whatever happened to downloading a mp4 torrent of the movie and watching it instantly whenever you want?
For movies that YIFY doesn't have, 1337x is a good site.
Also, I'll just note that we never got the 21st century we were promised, which was this - any movie ever made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAxtxPAUcwQ The fundamental problem is that the people who own movie IP rights are truly evil.
That is wildly overstated. The worst they can do to you is not let you watch their entertaining movie. Possibly even after you've paid for it (the subject of the OP) - and in that case the culprit isn't even the IP owner, it's the distributor! And honestly it sounds like the problem with digital ownership is simple fraud that is a) covered by existing law and b) too expensive for anyone to litigate. Maybe a class action could do it.
Here's the really interesting part - you're railing against artificial scarcity. Someone has a good that they could give away, and they aren't, and you're calling them evil for doing that, but I ask you, in all honesty, how else do you make money from movies? If you can't make money from it, how will you convince investors to fund your next movie? (Now substitute "album book software" for movie and ask the same question.)
That's not to say that IP owners can't be "evil". George Lucas believed it was his right to keep changing Star Wars over time, and it's impossible to find a legit copy of Star Wars that is the original theatrical release. That's some 1984-level memory hole bullshit and although the stakes are low, it's evil. Disney is arguably quite evil for a variety of reasons, e.g. it's unholy influence over Congress, it's unhealthy consolidation of huge chunks of the American movie market. But neither of them are evil for using artificial scarcity to profit from their work, because that's the only way to profit from data goods.
(Professional open source tries to square the circle by giving away the data goods but charging for (actually scarce) knowledge. It's a good model but cannot apply to entertainment goods, since viewers don't need scarce knowledge to enjoy a movie.)
Is it, in absolute terms, still a very important concern worth addressing at some point? Sure.
We should start addressing it now. We can work on more than one problem as a species, and moreover, we should. The big problems never stop coming, so focusing 100% of our energies on that means that the smaller problems won’t get solved.
It's a solved problem - torrent your damn entertainment. Movies are just basic files sitting in a directory. Files that can be rewatched whenever you'd like. If you are traveling, copy to your laptop. If you move and haven't quite set up your entertainment center or Internet connection, watch it on a computer. If your friend is interested in something, copy it to their USB drive. No fucking nonsense of some third party capriciously disrupting your life precisely when you're trying to relax.
Any business trying to sell me some productized solution needs to beat torrenting for ease of use. So far none of them have even attempted, because they all end up warping the user experience to appease Hollywood's delusion of control. Just say no.