Awww again *cry*

[Renmiri]

It's one of the oldest and most tried and true techniques in entertainment, be it in a book, a play, a TV series or a movie. We grow attached to characters, begin to empathize with them, and then ultimately, must be confronted with the loss of them, and it almost always hits home. There are far too many examples to even begin, but when it's done right, it resonates like few other things.

It is one of the marks of bad screenplay or movie writing: Kill all your characters because you can't think of an ending for them, or to get some tears and emotion out of your reader w/ having to "work" for them.

When done right, without cheapening the death or using it just as a way to jerk the tear ducts of your audience, or when the deaths are meaningful in some other way than the obvious emotional impact, yes, it is a good plot device.

I hate those "Street Vigilante" kind of movies when you see a cuddly family and cute kids on the first scenes and you just know they will be barbecued, mowed down and / or get other horrible death, just to "justify" the movie hero turning into a serial killer with some teeny scruples (kills only bad guys who deserve it, by the most violent ways possible).

Don't get me wrong, I like action movies, what I dislike is the cheap manipulation of my emotions those cheesy movies try to do. Lethal Weapon didn't show us Mel Gibson's wife getting offed and it was a very good enjoyable movie, for instance. Whereas any Steven Segal movie started with "wifey and adorable kid get thrown in the meat shredder". It was never a surly teenager or a noisy kid who got offed. It was always a cute as a button little kid with puppy eyes saying "I love you dadd.." POW! The kid's head explodes in a blur of blood before he/ she even finishes the sentence. Yuck! I mean, can you be any more obvious in your attempt to milk my sympathy ?

EDIT: What infuriates me more is that most times they succeed and I do feel my eyes stinging :rolleyes2