I was just watching the X-Men films. I only went up to 2014, but that appears to be basically contemporary - Rogue One is from 2016 and the MCU apparently has a formal division into phases of which "phase 2" centers on 2014.
The X-Men films have the property you want, with plots and characterization included in the movie instead of relying on you to bring them with you in your mind.
(Are the later films good? They're not great, but if you watch one you'll come out with a sense that the movie had a plot, the things that happened were related to that plot, and the characters had reasons for the things they were doing. The films are quite inconsistent with each other, but they're very coherent considered individually.)
The MCU films of phase 2 have already lost it. (For context, phase 2 starts with Iron Man 3 and is mostly garbage with the exception of Winter Soldier, concluding with Ant-Man.)
My conclusion is basically just that someone at the MCU decided "we can save on the budget if we stop using writers".
I don’t think it’s budget, i think it’s about the churn. They want an assembly line of blockbusters at a predictable cadence. If you need a good plot it adds a lot of uncertainty into which script, how long it will take to write, etc. much easier to just take whatever the best thing laying around on the deadline day and keep moving forward.
The X-Men films have the property you want, with plots and characterization included in the movie instead of relying on you to bring them with you in your mind.
(Are the later films good? They're not great, but if you watch one you'll come out with a sense that the movie had a plot, the things that happened were related to that plot, and the characters had reasons for the things they were doing. The films are quite inconsistent with each other, but they're very coherent considered individually.)
The MCU films of phase 2 have already lost it. (For context, phase 2 starts with Iron Man 3 and is mostly garbage with the exception of Winter Soldier, concluding with Ant-Man.)
My conclusion is basically just that someone at the MCU decided "we can save on the budget if we stop using writers".