While cinematography isn't the whole answer, I think it's a big contributor to why so much feels aggressively middling these days.
Modern shows are aggressively aesthetic. There's huge overuse shallow depth of field, resulting in blurry backgrounds. Watch modern movies with this mind, and you start noticing the reliance on a sharp foreground and blurry background is extreme to the point of bizarre. Cinematography should be a tool to achieve an effect; blurring the background to intentionally make the subject stand out is a purposeful use of that tool, but is being applied everywhere now, with no intent behind it, even if it's "aesthetic".
I would also argue that it's easier with digital photography to create blandly attractive, "painterly" images, thanks to colour grading and increased dynamic range and so on. A lot of shows these days have technically competent photography, but it all converges on the same aesthetic — tons of diffuse, lush lighting (often achieved with filling the space with lightly cinematic fog) and impeccable set design, and that creamy depth of field. But there's no contrast anywhere, it's just creamy "aesthetic" blandness in forgettable environs.
Another non-visual aspect rarely mentioned is audio: Almost all TV/movie audio these days is foley, and it's sometimes jarringly bad when you start to actually pay attention to, say, the sound of footsteps or keys jangling. High quality productions can be very good here, but most productions don't spend enough time on it. Bad foley has a very strange, subliminal effect on a scene, further undermining the sense of reality.
In such environments (visual and aural), nothing seems real and nothing seems like it matters. Everything, even nominally "adult" shows set in the real world, feels like Midde Earth and not Planet Earth.
It's not all bad, of course. There are also definitely cases where the quality of the show transcends the mediocrity of the cinematography. We are still getting good shows and bad shows, like always. But it does seem like things have shifted into a sort of middle where everything is average in the same average way.
Bad audio and bad foley doesn't get mentioned enough. I think it's why people are watching things with subtitles: the actors are on a blue stage that is completely silent having a quiet conversation and then the war happening around them gets added later. In noisy environments people slow down and enunciate and directors aren't helping actors know what to do.
Ideas on how to fix it:
• actors should wear tiny headphones behind their ears (or wherever is not visible) to make noise that approximates the environment they will be shown in. They'll have to act over it.
• Foley artists should not be given video of the final scene to foley. They should be given only one single continuous very wide shot. This will solve the problem where foley artists keep doing ludicrous things like adding the sound of a pin dropping and hitting the ground (since it's shown on screen) in the context of a space ship that is in the process of exploding.
I've ranted about this so much to friends, it's so distracting to me.
I have the hypothesis that some of it is due to how easy (or easier?) it is to quickly review footage to tell if the focus is set right when it's so aggressively shallow, but regardless of the "why" the monotony of it drives me crazy.
I want to see the environments the characters are in, I want the visceral grounding of the feel of that environment. I watched "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" and it felt so primal, and watching how intentional the sound design alone is I can see why.
> In such environments (visual and aural), nothing seems real and nothing seems like it matters.
That's a great description about the strange disembodiment I've felt in modern shows for a while now.
No, I'm pretty sure it's literally fog, some kind of aerosoled mineral oil.
Here is an example: https://imgur.com/a/gdemKM3. Notice the hazy background. The still is from this video [1] at 00:22, coincidentally also a good video about cinematic realism.
Here [2] is a video about lighting that shows adding haze.
Some cinematographers certainly use blooming filters, too. I noticed that Spielberg had a period with tons of bloom, though I don't know if those were filters or just a certain kind of lens. Indiana Jones 4 had absolutely awful photography. Bridge of Spies is also a good example, lots of blooming, lots of hazy indoor rooms.
Modern shows are aggressively aesthetic. There's huge overuse shallow depth of field, resulting in blurry backgrounds. Watch modern movies with this mind, and you start noticing the reliance on a sharp foreground and blurry background is extreme to the point of bizarre. Cinematography should be a tool to achieve an effect; blurring the background to intentionally make the subject stand out is a purposeful use of that tool, but is being applied everywhere now, with no intent behind it, even if it's "aesthetic".
I would also argue that it's easier with digital photography to create blandly attractive, "painterly" images, thanks to colour grading and increased dynamic range and so on. A lot of shows these days have technically competent photography, but it all converges on the same aesthetic — tons of diffuse, lush lighting (often achieved with filling the space with lightly cinematic fog) and impeccable set design, and that creamy depth of field. But there's no contrast anywhere, it's just creamy "aesthetic" blandness in forgettable environs.
Another non-visual aspect rarely mentioned is audio: Almost all TV/movie audio these days is foley, and it's sometimes jarringly bad when you start to actually pay attention to, say, the sound of footsteps or keys jangling. High quality productions can be very good here, but most productions don't spend enough time on it. Bad foley has a very strange, subliminal effect on a scene, further undermining the sense of reality.
In such environments (visual and aural), nothing seems real and nothing seems like it matters. Everything, even nominally "adult" shows set in the real world, feels like Midde Earth and not Planet Earth.
It's not all bad, of course. There are also definitely cases where the quality of the show transcends the mediocrity of the cinematography. We are still getting good shows and bad shows, like always. But it does seem like things have shifted into a sort of middle where everything is average in the same average way.