That video game analogy is completely irrelevant to cinema. You beat level 1 to get to level 2. I don't watch shitty Michael Bay movies to rise to great Michael Mann movies.

I don't look for deep meanings or enigmatic riddles in films. Filmmakers make films to express feelings for the most part or do something different. Cassavetes can explore a destroyed marriage in Faces or Scorsese can take a story of several gangsters, and turn it into a wonderfully paced docu-drama like Goodfellas. Most modern filmmakers make films to appeal to a shallow audience. Michael Bay or Ron Howard are to the film industry what Britney Spears or N'Synch would be to the music industry.

Some people try to pass off a horrible piece of work as innovative and deep as well such as Tony Scott with Man on Fire and Domino, the former taking an average story too seriously with nothing to back it up and the latter taking a true story and changing it to appeal to idiots. Both enhance this with the ridiculous wannabe-innovative editing.