Quote Originally Posted by PwrdOn View Post
There is just a troubling general trend with the infantilization of pop culture, where pretty much everything popular these days is some updated version of something that people enjoyed as kids, whether that be Star Wars, Marvel, Transformers, or what have you. And as much as filmmakers hate pandering to the hardcore fanboys, the studios and their parent companies are keen to find ways to hook them, because they know that a crazed man child that will shell out obscene amounts of money for merchandise is the equivalent of dozens of normal moviegoers who will just buy a ticket and nothing more. And so if that means throwing your actors and directors under the bus to satisfy the wishes of irrational fans, then that's what they will do, basic human decency be damned.

And while the studios are making money hand over fist with honestly minimal effort putting out these copy pasta superhero and sci-fi movies, I do feel like that we need something more substantial in our entertainment. Marvel and Star Wars are basically like the cinematic equivalent of junk food, and while we might enjoy watching them, they are fundamentally unsatisfying and will always leave us with a sick feeling if we consume too much. The delusion for many fans is that this is somehow not an inherent property of these types of films, but rather something that can be fixed if only they would tweak a few details here and there, but if you just take a step back and think about it, that will never work. From the beginning, Star Wars has been a blatantly commercial vehicle with a recycled plot, wooden characters, and some of the most ridiculous dialogue ever committed to screen. We may have been blind to that as kids, but now that we realize this as adults it does kind of make our childhood memories seem a bit manufactured and inauthentic, and the fact that the new films constantly remind us of the fundamentally corporate nature of the franchise is just troubling to us. But there just isn't a version of the sequel trilogy that will put the cat back in the bag and restore the magic of the originals, since that was always just an illusion all along.
You're aware that's been the criticism of popular culture ever since the term was a thing right?