I think that the MCU is being lauded for it's "planning" and "careful construction" is pretty strange. The most they did was line the tones and style of each film up enough that it didn't feel like too much of a clash when you mashed them together. The MCU as a whole, overarching story is filled with holes and threads that go nowhere. This was the right call because heeding too much to 16+ films of lore that constrain what you can do next so it's better to do what's best for the story people are watching in the moment, but if I were to look at it with the same critical eye as some of you look at The Last Jedi, it's kind of a mess. The "connections" and nods are almost all afterthoughts to whatever the wider story the film is telling is. Sometimes this even gets to the point where it's so haphazardly implemented and disruptive that it hurts the flow of the film. They are there to trick you into thinking you're watching a bigger story than what's actually taking place. Characters regress or become completely different depending on who's writing or directing. New characters are introduced only to fill the exact same niches and follow the same beats of development as older ones.
The "Event" movies that cross everything over are key to making everyone think what they're watching is bigger than it actually is because they usually take whatever haphazard foreshadowing from existed from before and run with it to create a new story, but building off a teaser isn't exactly groundbreaking filmmaking. Sometimes there's no foreshadowing at all. Ultron comes out of nowhere and disappears into the void just as quickly, not really having affected anything as a character. On the other end of the scale you have Thanos who waits in the shadows doing nothing for flat out absurd amounts of time, canonically. The Russos have mentioned that they were waiting for Odin to die but the fact that this didn't actually make it into any of the 3 teasers with Thanos in it or Infinity War itself shows that they weren't really thinking about it and could have found any other way to handwave it that they wanted. Infinity War had to wait until it was time for Infinity War. That's fine, but we can all see the strings. These movies also become so overstuffed with characters that a lot of them end up not really getting any room to breathe or falling flat. The emotional weight of Black Panther's father's death doesn't get any time to breathe in Civil War because it happens in the first scene either character is in. The full weight of it didn't hit me until Ryan Coolger and his crew expertly used the Mythical Realm to flesh out their relationship and get back the important character beat Civil War kind of robbed them of. Some of them are introduced for the sake of enticing fans who wouldn't watch the movie otherwise with a negative effect on the overarching story. Tony has apparently been flat out stalking Spider-Man for a while now and nobody seems to find this strange on Tony's part or contrived. Ultron is turning out to be just a little difficult to put down, so Tony just makes another one and hopes it works out better this time, and it does. No inventiveness on behalf of the other Avengers and no backing down on Tony's part for making a mistake necessary. Scarlet Witch and Vision's relationship doesn't receive any on screen development at all and just kind of falls into place because that's what happens in the comics.
This level of sloppiness is to be expected compared to what they're trying to achieve and how many different creative voices are involved, so I'm fine with it, really. It's just not really making for better films, so I don't see why this revolutionary storytelling technique deserves to be praised If anything the commitment to stylistic consistency has it's drawbacks as a lot of these films end up not having a unique voice or message of their own. Not all of them, but a lot of them. They take a shallow dip into a different genre or message, just enough to convince you you're watching something different, before falling back on the same story beats and tropes. Throw a teaser on the end of it to convince you that you MUST watch the next one to see the next part of the story, and you have a franchise. Dr Strange presents some interesting ideas about mortality and time but they can't escape the skeleton of what is ultimately a worse version of the Iron Man character arc where an asshole has to learn to have the basic decency use their ridiculously overpowered mind/gift for good.
If anything, it's more laughable that other Studios dropped the ball on this than it is impressive that Marvel pulled it off. DC had all the blueprints in the world but a sheer lack of quality control held them back. I don't even think it will hold them back for long, since Wonder Woman was already fine and both Shazam and it's sequel look fine too. All you need are decent movies, and the sequel hooks and the continuity and the arcs can be as half assed as you want. They're just commercials for the next thing. They only need to get the idea that the world is bigger and there's more stories like this coming and you're set. BvS's biggest mistake is putting the sequel hooks at the forefront.
The MCU, to me, has felt more like a series of gateway drugs and empty promises than a long running story, even if I've enjoyed a lot of individual efforts like Black Panther, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and the Winter Soldier. I said before that I genuinely believe that any major studio could do what Marvel Studios is doing, but I don't really want that. I'm surprised people think The Last Jedi is too radical since if anything I think it could have pushed it a lot further than it actually did. I want more films like it that push the envelope further. I doubt we'll get that sort of thing now either way, since Star Wars is likely to play it safer from here on out. I respect Rian Johnson's hustle though and I hope to see at least one more Star Wars movie come out with him on less of a leash. Maybe, with how polarizing The Last Jedi was, that isn't the best idea. The last bank account I'm worried about in the long run is Disney's though. They can afford to take a gamble.