I had an opportunity to view the film Logan over the past couple of nights. It’s that Wolverine movie that came out in 2017. I’m not sure how many stand-alone Wolverine movies there have been now. I think there was that one with Liev Schreiber, the one with the samurai robot and now Logan. I had heard great things about Logan, how it was a great Wolverine swan song, a western and even rated R to boot, so Wolverine could finally, properly, unleash his claws.

Watching Logan caused me to have a thought. Is it just me, or does it seem like today’s filmmakers are getting distracted by putting heart into their movies. Logan was one emotional beat after another, all of them basically one note. Everyone was having a bad day in Logan. Professor X got old and senile. Wolverine got old and poisoned. Stephan Merchant tried to avoid the sun. The kid didn’t have anyone who cared about them. The movie was a montage of characters being sad, a montage that lasted over two hours. Occasionally there was an action scene that was basically like the action scene before it. The kid snarled and clawed people. Wolverine snarled and clawed people, then got hurt and coughed and limped until the next opportunity to snarl and claw people. When it seemed like the movie might start getting some momentum, it stopped dead in its tracks to help herd a gaggle of horses and then have a nice family dinner because…heart. You are supposed to care about these characters, the director seemed to be insisting. Feel!

That’s why it took me a couple of nights to watch Logan. All of the heart wore me down, which got me thinking…did movies of yesteryear insist on so much on-the-nose schmaltz? It is something I will have to pay attention to more and study. I started thinking of the recent Star Wars movies, too, and how Rey seems to have such an emotional time. For some reason, whenever I picture her character, I picture her just trying sooooo hard, displaying so much heart. That’s not what I think of when I picture Luke in Star Wars. I picture an adventurer. When I think of the recent glut of comic book movies, I remember more scenes of weighty heart, like when Captain America and Ironman fight, or when Captain America and Bucky fight, etc. The movies stop and say, heart! Everyone seems to be struggling with their feelings, and I started to try to remember if that happened in other big-time movies of decades past. I’m just randomly thinking of some…

Raiders of the Lost Ark: Indy and Marion had a moment of heart on the ship before she tried to break his jaw with a mirror.

Aliens: Sigourney tucks Newt in.

Commando: Arnold feeds a deer with his daughter.

Terminator: Reese says he loves Sarah.

The Dirty Dozen: I can’t remember any incidents where the movie stopped to tell the audience to care and emote with the characters. We just did it by getting to know them.

Where Eagles Dare: I got nothing.

Die Hard: John in the bathroom.

And then in something like Logan it is just scene after scene of characters lamenting their angst. We’re suffering here, they kept telling us. Feel something for us!

Anyway, that was the thought I had watching Logan. It seems like today’s filmmakers are really forcing heart nowadays to the point where it is getting distracting. It’s like they are sitting down and saying, it is our solemn duty to teach the audience how to get in touch with their feelings. I wanted to watch a Wolverine movie, I didn’t want to watch a Hallmark Wolverine movie.

Actually, it occurs to me the movies that started this trend. The Lord Of The Rings movies. They seem to be the biggest genesis of too much heart in genre movies. How many times did the Lord Of The Rings movies go into slow motion heart stuff when the characters were suffering? I don’t know, but it seemed like a lot. Whenever something emotional happened, the filmmakers weren’t content to let the action carry the day. They had to let the characters expound on it.

In a nutshell, it seems like filmmakers are forgetting how to elicit empathy, or are not trusting the audience to have empathy for characters and their situations (that could be the case, people may be getting more callous and cynical), so they are trying to elicit pity instead.

But pity is not empathy. Pity makes the viewer a distant observer. Empathy makes them a participant.