Movies, however, don t seek to disturb but to soften anxiety, reassure our fears and to absorb everything in gooey sentimentality and happy endings. I don't know if violence has an influence, mainly because it is something we tend to reject unless economic, social, political or other factors force it on to us. They give us references we can understand, before falsifying everything in catharsis. Emotions become products, to be sold like movies. Tears work on film, only if we can enjoy a good cry.
Movies play it very safe.
Put that on a movie poster and expect a box office flop. And to get to this resolution, movies have to start telling you how to feel, to reduce feelings and ways of feeling to easy steps, hackneyed formulas, to tired old emotions that are interchangeable from movie to movie. In movies, there are seldom messy deaths - unless you're a drug scumbag Schwarzenegger blasts to kingdom come in a burst of splattering blood squibs. The good guys and gals die glamorously, smiling sentimentally, surrounded by loved ones. For me, the danger is that false movie emotion can drive out real life emotion, leaving one an empty shell or, after one more deliberate attempt to manipulate tear ducts, a bit hard-hearted.