So many movies are bad because their customer is, intellectually, the minimum common denominator. It's a miracle that movie plots don't consist entirely of grunts, chest pumping and farts, but we are getting closer and closer every year. Most block-busters have an awful lot of primal violence in them, but I bet you can't remember when was the last time any of them had any accurate, actual science.

As a film maker who studied film, the reason why so many movies are so bad are manyfold:

  - making movies is hard. A lot of things that require years to master need to go right. A *ton* of tech is involved. 
  
  - making movies is expensive. Money alone won't make you a good movie, but many productions are so on the edge that some choice they had to make for monetary reason will cause the bad. 
  
  - making movies is complex, that means making a masterful one requires multiple botched attempts and experiences by all people involved. These botched attempts are also what you see.  
  

I can't stress enough how hard making a movie is, even in comparison to complicated tech problems, programming etc.

But it’s also never been easier, cheaper, simpler. So it’s not obvious that these dynamics relate to how the middle has been hollowed out