Nothing wrong with it. It's cathartic and many Greek philosophers would say it's good for us.

Few good movies to see.

Do they count streaming as "ticket sales"?

Different things contribute to movies breaking box office records:

• higher ticket prices and inclusion of 3D ticket prices,
• nostalgia (Star Wars, Jurassic Park/World),
• intense planning and overarching themes/plots across many movies (Marvel Cinematic Universe),
• improved motion capture/CGI/3D technology (Titanic, Avatar)

In regards to overall yearly ticket sales, it really hasn't changed that much. Titanic (1997) sold 94 million tickets while Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) sold 88 million tickets

This site has some really interesting information on it about box office and ticket sales in the US.
[the-numbers.com]

The box office sales are deliberately biased. They dont' show actual tickets sold, but how much the gross receipts are. That means if you took inflation into account, most record breakers wouldn't break records in actual tickets sold. They use gross recipts because as inflation hapens they can have new record breakers mroe often.

Personally, I fidn it very to suspend disbelief for comic book live action movies.

Not exactly seeking escape.... I it entertainment

Movies keep bringing in revenues- ticket sales are different metric, and would probably be a better measure. Everything old is new again, same story new verse. From the 1920s on movies have been popular as an escape method. History is a filter, what folks think of as 1930’s movies for example are just the tip of an enormous iceberg of the movies that were made at the time. The filter let’s us see the “great films” without understanding 9/10 of the films produced have drifted into obscurity, and even more so for silent films. Sadly many films have deteriorated in storage to the point of no recovery. Movies are an amazingly powerful cultural mirror, and maker.
So to your point, Hollywood historically loves sequels- the Thin Man movies or the Andy hardy films. Hollywood really hit its zenith in the 1930s and 1940s, the cadence new movies were released was amazingly rapid, think weekly. movies can reflect our “real” world and deal in heavy subjects like “I was a prisoner in a chain gang” or “Shawshank redemption”. They also are as you point out- escapism, which can be a good or bad thing. In the 30s and 40s theaters were air conditioned when most of the world wasn’t. Refrigerated cases kept chocolate bars from melting- until then chocolate was a seasonal candy. In the 1930s the escapism was desperately needed by many- in the depression life otherwise sucked. There a Steve Martin movie “pennies from heaven” that addresses the very topic, escape from the suck of the real world for even a brief moment was a gift. “Purple rose of Cairo” is similar in concept. The avengers sequel today represents the cumulation of 10 years of movies binding a story together, by Hollywood standards that’s pretty good, even if it is an unannounced two parter lol. Movies can reflect our world, help it’s escape our worlds, and challenge our minds with what if possibliries. It is also a big business, and behind Warcraft is the number one export of America to the world. It can be good, bad or yes mindless escapism. I’ve gotten mellower about movies, and escapism- I used to hold some higher and mightier look down view on the whole phenomenon, now not so much.
So are movies better? Some are well done no doubt and CGI has introduced new possibilities to the art, if you adjusted for cost and looked at ticket numbers- far more people went far more to movies in the 30s and 40s than today. A couple of hours disconnected from our world appears to help people deal with our worlds other harsher side.

There's more people?

I go to fewer movies than I used to.

I went to "Get Out" last year. Period.

I've not been to the cinema in years, nothing on offer interests me.

I don't trust the figures.

Starwars has a large fandom that has been thirst for new content.
The MCU is less movies and more long television episode which causes a more emotional connection and has been building toward Inginty war for 6years.

Better movies to a degree as they are consistently strong and are better that 90% of what came out pre-2000 but it is more how they are marketed and part of the zeitgeist.

Escape
But I did think the last several star wars were good...although a few of the actors (Ben Solo) need acting classes. I hope this new Han Solo flick coming out is good.

Yes.

Escapism

Need escape from trumpism for sure.

Or they just fudged the figures to make them look better ?