As commercial as Star Wars ever was, there was a message of "scrappy scruffy rebels triumphing over the Evil Empire" that was at the heart of its popularity.

IMHO, of course.

They used that to sell endless toys and crass merchandise, and made tons of money.

But along the way, Lucas, and doubly so for Disney, put their heads up their asses and believed it was all the exotic designs, and spaceships, and special effects, and fights, and and and and that was what made Star Wars Special, instead of a simple inspiring message that good can triumph over oppressive evil.

Modern Hollywood doesn't know how to make a good movie anymore.

It's not Hollywood just "doesn't know", it can't, period.

When modern Hollywood movies are financed, by banks, there is a risk assessment: The stars, director, script summary, etc are put into an algorithm to minimize the risk that the movie will bomb and that bank loan will be repaid.

The result is that only the movies that are approved for production loans are those that roughly match all the hit movies that came before it.

The result is a system that can only make the same fucking movies, with the same fucking old man stars, directed by the same octegenarian directors, because they're designed to please the financial algorithms as much as..., you know, audiences.

It's like a roundabout way to get AI slop: Hey this movie approved by the algorithm made money, so let's make copies of that, instead of new ideas, or something that's in tune with the times for which there is no precedent.

Incidentally, this type of algorithm is also used by popular music producers to find hit songs, which is why all modern pop music sounds the same.

Tl;dr we were better off when the Mafia was in charge of financing movies because at least a real human with good taste could decide which movies got financing, instead of an algorithm.