When the original Star Wars trilogy came out, you can see footage from that time of people entering and exiting the cinemas. Men and women alike. It wasn't just men, there were plenty of women. Star Wars was a phenomenon with both sexes. In fact all cultural big hits were. You wouldn't encounter a female fan of Raiders of the Lost Ark or Jaws and go "a WoMaN likes this?!?"
Big movies didn't really need to cater. Now Star Wars is the most feminine bullcrap ever. The biggest thing movies do is play on two things with women. Cutesy and their love of animals. Baby Yoda as an example and also what porgs and the little sphere R2D2 was meant to trigger in them. There's nothing really "cute" about R2D2 in his design. That little sphere droid in Force Awakens was meant to trigger that feeling in women though, the cutesy feeling. LIkewise Chrewbacca looked really off and the reason for that is he was cutefied. In the OT Chrewbacca had a menacing look to him. In the Disney trilogy every element of his face was softened so that he looks no more threatening than whinnie the pooh.
Likewise with the animal thing. The reason John Wick has his dog get killed is that is the quickest way to get women on board. In reality it's stupid.
I love animals, but I don't give a crap if they die. That doesn't make me heartless, that makes me a man who, like most men, has the ability to compartmentalize and understands the value of animals as compared to human life. I've never seen a woman who isn't really manipulated by their love and protective feelings towards animals. Watch a woman react to John Wick and see how much it impacts them, the dog aspect, compared to men. There's a reason in the old days revenge centered on killing someone you were related to in stories. Because that was universally understood. And don't give me any crap about "the dog represented the wife symbollically". It's just cope to get away from the fact that it's meant to be a lazy shortcut to get women invested in the plot when they otherwise wouldn't.
There's many ways that movies soften the action hero in ways more appealing to women but this wasn't always the case. Women enjoyed men who were rough in movies. Plenty of women enjoyed Bond films and Bond would often be cold, and harsh with women. Which they of course, as we know, women like. They like Bond being charming and wooing women, but they also like that he doesn't put up with women's crap either.
Today men are emasculated in films and despite women naturally hating this in men instinctively, they seemingly let this slide or don't see it happening on some level when they go to the theaters. Like how is it that I can see that Daniel Craig is emasculated compared to 1960s - 80s Bond and this bothers me, yet women who are repulsed by emasculated men flock to the softer action heroes today like John Wick or Daniel Craig bond whereas in the past they might have gone and seen the Dirty Dozen with their husband. Are women becoming lesbians, is that the conclusion?
I would argue it is in fact more about that then it is about catering to women. You can tell by the fact that they very rarely come up with their own stories and characters that cater to women and just tell those instead. 9 times out of 10, they are replacing something from the past.
Nerds have always been an enemy of the left. Nearly all White men, unapologetically heterosexual even past the point of 'good taste' with all the comic book women drawn with massive tits in skin tight costumes, the bikini armor tropes, etc. Most have at least some degree of what might be called autism, though I think that is a modern reinterpretation of what is actually just a personality type that likes details, systems, intricacy, etc. The sort that doesn't really pick up on or care about 'normie' social cues and worry about who's fucking who or if Tiffany cheater on Brad. They'd rather spend 4 hours figuring out the backstory of a fictional character to determine if their psychic powers can work on a ghost. Nerds have always just been apart. They see things differently, care about different things, don't respond to the same attempts at browbeating and corralling them into political groups, don't respond to the same kinds of social stigmas, and so on. Nerds have been a bulwark against leftism for a long time, quietly sitting in the corner drawing fictional hot women and saying you're gay if you like a particular run of a comic over another.
And the left has been trying to destroy them for ages, and finally more or less succeeded. Not by destroying them in the end, but by infiltrating them, taking their stuff and making it normal, and then making it gay and womanly. It was always about taking away what those nerds liked, because the themes present in nearly all nerd hobbies are things the left hates. Heroism, clear right defeating clear wrong, rules that matter because they are the reason things are the way they are, whether it's in Tolkien's universe, Superman's weakness to Kryptonite, or the real world. Most nerd hobbies have at their core, something that is noble, good, and encouraging. This is why each one has been taken over and replaced. Catering to women is just a side benefit.