I will concede that Mel Gibson is a truly brilliant and creative talent, and I'll amend what I said by adding his name to those great Film legends of all time. I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that it's the inherent shallowness of this particular branch of the artistic community which is a major part of the problem. Simply put, in the old days there was something called "Screen Presence", i.e. the man or woman's ability to grab your attention when they were on screen and then hold it by convincing you they were that person whom they were portraying on the screen. Their attractiveness was important but not as important as their ability to act.
When Clint Eastwood played "Dirty Harry" to me that wasn't "Clint Eastwood playing Dirty Harry" That was Dirty Harry's Life and experiences being played out on the screen. It's the same for all the other Movies that were my favorites as a youth; The writing was good, the acting convincing and superb, the quality was there. I could go on and on, but I don't think I have to. The only recent example of this, and barely at that, was "Troy", whereas Pitt had me convinced that he was Achilles. It was ruined though in part due to Hollywood's narcissistic reliance on cheap sex and other thrills to "keep people interested".
Yes I agree with you it is a lack of cojones and all the other points you brought out. When I worked in the industry in the 1970's this "conversion" was just beginning to take root and we are now witnessing it's debilitating affects. It's rather depressing in many ways.
But then again, that is when the auteurs took over. Guys who knew nothing of real life and real people but knew every shot in "Citizen Kane". So inevitably movies become so self-referential that we have a situation like now where every romantic comedy recycles the same stupid cliches and every action adventure movie has been Bruckheimered to death.