I think there's a difference between accidental decisions, intentional decisions, and pandering to everyone.
-For example I don't think it was a particularly intentional decision to have so few women in original Star Wars. It seems to have just kind of happened, which was pretty common in that era. And having a few more probably would have been a net positive given the setting (unlike, say, Saving Private Ryan where it would make no sense and would just make it worse). And just using the few existing women with tiny roles a bit more like Mon Mothma (the literal leader of the rebel alliance with near-zero screen time) would make sense. In fact, as more content for the expanded universe was written, more women were included throughout it, because in that setting it naturally makes sense.
-In contrast, modern movies usually do one of two things. Either they try to be generic and appeal to everyone equally (bad decision) or they set out trying to exclude from the start (eg something written for everyone except specifically straight white men to preach about that as main plot which most people aren't too interested in) which is also a bad decision and usually lazily/poorly done.
When I refer to conscious exclusion, it's not really setting out with the goal in mind to exclude someone, nor is it intentionally trying to write to everyone. Instead, it's trying to be aware of decisions made. Like yes, it will exclude people who don't like complexity, violence, or bad language. And that's because eliminating those things would directly detract from the story that's being told, which is the audience it's for.
As an example, in one of my stories, a character refers to another character as a retard pretty early on. No beta readers personally had a problem with it, but about half of them specifically highlighted that it *could* be a problem for some readers. I'm aware of it, and consciously sticking with it. Because that's how that character thinks. She's a pretty mean person. She wouldn't change her language for others, and so as a writer I'm not going to change her language for others either. That'll likely get me a 1-star review somewhere on Amazon in this environment, but it is what it is.
Dragonball Z is an interesting case. A show written mainly for young Japanese men, but like most Japanese content it has a global following. As you pointed out, plenty of black men like it (along with plenty of non-Japanese men in general), though it has a pretty tiny female audience. Bulma was a main character for a while but gradually became less important as power levels creeped up. Android 18 was somewhat relevant for a period of time. Eventually there were so many characters but hardly any important women anywhere. That might have been part of why I gradually lost interest in it; I don't know. Just a few more would have been helpful, especially given that the characters all basically fight with magic anyway.
Dragonball Super eventually introduced several more women including super saiyans, probably to more consciously address that a bit, to my original point. That's a case of adding something without really detracting from anything, since it didn't really detract from Goku or anyone. It's like, a fighting-focused Dragonball plot is naturally going to appeal to more young men than young women, but there's some low-hanging fruit to pick of having a few prominent female characters to bring in the subset of potential women watchers that are into fighting-focused plots too, kind of like Naruto and Bleach did and as Dragonball Super did.
