I recently rewatched 12 angry men, and was surprised at how quickly and efficiently they introduced 12 characters. Off-hand remark by one character, an expression by another, the way they stood and moved around; in around 5 seconds you knew the characters without even knowing their names.
Contrast to Marvel's characters, which have hours of development each, yet don't really feel alive. All of them have tragic backstory, all of them are heroic in the same way, most of the male characters are snarky/sarcastic/have big egos.
Those were terrible movies and not hard sci-fi. Okay, maybe Arrival was watchable.
What was unique about Gravity was that it was sci-if but set it our universe and in our contemporary time period. It at least tried to operate within the constraints of current inventory of space hardware. You are non-space-enthusiast it was amazing.
Looking at the 2010s as a whole, we got to watch some amazing films.
We got great hard sci-fi like Gravity, Arrival, Ex Machina. The coming of age genre saw entries like Ladybird, Eighth Grade and Booksmart. Animation reached new heights with films like Inside Out, Spider-Man into the Spiderverse, and Kubo and the Two Strings.
We got comedies like The Artist, Grand Budapest Hotel, Death of Stalin, and Jojo Rabbit. Dramas like Moonlight, Fences, Spotlight, Parasite, Blue Jasmine.
Even in the ever-popular comic book genre, we got Logan and Joker playing at a very different level.
But also, it was the decade of the MCU. Let’s not underestimate what Disney has achieved with that — one big overarching story spanning over twenty films, bringing much deeper character development and more serious themes than what we’d gotten used to from blockbusters.