The Marvelization of Cinema

There are places I feel the theory of "Storytelling Entropy" is a bit weak, but story vs content is pretty clear.

Especially after I just watched Gladiator II.

It is quite clear to me they decided to have these grand scenes, the navel battles, the Colosseum navy battle, those are going to work well in trailers, and get audience to watch it.

And adding a bit connection to the previous movie and create nostalgia, like the same habits of Lucius in the arena (so they have to put him in arena for that reason), Lucius being Maximus's son.

Then they try to stitch all these into a story, and the basic story-line was also copied from the previous one (why not? The force awaken did very well with audience), they don't really care whether it made sense in the new movie or not.

I had the feeling of content rich and story light for some years.

Lord of the Rings is far worse than marvel. I would rather watch paint dry than to watch(sleep through) the trilogy one more time.

Cookie cutter formulaic. Marvel (and other movies that tried to follow the model) just feel like they're 'done by numbers'. I liked some of the earlier MCU, but I checked out some while ago (and I'm a comics guy).