But probably this also means more opportunities overall, even if there isn’t as much harsh selection at the top end?
The idea older movies were better is just selection bias.
Pauline Kael said: “If you love movies you must love trash because most movies are trash” (I’m paraphrasing).
There are “golden times” when a lot of good directors and writers were allowed to make great work - often because their work was profitable - and then times where the corporate machine took over. But that’s geofenced. Hollywood was creatively strong in the 70s and oppressive in the 80s, but Honk Kong was killing it in the 1980s.
It is what it is.
People will watch 1960s French movies and praise them “How wonderful etc”, “they don’t make movies like that anymore!” but if you tell them to watch French movies of the 2020s or more famously Korean movies and TV shows a lot of people won’t budge, even though Korea is clearly the alternative powerhouse in the industry right now and the “equivalent” let’s say to the French New Wave.