Greentext

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.

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

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.

I feel like they make movies to appease the hot take internet culture. If a few people don't understand how a guy with magic powers in a room full of cloning tanks could be brought back from the dead, you end up with endless "Somehow Palpatine returned" memes and it becomes a whole thing. So they've compensated (maybe over-compensated) and make sure every detail is explained fully to avoid that kind of reaction. They also have to make sure they make jokes about something being corny before people on the internet make the lame jokes.

Rise of Skywalker was probably the last popcorn movie where there was a lot of "show don't tell" going on and pretty much all of the commentary about it on the internet indicates people think it's wrong to do that. To be sure there were other problems with that movie, but people got very fixated on criticizing the decision made to not over-explain.

Somehow... movies have to explain every little detail now.

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.

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

Turned into a typical war film/book from what I recall. Little interest to me.

What? I'm honestly doubting you ever read Tolkien at all.

Your memory is wrong and your username is ostentatious. No-one needs more than four pant.

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.