When did IMDB go online? This seems like one of those things where nostalgia factor is pretty big. If people were rating those movies from a few decades ago at the time they were in theaters then these graphs might look pretty flat.
That or it is becoming increasingly harder to entertain people with new ideas as they watch more and more movies. People could be getting desensitized to entertainment.
IMDB is practically the oldest thing on the web. The site launched in 1993 but it imported the archives of relevant usenet (rec.arts.movies) and mail archives going back to the 80s.
My thoughts were along the exact same lines. I would like to see results on meta-critic/IMDB cut off when the sites actually started and movies that came out after that date.
I also wonder about the people who spend a lot of time rating old movies that they've seen and how much of their score is influenced by 'bulk' ratings of movies.
Does your score of certain movies go up because you've just rated 15 terrible movies or even just alright movies?
example:
Batman 1
Batman 2
Batman 3
Batman 4
then rating the new batmans? How does the score change?
That or it is becoming increasingly harder to entertain people with new ideas as they watch more and more movies. People could be getting desensitized to entertainment.