Hard SF has been done in Hollywood. For a famous example try The Andromeda Strain. If you want a plausible SF setting/menace, trying to do some good science speculation is the best way to do it. Grossly stupid science is only a turn off if you don't know any science. If you want a genuinely novel setting or premise, scientific speculation offers a treasure trove. Cliches from exploded speculations are also not boring if you don't know anything about science.
Hollywood doesn't do much "hard" SF because deep down Hollywood doesn't believe anything ever really changes and it's just childish intellectual slumming to think so. Hollywood doesn't think you need to take seriously the physics and chemistry and biology of the world because such things are irrelevant. Hollywood doesn't take seriously the prospect of social change because everything is just a matter of personalities. And people can be sold. It's all in the marketing. And Hollywood doesn't want to do exposition because they think you're too stupid to understand the big words or abstract concepts. (First, they do mean you. Second, they mostly can't do exposition anyhow, because exposition is hard writing.)
Hollywood by and large is ignorant and bigoted. The funny thing is that SF is infested with lots of conservatives and there could be many a match made in heaven. But they're too ignorant to know that, so the bigoted idea that there's no such thing as change means they relegate it to children's stories. Rarely, they'll think of SF as a fable, but then, their bigotry tells them that since people will never change but always be their nasty selves, fables are just sort of timewasting wishful thinking.
Most people, let's face it, are too poor to look very far elsewhere for entertainment and culture, so they're stuck with Hollywood. You really shouldn't think you're being offered the best our culture has.
