Well whenever I ask people why movie stories aren't as risky today as they used to be, I keep being told because filmmakers spend a lot more on them compared to before. But if that's the case and there's too much money at stake can't they just spend less money on a movie if anyone to take less risk but have a riskier story?
Some do (I'm thinking about Robert Eggers here) but part of what drives bigness is that, ultimately most movies are an investment strategy. A bunch of rich guys put up money for a movie, expecting to get back more millions in return. The people behind the scenes on all this have expectations about how much they will make in theaters, streaming, physical media, etc, and it's the film's writers, directors, etc, who need to make that happen. Plenty of times, I recall reading stories written on a Monday, pronouncing a movie that hit the theaters on Friday to be a failure because it didn't make enough millions in the first weekend. The financial wizards assume that, based on the first showing on Friday, every subsequent day and weekend and DVD sales, etc, will all follow the pattern. Investors are jumping out of high rise windows. Investors don't give a crap about quality or plot or anything else, especially political correctness. It's just a gamble for them....who will buy stuff.
Once you're in that mode of thinking, all of the demographics come into play, whether this group or that will relate to character A or B and whether the movie covers enough demographic slots to, again, make lots of money.
In my socialist paradise, however, none of this will happen. Movies will be funded by The People, only quality will count, and crew and cast will be selected, based solely on merit. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly when that will happen and my judgement on quality and merit has been a bit off lately.