If they make money surely that means people like them?
Which came first? The chicken, the egg or the battery farm? It’s a myth that films have to be mindless to make money. That’s a logic employed by a complacent industry justifying an ingrained culture of laziness that’s actually made possible only by the monopoly they hold over Western, English speaking cinema.
Viewed purely economically, it costs no more to make an intelligent film than a stupid one, and the few intelligent blockbusters that do slip through the net make just as much money as their dumb counterparts.
Films that insult the intelligence of the audience are the result of an industry that’s managed to muscle itself into a position where it can have contempt for the hand that feeds it. The profit a film enjoys is more closely linked to the marketing budget than the quality of the content itself.
Today’s Hollywood vapidity is an example of what happens when art and money are asked to play nicely; the art invariably loses.
If you like cinema, read this. Kermode makes the point better than anyone else could.