Maybe not I'm every instance, but I think it's easy to assume that lower overall budgets lead to lower overall quality.
Technology has greatly reduced the cost of filming. If you look on YouTube, you'll see that tiny budgets allow for production values well above typical network television even ten years ago. TV and movies may die by the sword of technological changes, but they also get to live by it.
Lower overall budgets lead to less spectacle. Personally I'm not that interested in spectacle.
Production quality and artistic quality are not the same things.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a low budget film, for example. It's budget was about 9% of the budget of Waterworld.