Greentext

I feel like Dune was a good outlier to this. It's the only movie I've seen in theater in the last few years and I really enjoyed not having everything explained to me

One thing I've noticed with newer movies is they do a lot more "tell, don't show" than old movies.

Main character seeing old friend: Well if it isn't my old friend Daniel, we used to roam these streets as kids, I used to have dinner at your house every day, you were like my brother, I would have done anything for you, I haven't seen you since our other old friend Jake died mysteriously, remember when we used to play videogames all night and made that life long pact that if "HE" returns we will do what it takes to send him back to the world where he emerged from when we were kids and lived right next door to each other, our mothers were best friends until the incident but they never stopped us from being life long best friends forever, we used to play in the streets all night, me you Daniel and Chris, the rat Pac they called us, best friends for life.

they do a lot more “tell, don’t show” than old movies

Geez the Netflix Avatar adaptation (a show, not movie, but still) was so bad for this. Despite actually having more runtime and fewer distinct plot points (due to the removal of and consolidation of different side-plots) than the cartoon it was based on, it spent less time showing us why characters think and feel how they do, and straight-up told us every single thing.

Idk about "ample budget". I was watching the director's commentary on the Two Towers and he mentions one week where the studio was trying to decide whether to green light money for the film and Peter Jackson knew that he had nothing to say that would convince them, in fact he thought it would dissuade them because they wouldn't see the benefit on the way he was spending the money. So he went out to a remote location to do the filming for several days intentionally to avoid their phone calls lol. I think that was when they were filming the battle for Helm's Deep. Apparently it worked because after he had the footage from that week to show them, they decided it was good enough to justify the price.

Is a movie that came out 23 years ago still modern?

I mean it was filmed 25 years ago, I guess it depends on your definition of 'modern'

This is an answer I'm not seeing here enough. The score for LotR just FORCES you to feel the feelings. Don't wanna be happy? Too bad, we're in the Shire bitch.

Just for the first one, right? I remember Ian Mckellen had a breakdown on set because he was sitting in front of the table at Bag End with nothing around him but green screen and was struggling without any other actors.

And good acting.