Turning up the center channel gives you more dialog. But that assumes you've got surround sound set up... Producers don't give as much love to stereo setups these days.

Yeah! It would sure be nice if we took accessibility issues seriously.

Like one lesson we learned as a society in the aftermath of implementing strong ADA laws (in the US) is that what's needed for the bare minimum for some of us is often really nice for the rest of us.

For example: if you're delivering a dolly of boxes to a building, the wheelchair ramp really beats working the dolly up the stairs.

It would be amazing if dialog were a separate channel, if only so that it can be boosted for the hard of hearing. If that meant more options for remixing for you and me - oh no?

It would be amazing if the subtitles were available and accurate. Great if you can't hear the audio. It's useful for scrubbing if you want to remember and find a obscure movie quote.

No, the directors intent is more important, and obviously you need a full Dolby speaker system to properly enjoy. /s

I'm not sure but Dolby Atmos might be responsible for some of it. Dolby Atmos lets the engineers assign coordinate values to each "sound object" in the scene, then your receiver takes that information, along with the room calibration mic info and your speaker layout, and actually generates the channels itself based on the listeners position within the scene. As an example, if an object is moving from front to rear then the engineers no longer have to pan it between channels, just tell the coordinate system that the sound is moving "that way" and let the receiver take care of it. Maybe engineers just aren't putting as much work into making discrete channel audio mixes anymore when the "gold standard" no longer uses discrete channels/tracks.