I agree with you here. The front-end (JS, CSS, HTML) are there to stay and can be organized into clean and maintainable modules. Its not technically difficult but it is humanly hard: you need to put in place best practices, peer training and have lots of discipline. Lots of people are turning to React - probably because it gives you structure.

Often a developer is thrown into a stack that was built crooked and gets discouraged. Instead, its your job to get in there and clean it up. It may take months but you'll you yourself and your team a big service!