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The real reason why movies are so boring and lifeless now is way more depressing than you think. Movies used to have a whole vibe and quality to them That's all but disappeared. Movies prior to say, uh, uh, 2015 or so just felt more real and lived in. And modern mainstream movies tend to have this lifeless, artificial feeling. But why? One of the main reasons is because of one cost saving measure that all movie studios started doing in the late 2010, and it's that they removed day players and bit parts from movies almost completely. One of the big ways that movies were able to feel like they had living, 
[0:32]
breathing worlds with texture was with these small walk on roles where a character would have one or two scenes or even lines with the main character that was compelling in some way. Like the swordsman who challenges Indiana Jones to a duel in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but then Indy just shoots him. It provides comedic relief, it breaks up the action, and it informs a lot about Indiana Jones's character. Or what about Groundhog Day? That movie is made up almost entirely of day players. And there are literally dozens of scenes of Bill Murray having a brief and hilarious interaction with a series of bit characters. 
[1:05]
There's chris farley's bouncer character from wayne's world, or the gas station owner that anton sigur does the coin flip game with. Or one of my personal Favourites vincent d'onofrio's mechanic character from adventures in babysitting. But here's what happened. So there's actually a huge difference between a speaking role and a non speaking role in a film. SAG AFTRA classifies any character that's being directed to say lines in a movie as a principal actor or a co star. And with that, they have to be paid a principal actor minimum wage and are also possibly entitled to health insurance, 
[1:36]
a dedicated makeup artist, etcetera. Movie studios used to be more than willing to pay principal wages for day players. But in the late 2010s, with the rise of streaming and particularly in the 2020s, shrinking margins and an increased desire for profit have basically killed the day player entirely. They just don't put fun, interesting bit parts in movies anymore. For example, Grey's Anatomy actress Jordana Oberman said in an interview that after 2020, the show started drastically decreasing its number of day players and started shifting towards stories focusing on the main cast 
[2:07]
rather than the hospital patients. And in my personal experience as a working screenwriter in the late 2010s, I had several writing projects where the production company explicitly gave instructions to only write four to five principal actors and no additional speaking roles. And does that sound like enough characters to make an interesting movie to you? This is LED to a lot of mainstream movies and TV Shows just having this empty, lifeless feel. Like, notice how in the First season of Stranger Things, there were a lot of these cool side characters that would just pop up for a scene or two. And they gave this authentic feeling that you were actually in the 1980s. 
[2:41]
As opposed to season 5 of stranger things, where it just feels like the main characters are in a void of nothingness and all the other characters are just kind of like silent drones in the background. And it's because movie studios just simply don't wanna pay for additional actors to help sell the authenticity of the world.