10 Movie Events That Shaped the Decade (For Movie Fans)

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by Diesel

And there is (almost) always going to be someone out there who will pay to see it.

Don't think it's that they're "sick" enough to see it, just that they don't apply much thought to the reasons they think the momentary rush of seeing something "extreme" is so Cool.

For comparison, I was going to suggest that one other sociological trend we saw coming out of the Oughties was the rise of "Zombie Chic":
I can appreciate that the "Dawn of the Dead" remake was Because We Can, "I Am Legend" wanted to borrow pretentious clothes because Will Smith wasn't feeling Cool enough that week, and "Fido" and "Shaun of the Dead" had satirical fish to fry...But when we get to something like "Zombieland", you run into a movie that both thinks it was the Definitive movie of its appeal, and was convinced it was the first to come up with its idea.
Coming out of the frustration of the Bush era, into a helpless undefined era we didn't know, it seemed like we had a lot of ADD-aged audiences that wished for a world where you could deal with a difficult situation by whipping out a sawed-off heavy-gauge weapon and messily blowing the head off of the person who was immediately bothering you...But since that would be Bad, to explain it away with a bravely persecuted underground resistance against the entire world, where you can look cool and get points for picking off a segment of the population Born to be Targets.

Basically, we have a generation that is so scared of their own personal inabilities to deal with other human beings in the world around them, they'd rather see something cool and violent happen to them, just to shut them up and look funny....Preferably something happen to them, so you can remain an innocent spectator.
To which we can throw in the "Cool public self-humiliation video" Jackass culture of the 00's as well.