There's a bit of a problem here. The article is largely about the "feeling" of interconnectness, not the actual impact on story.
To illustrate, imagine a boilerplate cop film. Rogue Cop meets his captain and that captain goes "This is your fifth incident of misconduct Rogue Cop! You're off the force!"
Now the question is, does the rest of the story change whether there were movies for those four other incidents? If those films existed, then sure, you might feel you had to watch them, but in reality the current film would be the same regardless.
My point being, a reference isn't always a missing part of the story. Most of the MCU films are standalone, or sequels in a line. The outliers are the two Avengers films, which are event pictures, and Captain America: Civil War. Thing is, that's 3 films out of 15 in total.
Fast and Furious is an excellent example. You can essentially jump onboard with Fast Five. You gain more from the previous films, but Five is largely a self-contained story.
It's the difference between frosting (the references) and cake (the actual story). And the issue is some confuse the frosting for being a part of the cake. You can watch Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them without knowing much about Harry Potter. When character X appears in the next film, that character will exist alone in Fantastic Beats world, while also being a reference to a character in Harry Potter. That doesn't mean Harry Potter is required to understand that character, only that you gain more.
Vader in Rogue One is another example. The character as portrayed is akin to Boba Fett in the original trilogy. He's an enforcer and force of nature. You gain more by having watched previous films, but you don't need those films to understand the story being told. This goes on and on. In Daredevil, you don't need to have seen Avengers to understand the indicent, only that an alien attack screwed up party of New York. Outside of specific cases, you don't need previous Star Trek shows to understand the story being told in DS9 or Voyager.
The problem again, isn't always in these films being connected, but this perception that you have to get those connections in order to understand the story being told. I agree with the general idea that one shouldn't have to look up something else to understand a film - in except in the case of sequel following from a preceding film, where you probably should've watched it - but not the general premise of the article.
