For example : Megadeaths happen with nary an eye batted in Japanese movies, but you rarely see that kind of thing in the American. And the total dominance of the aristocracy over the underclasses is as assumed and invisible as gravity in French movies, but it seems to be taboo elsewhere.
Prevalence of Death in Hollywood movies.
Seriously, how many times does some side character in a Hollywood movie escape death by an inch then looks at the protagonist and smiles, only to be instantly killed anyway.
Or the fact that if there’s a group of people in a horror movie, only the main protagonist and their estranged love interest or child will survive till the end.
Or if the protagonist is shown to have a lovely quiet life with their love interest, they will lose them in the next 5 minutes.
I can excuse the protagonist mowing down some unnamed goons, but Hollywood treats their named side characters as disposable garbage too.
Watch foreign movies and you’ll get what I’m saying. There, a single character death is usually a big deal and a major pivot point for the story.
I’ve recently started watching more biographies and it’s so much more enjoyable knowing that a character isn’t going to suddenly get hit by a bus for having a good time.
Considering how many people I’ve heard here in the states say without a lick of irony that we should nuke China/Russia/insert middle eastern nation here for insert reasons here, as if the world’s biggest hammer will fix any situation, I think Americans are just obsessed with death to an unhealthy degree. Hell, growing up in the heyday of the Bush years, I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve heard kids in my class say that themselves.
Nuke the whales.
-Gotta nuke somethin’
All of this is related to dichotomy in Hollywood and English writing: someone is fully good or fully bad, and the opposition for this is the anti hero which ends up being it’s own trope. Latin languages literature don’t necessarily go there, everyone is big parts good and bad. You don’t need to establish villains dressed in black who kill a dog in the beginning of the movie just tob umequivocally establish who’s going to be the bad guy.
I think there’s a way simpler economic reason. If you have an ensemble of actors, the more scenes they have the more you have to pay. So killing them of one by one is an easy way for a studio to save money (let’s not forget, the US has an Union for their actors). Also we live in the age of sequels so having only a minimal cast transfer between movies means way less contract renegotiations. At least I think it started that way and then just grew into a cultural school of filmmaking in Hollywood. It just became the way you do things.
It might also be an artifact of the popularity of slasher movies from the early 2000s’ where the whole point was to kill characters.