriated you?