I think much of popular cinema (and media and culture overall) is getting worse.

The data from this study is flawed. Inflation adjusted Box office sales are going down due to streaming and home viewing, not because people don’t like all movies

Maybe you are just getting older

Maybe you're getting younger

Not remotely beautiful.

The "study" attributes an inherent correlation between the best picture nominees and the decline of the box office. But it's not accounting for the greater box office trend - the rise of blockbusters.

The relationship between Metacritic and Box Office inverts around 2004, it looks like. You know what came out the previous year? Return of the King. (Though I think Spider-man in 2002 is a more relevant data point.) Since then, there's been a bigger focus at the box office on spectacle-driven films, which are rarely going to be Best Picture types. And that goes even further in the past decade with the shift to streaming; last year's winner made $1.6 million at the box office because it was straight to Apple+.

This says nothing about the movies quality. The only possible conclusion to draw from here - and that's if you take the data at face value - is that good movies aren't making as much money, not that Best Pictures are getting worse.

It's been only the case in the last two-three years. Most films prior to 2020 were not available for streaming when they were released.

You can't say the data is flawed based on this argument alone.

The data is flawed not for this reason alone, but its sufficient to not consider it as useful.

The data is also not useful as box office sales are based on movie hype. Since box office numbers are generated from theater views alone. The highest box office movies will be highly advertised, and more often than not be parts of a series. Take for example Furious 7, which I think is a great movie, but is nothing when compared to something like Wall-E. Furious 7 had a box office of 1.9 Bil^(inflation adjusted) whereas Wall-E made 721 Mil ^(inflation adjusted)

Agreed, majority of the content is getting awful.