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I haven't read too much about Brando's private life, but it seems to me that at some point fairly early in his movie career he got so disgusted with the whole business of Hollywood filmmaking -- perhaps even with the roles he had been doing and/or was still being offered -- that he was seldom able to muster up a focused performance as part of a unified ensemble effort again. Things that might have contributed to his disillusionment: the lopsidedness of the annual Oscars, and the dirty behind-the-scenes shenanigans that attend them; the nasty real-world politics involving Elia Kazan, the stage and film director responsible for several of Marlon's greatest performances; the obscene amounts of filthy lucre lavishly bestowed on the biggest movie stars, which he might have despised even while accepting it; the whole concept of movie "stardom," as opposed to dedicated acting; the insane intrusions upon his private life by insatiable fans and the media; and, perhaps, even the unwholesome subtext of some of his most popular roles, such as the rebel-without-a-clue biker in THE WILD ONE, a role model for mindless, selfish, disaffected youth if there ever was one (James Dean is another, IMO).

For whatever reasons his attitude toward film acting may have changed, he's so electrifyingly charismatic that I find him interesting to watch in almost anything...
but I think it's a terrible shame in at least some cases that he wasn't willing or able to be on the same page with the rest of the cast. THE MISSOURI BREAKS, for instance, could have been one of the great classic westerns of all time, but he played his part as if he was a visitor from another planet, and disrupted the focused efforts of everybody else involved. (Imagine Jack Palance wearing a granny dress in SHANE.) Weirdly fun to watch, nonetheless, but far from the great film it could have been.