And The cinematic success story of the last decade has been the Marvel films which, while still being mass-market entertainment, have managed to bring on exciting new directorial talent and broaden the appeal of blockbuster films beyond their traditional demographic.
And written and directed by middle aged white men!
Kevin Feige and the Russo Brothers and with a few female and black characters in the mix BUT all pretty much based around white men who are by far the leading characters
Iron Man, Thor, Hulk(Banner) Captain America,Bucky, Ant Man, Spider man, Hawkeye, Dr Strange,Star lord even the baddies were generally white ...Thanos actor!
The were pretty formulaic and stuck to the basic comics so i have no idea what broader appeal you are talking about which probably helps explain their huge success....its only when they went wokeish and shoe horned in Captain Marvel that they nearly came unstuck and her role was considerably reduced in the End Game movie
Star Wars was in fact far more of an attempt to 'broaden the appeal' of the franchise especially TLJ!
TLJ was hardly playing it safe they actively went WOKE , killed off beloved characters or sidelined them and it spectacularly back fired and SOLO caught the flack and lost money.
The Rise of Skywalker was pretty much DOA and was largely a damage limitation exercise....and as i said largely edited and controlled by Disney not the director.
the failure of star wars was having NO overall plan or vision so they end up with a disjointed mess