>>149930598
Long story short is that the Global Financial Crisis caused studios to tighten their purse strings, and it happened right during a time where a lot of previous executives were retiring. So the new executives came in, saw this kind of cost-cutting as normal, and doubled down on it. It basically baked bad practices into management. This also occurred right when distribution corporations began to get unprecedented power as a result of momentum building from mergers and the internet becoming both the public forum and distribution network. So they more or less dictate what actually gets made AND what actually gets popular. Of course there are exceptions here and there, not literally -EVERYTHING- is bad, but it's hard to deny that most of what's big right now is pushed from the top down and just plain mediocre at best.