Quote Originally Posted by Bugbear View Post
There are tons of 5E examples. How about a path of wild magic barbarian shooting off wild magic surges each fight? A Warlock Hexblade? The Fighter Arcane Archer?
These are things that exist. They are not things that move the game past the bounds that already existed in D&D. People (including fighters, because magic weapons) have been throwing around bigger and flashier effects from day one.

Yea, but gamers mostly seem to want more. Tell them their character can punch or just swing a weapon and they are unhappy at best. Tell them their character can go all "Lightning God Blaster" like Thor or Captain America in Avengers Endgame and they get all excited to play.
I really don't know where we can go with this. You keep trying to define 'gamers' and 'gamers mostly' in ways I don't think many of the rest of us agree. Certainly not specific to 5e (5e, as well as 4e, have been a step less epic in scope compared to 3e, or heck Eldritch Wizardry and Arduin Grimoire in the oD&D era).

And a LOT of the 'gritty' movies are fake with CGI: people jumping or falling form heights, people impossibly dodging and shaking off hits. Plus the wacky "jump in the air, kick three other people, spin around in midair, somehow 'fly' backwards several feet, land on a wall sideways several feet off the ground, then jump sideways through a window, and land on a passing moving truck.
The special effects have improved, but the core concepts haven't changed. People impossibly dodging and shaking off hits in modern movies are shown with more detail, but certainly don't outdo Die Hard or 60s era James Bond in terms of unreality. I'm honestly not sure what point this is supposed to make anymore. People have successfully pointed out that there was plenty of sci fi in the 70s when D&D started and plenty of swords and sorcery movies post 2000, and you never did regroup after that and make clear your point or what you thought on the matter. This argument seems to have meandered into 'they have better special effects now' which doesn't really support any point I can see one way or another.