The overseas market, specifically China, probably plays a much bigger role in self-censoring cinema than most people are comfortable admitting. Nobody wants good cinema, movies that dig into and challenge the human condition. They want money. In the last 20-30 years, we have seen the strip-mall-ization of the movie theater. Every city has at least one, they all look the same, and drop in at any time and you'll see th…
On the China thing: Why don't we let the ones who want to censor movies just do it on their own instead of precensoring them? This used to happen a lot. Is it really that expensive to cut out a few shots or use compositing to obscure things? I believe it's still done for so-called in-flight entertainment.
So when I said the problem was China, I didn't mean the Chinese market, I meant that a huge amount of money currently being spent financing film entertainment comes from groups like this. They kill these kinds of things before they ever get financed.
Most folks don't talk about the money side of movies. It's nothing like talking about which star is in rehab or where the MCU is heading with its reboot. But at the end of the day, that's the thing driving content creation.