Why is dialogue hard to hear in big action movie sound mixes?

[EvelynTT]

I’ve been noticing a weird trend lately where the sound mix in big action movies makes the dialogue almost impossible to hear, but the score and explosions are crystal clear. I just saw a blockbuster in a good theater and still missed key lines because they were buried in the sound design. Is this a deliberate creative choice in the final mix, or is it more about how modern audio is mastered for home systems first?

[Addison40]

In my experience it's partly a creative choice. The mix crew wants you to feel the scale, so they push the score up and pull the voices down a notch.

[Layla.L]

It also feels like the mastering target matters. Many blockbusters are laid out for loud home listening and sometimes the dialogue just gets eaten by the kick drums in loud scenes.

[PatrickLL]

I tried watching with captions on a recent release and it helped a bit, but not every line is captured by subtitles either.

[KennethZR]

Sometimes the theater acoustics or the theater acoustics or the room calibration seemed messier than the mix, which made things worse.

[Thomas68]

I've caught myself rewatching a scene on streaming with the volume dialed differently and still missing a line, so I'm not sure there's a single reason.