[FredPret]

You can't reach financial success in the arts without delighting a whole lot of people with your art.

If some other people then turn up their noses at this art, one has to wonder if they're just trying to project an air of superiority.

[anigbrowl]

That's like concluding McDonalds is the world's best restaurant based on having sold 1 billion burgers, or whatever the number is.

I do enjoy superhero movies to some extent, and many of them are very well crafted. The fantastical elements give actors an opportunity to go to extremes by dramatically upping the stakes. But even the well-made ones can tip into tedium or self-parody, full of stock characters collecting plot coupons and trudging through obligatory scenes. Once something turns into a franchise, it's hard to evade decline, virtually impossible to reverse it.

[librish]

An interesting difference here is that part of the reason McDonalds is so popular is because it's cheap.

Writing pop fiction or making Marvel movies isn't cheaper than the "artful" variants (in fact for superhero movies it's much more expensive), and consuming isn't cheaper either, so there's more at play here.

[wkat4242]

It's not that cheap over here, they have a budget menu but you can get a cheaper 'big' burger at a local Independent restaurant that is likely to be much better.

For me what makes it popular is the consistency. It's something you eat when you don't want to explore some amazing local cuisine that you may either like or dislike. You just want to get something known.

McDonald's is never amazing but once you've had it you know what every next time is going to be like. And mediocre is better than bad. Also, they really have the fast in fast food licked.

[codetrotter]

> consuming isn't cheaper either

Mentally it costs far less energy to watch a superhero movie than the deeper movies.

I like to watch movies that are for entertainment too, don’t get me wrong. Just want to point out that there is a different in cost to watch different movies, even when the amount of money I pay to watch them is unchanged.

[FredPret]

Yeah, so? It is the best restaurant in the world, from the point of view of millions of people who go there.

I personally hate superhero movies and McDonalds, but to say that these are incorrect or bad in some way is to cast a (probably class-based) value judgement on something that is adding value to people's lives.

[TheOtherHobbes]

They're bad if they make it harder to access more complex experiences.

This doesn't apply to McDonalds, because a McD won't automatically kill off more sophisticated restaurants within the same area.

It does apply to terrible movies and books, because more creative and original projects don't get made "for commercial reasons" - which is really just a form of corporate enshittification.

The issue isn't just that they're bad culturally - although they are. It's that they normalise conformity and creative obedience through the principle that the mass market is the ultimate cultural authority.

When a majority of creators self-censor because "This will never sell/get made/be published/be listened to, what's the point?" - that is a very dangerous place to be.

You don't need to burn or ban books to destroy the values they represent. You can censor them implicitly by making sure certain values, ideas, and creative orientations have no cultural presence.

[JohnFen]

> one has to wonder if they're just trying to project an air of superiority.

Or it could be that's just not a style of art they enjoy, and wish that there were more of other types around.