Better off by what metric? Nothing is stopping people from making and watching small budget movies. They just choose not to. The last movie I watched was Venom. $100 million budget. I thought it was awesome. If you could get everyone who watched Venom opening day to pay $1 you could shoot and distribute a real movie using modern technology. But those people don’t want to watch your $1 movie, they would rather pay $14 to watch Venom. You may not be alone in preferring small budget movies, but you’re clearly in a small minority.