Fair enough. I thought you were going down the "capitalism is bad" route. I think I understand what you mean.

> I think the problem is that the people making the artistic decisions are also the ones trying to minimise risk and maximise revenue.

Knowing absolutely nothing about production, I would surmise there is a financial science and formula applied to films estimating modelling their potential profit. I mean something like "there must be x car chases to draw y amount of viewers" for an action film and so on.

Since such formulas would be based on past data, we rarely see something fresh as it's riskier.