But for the better part of cinema history, great EFX work is also rare.

My sense is that modern movies' CGI is bad is partly with directors or cinematographers not understanding the limitations of CG and also the heightened standards that filmgoers have accumulated over the years.

It probably doesn't help that it seems execs at studios know that spectacle sells more than subtlety and maybe sequences get included into productions that really are unnecessary but will likely make some in the audience more likely to spend to see the movie while it's in its first run.

But real talk, solid EFX work is rare throughout cinema's history. In an artform that is already tasked to get people to 'fool' the audience into feeling that the humans projected on a 20 ft high screen are really experiencing and feeling the emotions the script calls for, tricking the senses to immerse itself into a fake environment is an endeavor that takes impossible levels of craft and patience.