Case in point: House of the Dragon. The beautiful sets and costumes are all hard to enjoy when it's all drab blue and orange. Take a look at the picture:
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/sep/15/house-o...
This happens in movie after movie after movie.
Its similar to the unimaginative western boring shit color palette that exists in Windows, Apple and Android permeating all software guis across the world.
Yep. Modern movies have become the cinematic equivalent of Corporate Memphis.
By drenching everything in one monchrome color gradient it is also easier to hide bad set design, costume and VFX. Doing a crystal clear shot with a steady camera, full color and a believeable effect is much harder to pull off (and thus: more expensive).
Technically nothing speaks against doing any other style of lighting and coloration, but then you cannot hide behind the colors and then you have to think a bit more deeply about color schemes than "blue=calm/depressive" and red/orange=aggressive/dangerous".
But Netflix is not in the business of producing motion pictures that are deep, Netflix wants to crank out as much content that people watch as possible, for the least budget possible.
The mood it imparts on me is annoyance.
those films were mostly grain.
But as other people point out, the grade of a film has been a deliberate choice for over 20 years. None of what you've seen has ever been natural. but now its a bit more obvious.
I.e. obviously worse. Much worse.