This phenomenon probably isn't helped by the average sound experience being worse than it once was. You might be watching that film on your phone's really tinny

This phenomenon probably isn't helped by the average sound experience being worse than it once was. You might be watching that film on your phone's really tinny speaker, or your TV's speakers which might as well not be there since there's no space for anything decent. Meanwhile, if you watched that film in 2001, you were probably watching it on a tube TV that did have space for a speaker that wasn't horrible. That same speaker might even be just as cheap as what would go into a 75-inch TV today, but that TV physically doesn't have the space for that speaker. No wonder a soundbar is functionally a mandatory purchase unless you scale up to actual speakers. Films definitely have worse sound mixing these days (unless they all target 7.1 Ultra-Whatever), but even with old films it can get really hard to hear what they're saying when you've got so little to work with. The whole thing though goes to show the importance of decent subtitling. Accessibility should be a good enough reason by itself, but if more than 40% of your audience uses it, then it's a lot more than just that.