People are just so inured to the absolute mediocrity of Marvel/DC shit that they lose their minds when someone elevates it even slightly (also see: the Joker movie)

I think the problem with these films/stories is that they try to take genuinely engaging topics - blinkered nostalgia, our failing social order, imperialism and the horrors inflicted by the imperial core upon the colonies (WandaVision's big plot reveals serve as fantastic metaphors for a bunch of these) - and then paper it over with Robots And Wizards And Laser Beams.

Like, they're not strictly bad entertainment, which is why they get gobbled up by the public. But they're infantilizing these heavy concepts and looming crises. "Elevating" a Batman villain to bring to light our collapsing social safety net is doing to welfare reform what Captain Planet did to the environmentalist conversation. Except we're doing Big Budget Captain Planet For Adults, because we literally cannot digest our politics any other way.

And even past all of that, we're still in a very dangerous place because so many of these media spectacles still end up promoting our worst political impulses. Avengers lets us continue to believe Smart Military Officers With A Plan and Super Technology will defeat a single malicious actor commanding a horde of monsters. DC keeps pressing on the "Crime Is the Problem" button every chance it gets, adding more fuel to the Terrorists Everywhere hysteria we've been experiencing since 9/11 (and the Satanic Panic before that and the Red Scare before that).

We're losing our minds because this is junk food for our brains.