Unlimited availability breeds its own discontents. Where once scarcity gave every premiere a glow, ease of access produced decision fatigue. A new generational question arose: when you can watch anything, how do you choose? Site curators became taste-makers again — not as gatekeepers in the old studio sense, but as narrators who could cut through the noise. That power was a double-edged sword.

VII. Afterlives: How the Conversation Changed Filmgoing

V. Hollywood Reacts: Reinvention, Retrenchment, and Redirection