Popular entertainment has been breezy and shallow since before the emergence of mass media; it's not a new trend. Indiana Jones was specifically inspired by th

Popular entertainment has been breezy and shallow since before the emergence of mass media; it's not a new trend. Indiana Jones was specifically inspired by the 1930s serials that Lucas grew up with, such as Buck Rogers and Zorro, which were always about set pieces strung together with minimal depth of character development. If there's a trend, it's that there is a distinct drop in "adult" films — meaning smart dramas for adults, not necessarily arthouse films — that started around the 2000s. Maybe the Indy movies were portends of this (some might say Jaws and Star Wars), but it's been a slow trajectory, and one that seems to have even accelerated by the pandemic and the emergence of streaming.