[Mediterraneo10]

The opposite. Just like with the canon of literature, seeing that many films allows you to unlock some delicious references made by later filmmakers to earlier ones. For example, every Truffaut film shot after 1964 contains at least one homage to a shot in a Hitchcock film, so watching Truffaut after you have seen all of Hitchcock only makes Truffaut’s films more enjoyable.

[Bakary]

Aren't references closer to what you earlier described as inane content? Don't get me wrong, I appreciate them too, but they bring nothing other than a jolt of dopamine from the recognition. An auteur making a reference to another auteur is not really that different in terms of depth from Marvel Movie №32 making a reference to Marvel Movie №55. Or at least it is not qualitatively different. As far as I can tell, the whole point of art is to be confronted with new ideas. 500 films/year sounds like it would dull the senses for that and not allow you enough time to digest a film's ideas before the next meal

[Mediterraneo10]

> As far as I can tell, the whole point of art is to be confronted with new ideas.

The “whole point of art” for most of human history has been to continue a tradition of craftsmanship, and innovation has its place but is certainly not the whole point. It wasn’t until the 20th-century that innovation became “the whole point” for the Modernists, whose views were not universally shared. Down the centuries, works of literature, music and cinema have regularly featured references to the artist’s forebears without being dubbed "inane" for it. (There certainly is a qualitative difference from comic-book movies, which are low culture, often by their creators' own admission, instead of high culture). And whether a person can properly "digest" works of art at that pace completely depends on the person; evidently many people can.