This is the IMDB top 250 list, which I take as a reference for "best of all times" movies. 30 of them are from this decade. Some of them may drop off (there is a slight bias towards recent movies), so let's keep 25 of them, so 1/10, the list is over 100 years, so we are about average.
Not many in the top spots though, the best being Parasite (2019), #33, which I expect to stay high, and Dune: part 2 (2024) at #35, but I expect it to drop a bit as it is a current year movie.
Anyways, it is neither a particularly good nor a particularly bad time for movies.
Provide reliable evidence of your own, then. What objective measures are you using, other than your own personal taste? What quantifiable data can you provide to back up your claim that great films are no longer being made?
And how does your definition of greatness apparently presuppose widespread impact, but somehow presumably exclude any modern films that have demonstrably widespread impact?
>Money--overall monetary takes are down across the board.
If this is the case across the board, it can't be an indicator of decreasing quality. It's more likely that with the internet and streaming, box office revenues simply matter less than they once did. Everyone is competing with streaming and the internet, no one wants to go to a theater anymore.
Same with music. No one cares about Billboard anymore now that everything is on Soundcloud and Spotify, and no matter how niche someone's tastes are, there's probably an entire ecosystem of content for it. I recently found out dungeon synth was a thing.
>Innovation--its documented that everything is now IP sequels and the number of original things is way down.
Where is it documented? Show me the documentation. I doubt that if you combined all movies releasing this year in theaters, and everything on every streaming service, that even half would be sequels.
>Impact--which artists and decades were playing at the last wedding you went to? Yeah, thought so.
What's your thesis here? That no modern music is ever played at weddings? That music played at weddings is an objective measure of artistic quality and cultural impact? Why even bother asking this question if you're going to answer on my behalf?
But as far as impact goes, again, it's simply impossible for any music to have the same impact in the internet age as it did pre-internet. That isn't an indicator of quality going down, it's an indicator of the scope of available media becoming so broad and diffuse that no one thing, regardless of quality, can capture the market like it did when pop culture was more centralized.
On all three, I'd like to point out that I covered these in my original post. You expect to look at box office takes, source your media from large studios, and go to weddings between boring people.
Are there? People parrot this over and over but rarely provide any reliable evidence.
Even if there is interesting stuff being done, if it has no impact past three people then it is by definition not "great".
By most measures I can think of, there are NOT lots of "great" things being made.