I completely agree regarding modern movies.

I recently watched the Borderlands movie and while it had its obvious faults, the biggest flaw in my opinion was the jarring pace that one scene would switch into the next. That movie had a short runtime so could easily have been extended to let each scene breathe a little more and I think that alone would have drawn people in the world building a lot better.

I do think with SciFi, the world-building aspect needs to be front and centre, otherwise it’s impossible to switch off the “well that couldn’t happen in real life” part of your brain.