Big budget films (and TV series) can spend an incredible amount of effort and money on detail that most people won't notice or appreciate (or sometimes even makes it into the final cut). Of course, as you say, they can do dumb stuff too.

Which, depending upon your perspective, is an attention to detail that makes the film better even if most people don't consciously notice it or it's a symptom of why studio films can be astonishingly expensive to make.

I have a friend who does graphic and video design. He gets jobs occasionally (via several layers of subcontracting) for "alien operating system and interface video" and the like, which have appeared in a few movies. He showed me the brief for one once, and it was pretty interesting. A while different kind of design work than what I'm used to seeing.

I remember post credits narration of a 1990s Dorling Kindersly video about a black car morph into an insect (both beetle) and she said this took 3 weeks just for a 3 second animation.

It's not crazy: You've just summarised filmmaking.

Costumes, sets, special effects, props, etc. all are like that. Specialised and skilled people spending a lot of time and effort for things that may or may not get a lot of screen time.

But even a short screen time can be very important for the film and have a lasting effect. Example: That very program.

Wasn't it an Atari Portfolio? If memory serves, it had a mostly functional MS-DOS, so writing a program for it was likely not an arduous task. That being said, rewatching those scenes, it was a striking little device for its day and ahead of its time.