Material animations are not (entirely) pointless, they are designed to improve user's awareness of UI's behaviors - primarily by making transitions between related screens less "beam-me up, Scotty" Teleport-like.

Sure, it may be prone to abuse, but the base theory is sound. By tapping into the perceptual abilities of movement and shadows, some parts of the inner structure and layout of the interface (which are usually only known to the dialog's developer) are exposed to the user in an intuitive way.