No, you are not just distracted by raising kids. Modern movies have been co-opted by politics and narcissistic nihilism and high levels of this toxic, cynical, postmodern “cleverness”. Disney/Marvel movies are the biggest most obvious perpetrator of this. Their movies are so afraid of expressing any genuinely challenging emotion. The only emotions allowed are surface level, “self-aware” “”jokes””, “sadness” and “anger”. It’s pathetic how little nuance there is. It’s like every time a slightly uncomfortable feeling comes up the writers are like, “Oh, God! Feelings are so gay, throw in a joke, quick!”

Movies are very condescending to the audience and do not trust them to understand basic plot, story, characterization, etc. and decides instead to spoonfeed details and while they’re at it, throw in some Hollywood politics for good measure (nowadays typically “woke” nonsense but not always. Hollywood was very racist for a long time).

Of course this is the fiat system at work. Artist don’t have the time to stop and make something that’s actually worth viewing because they are under pressure to return profits rather than making something memorable or even remotely challenging to audiences. They gotta place safe bets. Plus there are so many free forms of media and entertainment. TikTok, YouTube, social media? Forget it, those are free and in our fucking pockets why would we drive to a dirty theater with obnoxious people on their phones the whole time and waste our money?

All that being said, I do enjoy horror movies from the last ten years or so. They’re clever and creative and require a bit more trust from the audience. Also, television is incredible now in terms of production values. Shows from the 80s, 90s and 00s look like shit unless they were made for HBO and even then those don’t have the production values of today.

I could go on but I think the TLDR is no, you’re not out of touch, movies generally kinda suck.