It’s nothing new. I heard a discussion on the James Bond franchise years ago. There’s an inverse relationship between the quality of the script/plot/story, and the amount of special effects.
I guess you trade one for the other. I keep thinking of The Caine Mutiny, the scene where The Caine was in the storm looked like it was filmed in a bathtub, but what a great story. I’ll side with a great story or plot. If you consider the movie Jaws as having special effects (it was 1975), I’d say that was the right balance, it had both.