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Do you guys think that a preference for children's media over media targeted toward adults is a sign of emotional immaturity or psychological issues?
I'm in my late 20's and I still primarily consume media made for children, but I'm not likely to enjoy it unless the protagonists are adults or the situations are allegorical enough that I can relate to them regardless of the characters' canon ages.
I do want movies to "loudly announce, with musical cues or exaggerated expression and body language, what characters are feeling and what viewers are supposed to feel." I don't like simple conflicts or black and white morality, though. The former is useful for me. The latter is stale and unrepresentative of the real world, where people routinely commit atrocities while believing they're the good guy. (I want to CW so hard right now.)
I've never heard of Zero Dark Thirty, but based on your description of the film, the ambiguity of the characters' motivations would be impossible to achieve in a musical. Characters in a musical can be as morally complicated as characters in anything else (go watch Into the Woods if you don't believe me), but they are required to narrate (sing!) their thought process, by nature of the medium. The only alternative would be to have an omniscient third person narrator sing the entirety of the show, describing the actions taken by the characters in mostly literal terms. I guess that would be more of a concept album than a musical, actually. And then there's the issue that music inherently informs people's emotions, so you might not be able to include any music while giving the audience emotional ambiguity. If you play cool music during the action scenes, then sad music at the end, the message will be clear, but the audience would rightfully feel like the film was holding their hand. I'd still love it, though. There are few concepts that I don't think would make for an enjoyable musical.
So, I don't agree that moral ambiguity requires subtlety, but I see your point that there are some stories that are best told with a level of subtlety that would confuse kids.
Have you seen Synecdoche, New York? That's an adult film I enjoy, but even though the plot is deliberately confusing and, at times, nonsensical, the motivations and personality of the main character are always clear. This isn't true with Charlie Kaufman's most recent film, I'm Thinking of Ending Things. I was so bored and confused that I turned off that movie partway through and read a summary. The central concept is brilliant, but if you don't know what's going on, the behavior of the two leads makes no sense, making it impossible to empathize with them. The movie didn't drop nearly enough clues for me to figure out what was going on, hence my distaste. >!I thought the janitor stuff was an unrelated subplot going on at the same time. I didn't even notice he was played by the same actor as the male lead. I think the movie should have implied that the date scenes were a flashback to the janitor's youth, that he was mourning a failed relationship as he worked his menial job. Cut the fake out horror movie stuff, focus on the mundane conversations that gradually reveal his insecurity. The anachronisms in the story would make it possible for the audience audience to figure out that these scenes never actually happened to the janitor well before the reveal at the end. Would that make it a kids movie?!<
I can relate to those feelings, but I can't understand that the protagonist is feeling them unless he says so. That's why I watch stuff that is on the nose, usually stuff for kids.
Also, believe it or not, Disney made Into the Woods into a movie and it got a PG rating. They gave Rapunzel an implied happy ending, but otherwise the movie was as dark as the play. When I saw it in the theater, it was a full house, and most of the people there were families with kids. A noticable chunk of them had left by The Last Midnight. I didn't hear any crying, so I don't think they were even scared, just confused and bored. It'd be funny to think that they were scared by the giant threatening everyone, though.
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