Gratuitous Violence

Recently I saw MissionImpossible? 2. In that movie, I felt the violence was too much. By the time the final fight came around, I was fried on violence, and was quite bored till the movie was over. My point? Violence is being used so much in movies that adding more is now counterproductive. I find less violent action movies to be more striking now.

Shaft was cool because there wasn't a single fiery explosion in the whole movie.

But there were heaps of people shot and left on the street... a more striking form of violence if you ask me. I mean, they just wasted the bad cops. I guess it was "life or death", but gosh.

True. So the next question would be, what is a good action, thriller, whatever movie without tons of explosions and corpses?

Karate Kid (or even worse, Karate Kid Three).

I thought those were boring. However, now that you mention it, some of the HonkKongAction? stuff isn't too bad. After all, how many people die in a Jackie Chan flick? One? None? And what I saw of Fists of Legend didn't appear very lethal either.

It's all about extending the domain of experience. The easiest way to extend it is to increase the violence to a never-before seen level. But the human brain can perceive very high orders of complexity, at least compared to what it can create through our traditional forms of media. Those who have already adapted to the ever increasing cycle of violence only perceive the substrate: people getting hurt. This turns them off. Those who have not adapted only perceive something novel: "I've never seen an explosion that big before! Wow!" To each type of person we have different types of movies. In the end, the point is to entertain... if the movie entertains its intended audience, then it is successful, no matter how displeasing it may be to you personally.