It's the same problem as everywhere else: When people get too greedy, they ruin the show for everyone else. The amount of content that Disney pumps out in the MCU is too immense to follow up - the cinema movies, okay, but even then if you want to start fresh it's like two days worth of non-stop binge starting from the OG Iron Man... but forget about all the side content on Disney+.
The amount of money customers can set aside for entertainment is shrinking: three years of covid have eradicated savings, inflation has skyrocketed, and the future is looking uncertain AF - so the first thing that gets cut is entertainment. "Cord cutting" has become so commonplace it's a meme, but cinemas or even Netflix (!) have been hit by people trimming their budgets, and it doesn't help either that maintaining Netflix, Disney+, HBO and whatever else has grown so expensive it exceeds your prior cable TV bill. So that means people will go and see one, maybe two MCU movies a year and that's it - no budget left over for anyone else.
Saving went up because of the lockdowns.
> The amount of content that Disney pumps out in the MCU is too immense to follow up - the cinema movies, okay
I would diagnose a radically different problem - the MCU only has a lot of content measured in minutes of film. Measured in plot, there's almost nothing. I watched the 2016 film Doctor Strange. That was a huge mistake. I couldn't tell you anything about the film other than "Benedict Cumberbatch is in it" and "don't waste your time; there is no reason you'd ever want to see this". Ask me what happened, or indeed if anything happened, and I'll be stumped.
It doesn't come as a surprise that with the decline of the idea that a movie should tell you a story, movies are getting less popular.
Yes, for those who were able to save money of stimulus checks or whatever instead of having to use them to pay down debt. For those not in that fortunate position... well, 50% of Americans have less than 500$ in savings [1].
> It doesn't come as a surprise that with the decline of the idea that a movie should tell you a story, movies are getting less popular.
Yeah... Disney has mastered the art of making money with (admittedly excellent) special effects. The problem is, they may have lowered the expectations people have for good storytelling - but raised the bar immensely for "acceptable effects". Not every independent movie director has access to people like the VFX dude behind OwlKitty (who does VFX work on scenes of popular movies where he inserts his floofy cat as a character or funny sidekick [1]).
[1] https://news.prudential.com/generational-gap-grows-work-mone...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpLQXR116cLVUa1LRY8KS4w
Savings can't be eradicated by anything if they don't exist in the first place.
[1] https://www.boxofficemojo.com/releasegroup/gr2284737029/
Why would subtitling or dubbing make a difference? That doesn't change the plot. Is the value of Arthurian stories lessened by the fact that they were originally written in medieval French?
Translating the language will generally ruin wordplay, but that's a very different thing.
The bit where he says "What's this, my mantra?" and the monk says "No, it's the wifi password".
But it doesn't matter to them. When you have one hit like Avengers: Endgame, and some more like Black Panther, Infinity Wat, etc., HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE have LIFE CHANGING MONEY.
They won't give two hoots about ruined market or killing the golden goose.
If the goose gave a diamong of the same size of the golden egg, the owner wouldn’t fret killing it at all. One is enough.
Except I suppose with the second Star Wars, where they threw out the most of the movie in order to "subvert expectations"
First seasons and new IPs are fairly traditional and follow common writing tropes (although poorly, as if the knowledge has eroded).
It’s only when something gets popular that it gets the “updated for modern audiences” treatment.
The past few years they've been concentrating resources on fewer larger budget movies with a much greater chance of success. The likes of the Marvel MCU, Star Wars and other sequels and remakes. They've chosen safe formulaic stories with evidenced success and pumped large amounts into the marketing of these films. The initial success of these drowned out any prospect of a low budget hit and have killed off the mid tier movie (those that were just fine and perhaps eeked out a small profit). Commentators in the past have noted how this focus could kill off the industry.
Now a triple whammy. Firstly, there's less current evidence to justify funding these smaller films, as a consequence of the past few years. Secondly, the popularity of the formulaic big hit is starting to wane and thirdly, streaming, a wild card, has introduced uncertainty and volatility into this business model.