So it's cheaper and faster and movie making is a business.
Instead, CGI became a lazy way out for quick and sloppy production quality, even in established franchises from studios with deep pockets. In the first IronMan and SpiderMan movies, the heroes actually wore physical suits painstakingly made by artisans in the business. In the last Marvel movies the costumes are just lazy CGI that look like textures over a spandex suit instead of acting like physical items over a human body. Terminator 1 & 2 had practical models and they still look great.
"Oh, we don't need to finalize the real costumes and models now, just dress the actors in gray spandex with tringles, put them behind a green screen and we'll CGI everything later on before release". "It's OK, we don't need to bother having correct lighting and shadows in the studio, the CGI monkeys will just fix it in post with their computer thingies."
CGI now somehow looks worse than VFX 10-30 years ago despite the insanely better tech, everything just feels rushed with no creative direction behind it.
The Hobbit is much newer but doesn't look so great in comparison. Sure it has some amazing special effects but the cinematic footage doesn't compare as well next to the older films
But Hobbit trilogy - all the time I had feeling I'm watching it from behind some plastic screen, or perhaps an action game. It's not bad (tho the book was "spread" into 3 movies) but excessive use of CGI and post-processing is clearly visible. Hell, the An Unexpected Journey has moments where Gandalf's face is unnaturally lighten up with dodge tool - and that does give me the unpleasant feelings.
I still believe that computers in movie industry should be tools to enhance camera work, not fully replacing it. You can deliver an exciting story portrayed without overfilling it with CGI or... lens flares, bokeh effects in every scene.
1/2/3 is the worse examples as the CGI quality was particularly bad. Let's not even start about Jar Jar.
It's surprising how it makes it more immersive than perfection.
Things like the new Marvel movies leave me a bit cold because there's no sense of "how did they do that", because the answer is always going to be "green screen and Blender".
Interesting comment, because while watching Avatar Way of Water, I was constantly asking to myself "how did they do that?" Technically, the answer is of course "green screen and computers", but that's about as useful as watching a great performance in acting or sports, and saying "it's just technique and practice". No, it's that but while trying to make new things that you haven't seen before, paying attention to every detail - and in the case of Avatar, also doing that for 3 hours straight.
I think the modern Marvel movies leave me cold because of the same issues that the story for Avatar left me cold: it's all easy and digestible, executed with perfect competence but little ability or desire for surprise, subtlety or discomfort.
If you are however claiming that, on average, visual fidelity has declined in comparable product tiers, well, no. In the past a lot of folks would just not do much FX at all, because it was prohibitively expensive.
It's somewhat incorrect. We now have significantly more CGI, and most of it significantly better. See, e.g., Why C.G. Sucks (Except It Doesn't) https://youtu.be/bL6hp8BKB24
However, the over-reliance on CGI is a problem
"Toupees always look so fake. I can spot them instantly. I can't imagine why anyone wears them."
Maybe that example is less pointed now that baldness seems more socially acceptable, but the point stands: Of course you see bad CGI, in that you notice that the CGI you're intended to notice is sometimes flawed. You don't see CGI the moviemaker doesn't want you to see, CGI used to clean up shots, CGI used to replace what would have been matte shots decades ago, and whatever else CGI is used for these days. You see a scene and it registers as a scene, not a shot with some obvious CGI composited in.
Recursing, some matte shots were horrible and obvious, whereas others, like Dana Barret's apartment building in Ghostbusters, were pretty seamless.