Part 8/12:
Some commentators bemoan what they see as Hollywood’s decline in storytelling that involves clear moral distinctions. Modern films, including recent franchises like Transformers and Ant-Man, are criticized for their heavy-handed social commentary, often imbued with political messaging, including critiques of capitalism, health care, or authoritarianism.
The narrative landscape has shifted from characters with clear-cut good and evil, to morally ambiguous figures loaded with political overtones. This trend is viewed as a reflection of a broader societal move toward viewing everything through a lens of moral grayness—where even the simplest questions about right and wrong become battlegrounds for ideological conflicts.