Maybe the prude nature of Hollywood films is a reflection of the American society and of the Chinese one where many blockbusters are being pushed?
That being said, as a European, I really don't care for sex scenes in mainstream movies, as they mostly feel forced and shoehorned in there and not relevant to the plot in any way, and are absolute cringe when the writers didn't spend any time or efort developing any attraction between the characters, and instead the script just forces them to suddenly f*ck because he's the male lead of the movie and she's the female lead, therefore they must get it on.
And India. This is absolutely a factor in the decision not to include anything that might get censored by those countries.
> not relevant to the plot in any way, and are absolute cringe
This is a more subtle but true issue: the audience standards, and the production standards, for how to do intimacy well are higher. The widespread availability of internet porn has killed the market for "exploitation", and doing non-exploitation sexiness is a lot harder.
To a great extent it's just moved to TV, which under streaming doesn't have to worry so much.
Maybe locally, but internationally I think that's pretty clear its not true, its simply that eastern audiences don't like unnecessary sex in a movie.
Not even sex scenes but kissing and clothes unbuttoning scenes with elevator music and maybe a bare ass shot if you the director really wanted to push the envelope.
A completely ridiculous motif that ran its course.
Subversion is risky as an investment...There was an article linked here a while ago, about how you cant make movies like "The Fugutive" anymore:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31874606
China has been investing in Hollywood as well, and with that has come higher exports of US cinema to China. For a movie to work in China - it will need to pass censors there. Its no surprise most media coming out is safe as all fuck, tedious, obvious as hell, and objectively bad.
Moreso - there's the concept of the four-quadrant movie - one which appeals to all four major demographic "quadrants" of the moviegoing audience: both male and female, and both over- and under-25s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-quadrant_movie
More pertinent to sex - sexuality is/has traditionally sided towards objectifying women. This can be turned on its head by objectifying men...or avoided all together (the safer choice) - the wide range of overly sexualised fantasy characters in McMarvel franchise type movies is odd to consider based on what i just said though
Basically, no sexy times, no political times, no times at all...
