American audiences still largely view film as entertainment, a diversion—- not art, and there’s a big difference. We don’t like to be challenged by our films, and in this current climate of studio “group think” (in which teams of 8 writers are needed to ensure Transformers meets its quota of Burger King tie-ins) movies aren’t doing anything to change that. The studios are trying their damnedest to puke out a product that will appeal to the lowest common denominator, and not upset the applecart. Redemption is the backbone of this country’s Judeo-Christian framework, so they want to make sure that “Johnny Red State” and his 2.4 kids and white picket fence take away that good feeling of seeing the good guys win and the bad guys get their just desserts. Everybody learns a little life lesson, hooray. Also, look at examples like the recent Ocean’s 11 films. Notice how in those films the protagonists are thieves, yet we can root for them because they are stealing from some “evil” guy that has wronged them somehow, whereas in the original Rat Pack film, part of the fun was the fact that these guy were thieves because they LIKE TO STEAL. Try that now, and every nothing-better-to-do media watchdog group will be carping for “better standards for our children, blah blah blah”.
Or think of the “controversial” Sopranos finale. I think what upset people most was that Tony didn’t pay for his wrongs, there was no reckoning. He was pretty much the exact same guy at the end of the series that he was on the first episode. He didn’t learn, he didn’t grow, he didn’t change, and folks couldn’t deal with it. American cinema directly reflects that we like to ignore that sometimes, often, most of the time—the bad guys win, cute kids get cancer and die, bad things happen to good people and no one pays for it….. and the world keeps spinning.