memes

Dude, you literally say at the start of your comment that:

nerds used to be a little more "I know oh-so-much more about this media than you ever will" and a little less "I'm eternally uncomfortable about the changes being made to my media."

You then proceed to call a movie director "selfish" and "fart-sniffing" for telling the story the way he wanted to tell it. You've got to admit the irony in all this.

Also, it's true that big companies are following trends and fostering memes to drive engagement, but I very much doubt that they are willingly antagonizing their own fan bases to drive negative engagement. That sounds like a nightmare that no social media manager would purposely walk into. Nobody is willingly stirring the pot by making people theorize conspiracy theories about a secret leftist agenda. That's just humanity for you. Some are good people, a lot suck.

The entities that are willfully stirring the pot are social media platforms, who have a lot more to gain by having those people scream at one another in their feeds, because controversial takes can populate comment sections more and faster than mild takes, which drive engagement on those social platforms even further.