Black Widow is a recent film with very questionable narrative, going by how marvel told the one time director, they don't do their own action scenes and this does make a lot of scene because black widow has one of the worst cgi in a comic film.
NWH is a recent film and it had the same marvel vfx issue.
Shang Chi is a recent film, yet the 3rd arc is like GOTG/Endgame. All out animation.
Eternals acted on something different but stuck mostly to formula, I also keep going back to Eternals, wondering if Chloe Zhao was really fully onboard with the extremely colourful costumes that created a lot of issues to the overall look of the film, since it just clashed with the mix-bred cinemathogprhay of hers and Feige.
Surely this cannot be creative freedom like Zack Snyder doing Man of Steel and Patty Jenkins doing Wonder Woman?
I dont think there are different kinds of complexity in film once you break down the purpose of a movie, all road may be on the same direction. Naturally, it will and should be hard to get a complex story based of a light hearted action driven movie already water down compared to the source material, because there will be no space to layer plot-lines and dive deeper into the characters to make it complex and even any little complexity easily burns out or comes to a halt once we get to the final big 3rd act cgi fight.
I am pretty sure somebody has already blamed GOTG for quips and jokes that all marvel films now do on this thread. Gravity actually pushes you to study science and makes you think more of how dangerous Astronauts jobs can be. It is a great film in many ways and it does not even make me think of Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban (same director). you watch GOTG and you think of Thor Ragnarok or the recent Shang Chi, seem both films are just intentionally way too colourful.
Which assumes that it needs to be. There are a wider range of stories that can be told.
When you say wide range of stories, what do you mean? when I say range, I mean Joker, the comic books.
James Cameron will rank in the top 10 for the later half of the 20th century. he has changed cinema 3 times as an auteur film maker.
Titanic redefined blockbusters and was a real successor to Ben Hur , the first film since Ben Hur to be epic in scope and visuals and also nabbed 11 Oscar wins all for merited meaning.
T1 and T2 changed science fiction movies film making and has been a constant influenced on the genre. the visual, story and Cameron direction has stood the test of time and gets referenced by many other film makers, heck the Wolverine scene from DOFP where he goes back to the past and has no cloth on was a tribute to T2.
Avatar best show cased what 3D should be used for and used for only with films.
So Cameron will rank, Additionally Cameron by 1997/1998 was already an iconic film maker because of titanic which was both a blockbuster phenomenon, a pop culture phenomenon and an artistic phenomenon. this was before Feige produced the first mcu film in 2008. So Cameron was already way ahead.
Lastly who will be doing the ranking. surely it is not marvel fans or dc fans , or star wars fans or another big blockbuster fans . usually it is other film makers or peers and those who study films for serious earnings and living that can break down film making, down to an atom. so in other words the same people who are reluctant to take feige comic films seriously in the first place
.