I think it does speak to the declining quality of their output if we can describe them as soulless, early Disney productions do not feel soulless.
telling that they were also based on genuine folktales. Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Pinocchio, all these early animated films, even on up to Aladdin and Little Mermaid, were based on classic fairytales. the old stories tended to be better constructed due to standing the test of time. they had archetypal characters, classic ethical questions, moral dilemmas, story structure. Batman, Iron Man, etc. are heroes marketed as if they are on the same level as the classic folk legends and myths, but in truth they have a fraction of the depth. they are mostly about someone in a costume dominating the rest.
when you stack up classic legends hundreds of years old against a story some guy wrote in the 70s, well, it isn't going to have the same level of meaning behind it. people tend to flatten out all fiction these days, it is part of the trend of ahistorical thinking, that everything is the same, it is all subjective, there is no real objective quality. but if that were true there wouldn't be capital-A Art at all. a character with hundreds or thousands of years behind them is usually far more interesting than one that is a derivative of that. not saying comics as a medium is incapable of great storytelling, but that when you stack up 50 or so years vs. hundreds of years, there is little to pick from.
even the best of the Marvel films are still mostly monuments to mindless violence & ego.
Iron Man 1 celebrating a weapons dealer who becomes a weapon himself, the glorifying of US military might, is that really cinema or just pop trash?
Ragnarock, while a fun movie, it isn't saying anything at all, just a lot of punching, and silly but pointless banter, and is a bit too garish and over eager to seem zany. they all feel a little desperate to please to me. true cinema needs to be transportative, these films always feel like they are selling you on the next movie down the line.
