Okay, I know I've said I wasn't going to be posting in this thread anymore, and by god I tried, but...
Whats this badmouthing of today's entertainment industry? There's tons of amazing stuff out there.
and no living legends in sight to correct the situation.
This is because our culture is becoming increasingly divergent, not because Media is any worse. You want some living legends? Heck, I'll stick to names you're likely to be familiar with even
considering the awesome people you've probably just never experienced. Lets just stick to those who've created something impressive in the last decade as well...
G.R.R.Martin, Laura Faust, Terry Pratchet, Johnathan Coultan, Andrew Hussie, Scorsese, Miyazaki, Pixar, Chris Nolan, Joss Whedon, The Coen Brothers, and I haven't even touched on music yet. The number of amazing bands out there - it's daunting to everyone try to list them, to be honest! Will any of them ever get as wide a following as the Beatles did? Probably not! No company has the clout and power to create another band like that in today's environment.
It's not that today's media is worse, it's that it can be a little harder to find. Its a bit more diverse. A lot of it is better, better enough that it actually takes some ground and history to fully appreciate just how good it is (and that's going to kill its popularity when there are so many still quite great alternatives!). These are all the people that are popular, right now - throughout history, most artists haven't been properly appreciated until they were gone. If anything, the problem is that there is
too much stuff now, and we no longer have those centralized tastemakers that can say "Okay, everybody in the country, THIS is the movie you're going to watch, now go do it" nearly as easily.
There are plenty of things to complain about, but I don't really feel that "the state of modern media" is one of them...