‘Dark Knight’ shooting: Why do directors set violence in theaters?

The realization on Friday that Warner Bros. was poised to release a movie, “Gangster Squad,” which features mobsters opening fire in a movie theater elicited a collective cringe and prompted the studio to consider replacing the scene.

But it wasn’t just an unfortunate coincidence that a new movie would featuring violence in a theater. Filmmakers have been going to that well for a long time now.

Another gangster picture, “Public Enemies,” included a climactic scene in and around a movie theater, with John Dillinger surveilled while at a Chicago screening of the movie “Manhattan Melodrama,” then shot as he leaves the showing. Quentin Tarantino set a critical assassination plot in a movie theater (and then set the whole theater on fire). “Scream 2” opened with Ghostface killing students at a screening.

As an enclosed space where crowds of people gather, a movie theater is a ripe place for filmic mayhem.

Of course, there’s another reason directors like to set disturbing scenes there: It’s very likely where the people watching the scenes happen to be sitting at the time. If you want to make an audience feel unsettled, what better way than having a scene, literally, close to home?

The 1990s bio-thriller “Outbreak” had, to the best of my recollection, an actor turning to the camera and saying that the virus must have spread in a movie theater, almost as though speaking directly to the audience. Filmgoers flinched.

Should the “Gangster Squad” scene be wiped from the final cut? There will be those who argue taste and others who say it’s not necessary. Either way, we’ll probably see a lot more films down the road lose the movie-theater violence — and the shudders that come with it.

ALSO:

In wake of shooting, Warner pulls ‘Gangster Squad’ trailer

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‘Gangster Squad’ may change after Colorado shooting; trailer pulled

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