Yea yea the Hollywood variety is basically fiction, but if it WAS real it would be a pretty sad life actually. See the original Mechanic where you end up feeling sorry for the unnamed protagonist even though he kills people.
Serial killers-
As protagonist not antagonist, gotta love also the alternate reality where serial killers live on every block.(he only kills serial killers that kill other serial killers!)
Read up on some real life examples and you’re left just unimpressed by obviously totally broken people who do not lead glamorous lives.
Those character types are as far removed from the typical audience member’s life as possible while still integrating into society enough to establish points of reference. To some extent I think we’re jealous of killers, since they have such straightforward, primal goals in sharp contrast to the compromises and bureaucracy that fill our daily lives.
Of course, there’s also the very practical point that killing is a very straightforward way to drive a plot. Having killers at the center of a story creates a lot of very easily understandable, extreme motivations.
Because they’re scary. Dispassionate killers - people who see human beings as nothing more than meat - are outside most people’s experience, and thus terrifying.
A couple of random points that, I hope, bear at least some relation to the topic:
I had a sort of epiphany one day when I was in a video store and happened to notice that the cover art on at least two-thirds of all the disc cases included a person holding a gun.
If aliens are intercepting our broadcasts, they could perhaps be forgiven if they thought our entire civilization is made out of cops and killers.
Writers love a good redemption hook and professional murderers give you a lot of room for redemption. And if you’re not interested in a redemption story, hitmen also give you plenty of opportunities to tell a vengeance story.
Offhand, the only movie I can think of where a hitman wasn’t seeking redemption or vengeance was The Day of the Jackal. That was a story about a hitman being a hitman.
That’s funny as I recently noticed the same thing and once noticed it seems such an odd fixation. It’s also one of those things that once noticed you cannot help but start looking for it all the time.
It led me to wonder if most Hollywood actors have stock holding gun poses they practice. It seems like something they would need a lot for movie posters.
Look closely at those poses next time you walk by the posters at a theater. Most actors’s “gun poses” make them look like they’ve never handled a live weapon. They remind me of kids playing cops & robbers.
Hollywood is in the business of telling a story interesting enough to keep you watchibng through the commercials. Hitmen and serial killers offer a lot of drama and conflict without requiring much thought on the part of the audience. Nearly perfect prolefeed.
I once read an interesting perspective on how movies and TV distorts reality. It said that if you just took your statistics from them, you’d think that about ninety percent of the time when two people were having sex it was the first time they were getting together. An alien extrapolating from this date would assume that while we pair off in couples for relationships, we’re not a sexually monogamous species.
I’m sure you’ve watched British TV. Inspector Morse/Lewis has taught me that quaint Oxfordshire is awash in blood on a weekly basis. I’m assuming that’s the way all of Britain is.
And you cited a list of “greatest” not most popular. Are you really trying to tell me that violent movies aren’t popular in Europe? The worldwide box office leaders list does not look much different than the US list.