This is different tho. You can produce a movie that pisses off people, and still have it play in theatres.
If you make a movie that pisses of the Chinese government, not necessarily the people, then that movie won't even be shown in China.
This is not Chinese citizens "voting with their wallets", it's the Chinese dictatorship dictating what is allowed to be shown in the country. One unilateral vote.
The equivalent is the US government outright censoring and banning movies. It's hard to even imagine how such a thing would play out because it is so far fetched, yet we (well, at least you) accept it from China. Why?
because it's not my job to tell China how to run their country. This is mostly a distinction without a difference anyway because the Chinese would obviously not enjoy watching a lot of movies in which they're the bad guy and Captain America saves the day.
It's like if you make a movie that insults the Prophet Muhammad a lot of Muslims won't like it, and neither will a bunch of autocratic governments, but it doesn't really make much difference in practice. If one of said countries was on their way to become the world's largest economy that'd probably be reflected in film production over time.
The real issue here is that global consumption now more closely reflects the actual demographics of the globalised economy, which means if producers want to serve all those markets they'll have to be more sensitive to different audiences or regulations.
It's like French radio stations demanding that a quarter of all lyrics be in French. If that was a 20 trillion dollar economy you bet a lot of musicians would make more French songs
Are you sure they wouldn't enjoy it? You think people like living under oppressive regimes?
And speaking of not telling people how to run their countries; morality is relative? Imprisoning political enemies and subjugation of their families is ok?
Michael Moore's documentaries get shown in theatres as do others.
Such movies about Chinese bad actors wouldn't get even a single showing in China. And would probably get the director placed in jail.
You can slag on America for lots of things. This isn't one of them.
And, by the way, one of James Bond's enemies was effectively Rupert Murdoch (Tomorrow Never Dies). So, even English enemies appear in Hollywood films.
Anyway, I think many countries would want to do the same as China but they just don't have the leverage to do so.
But that's the point. It's the reason Saudi Arabia doesn't count. It only matters if they're doing it and are a large enough market to affect the international market. Nobody's changing their movies to capture the 0.4% of the world population that lives in Saudi Arabia.
You also could never afford to piss America off, which is why every other protagonist in hollywood movies is some Tom Cruise lookalike who combats people who speak English in a broken Russian accent.
Just seems normal to me, the only difference is that the other 95% of the world population now have enough cash to vote with their wallets and American companies learn what it's like to operate in a world where different cultures have different values.
Sure you can disconnect from everyone, but that doesn't sound wise long term, in particular not for Hollywood.