A madman has taken over a city, he holds innocent people hostage and kills some with firearms and his bare hands.

It’s a fictional city called Gotham which means that real people will dress up like the villain and line up around the block to see this depiction of violence and psychopathy but when a real psychopath stands up in the theater and opens fire they, along with the rest of the country, instantly change their minds about what they wanted to see. The joke goes: a man approaches the ticket counter in Aurora Colorado, “I’d like a refund” he says. “I came here to see a psychopath strike fear into the innocent, but I can’t stand these new 3D movies.”

This is cognitive dissonance, but our audience is not to blame, our movies are. We are attracting viewers with simplified premises that trigger their easiest emotions and because of this we have ushered them into expecting and accepting only poor storytelling. Filmmakers aren't making better characters, they are making crueler villains and bigger monsters because they imagine that it will make the story more compelling for audiences. It doesn’t, and although we are still paying for it, we are not buying it.

Recent studies of the brain’s response to stress with camaraderie may indicate why people seek out fear-creators like Halloween Haunted Houses. Although fear may not be a primary pleasurable emotion, people visit these sites because of their side-effects, the befriending sensation of squeezing the person next to them (Oxytocin), communal endurance relaxation (Morphine), frequent bursts of adrenaline (Epinephrine), etc. Films are the same, both attractions provide intense emotions while the audience has no real fear of danger. What blockbusters offer as a bonus is the unspoken promise from the filmmaker to the viewer that justice (and therefore, catharsis) will be delivered before the credits roll.