I was taken by how freely they spent months of man hours on things to go 'meh' and casually throw them away. Different world. Quite holistic with their production costs

Once production starts the costs for many roles are locked in and they work till it wraps, often due to union rules and contracts. Anyone working in parallel with the film crews just does whatever the director/producers prioritizes since they’re not getting sent home.

It's definitely a different world though because you’re not supposed to go under budget. If investors give you $100mil to make a movie, they want to maximize the return on that $100mil, so if you’re $5mil under budget, they want you to go and spend that money to make it even better (usually in post production now, but back then it was less of an option).