generalfrevious said:

Yeah but a blockbuster film from 1980 is vastly different to one from 2015 because they still based their films on original ideas. ...... today we have the Internet, so they have to exploit existing franchises to get people off youtube for three hours. And the prequels were one of the first recognizable brands for studios to use.

There have been a fair number of blockbusters in that span of time that weren't exploited franchises. No doubt that's much more the case the past five years or so, but to lump the 90s and 00s in there isn't necessarily fair.