Those anchor stores are on life support. New channel anchors: American Girl, Apple Stores, etc, etc. What is dead is price-based stores the internet has replaced.
I used to live between two of their major malls for years. I could barely leave my apartment for 2 months before xmas due to traffic. They just spent millions remodeling their high end mall adding capacity and additional room for high end stores like Sacks and Restoration Hardware.
Non generic crap malls are fine. Junk stores that have generic brand cheapish clothes and the like (JCPenny) are being replaced by Amazon, but overall malls are doing fine.