I was going to say, were movies really that good in 2002?

Catch Me If You Can

Gangs of New York

The Pianist

City of God

Yes, yes they were lol. It is almost hard to believe those all came out in the same year.

Imagine in 2025 having to pick if you want to see The Pianist or City of God? It is just so unthinkable

I think there’s a lot to that. It feels both like the market shrunk in the sense that they’re competing with options which didn’t exist back then but also two other interesting changes: very expensive movies need the international market to be really profitable which limits creativity somewhat (more social norms to stay within, many topics to avoid) and also leads to uncreating safe bets. The other big change was that streaming services sucked up a lot of audience & creativity, but aren’t tracked in box office revenue and also have different goals and weird relationships with their audiences (e.g. Netflix is so quick to cancel that some people never watch an incomplete series).