It's been 10 years of "if you didn't like this movie it's because you're actually evil" -- but is it really culture war stuff, or is that just the argument they're using? Filmmakers have never liked critics, but now they've got an argument that their critics are fundamentally evil and every reason in the world to use that argument.

I think you kind of have to look past the specific form of what these people say, because they're from Hollywood, they don't believe a word they say about anything unless it's how great they are, and lashing out at people they don't like or who criticize their work.

Healthy ecosystems such as Hollywood of yesteryear or Japan's anime ecosystem today had different rungs, you'd get lower cost lower impact media to start, and as you succeeded you'd get to work on higher impact higher cost (potentially higher profit) works until eventually you earn the big tentpole blockbuster through proven success.

There used to be multiple rungs in Hollywood, but now you go from niche movies at Sundance (not even a market) to producing mega budget blockbusters, and that's not healthy. Hollywood would blame streaming for this, but other markets have rungs still, it's more that Hollywood got addicted to blockbusters and ate their seed corn.

Some of the best movies of all time were created at those lower rungs. Star Wars: A New Hope was actually a fairly low budget movie. E.T. was a lower budget movie. Cult classics Half Baked and Office Space were lower budget, and Fight Club and The Matrix were mid-budget, not massive tentpoles with budgets that would bankrupt the studio. They couldn't make any of these today because those rungs of the ladder don't exist. They can only hand the empire to a child emperor and watch them have a hissy fit when the treasury starts to dry up and barbarians at the gate start taking territory.

I think a lot of these storytellers are trying to do what Joker did -- hop into an established franchise and tell the story they want to tell regardless of the franchise. That's a big problem with an established brand because something that could have been a modestly successful lower tier film ends up pissing off customers who came in with an expectation based on the brand. The problem was never politics, but not following the laws of physics when it comes to pleasing customers and making money. Then the child emperors lash out because it turns out the emperor must follow certain laws of physics or their empire collapses. Then the audiences are alienated because the movies wasn't FOR them, and you get the current MCU. Even if they make some decent movies, it'll take a lot of time in the penalty box.