I mean Jim Jones was pretty damn effective at convincing a large group of people to commit mass suicide. If he’d been ineffective, he’d have been one of the thousands of failed cult leaders you and I have never heard of. Similarly, if Hitler had been ineffective, it wouldn’t have takes the combined forces of half the world to fight him.

In other words, you have the right to be an asshole, but if you do it to much, others can invoke their right be assholes right back to you.

I do, but only if it’s built up properly. This is also true of musical numbers and fight scenes. If built up properly, they can be incredibly cathartic and the best parts of the film, but if not, they grind the plot to a halt.

The reason so many people hate these kinds of scenes is that most screenwriters are really bad at creating tension. The purpose of these scenes is to release emotional tension, so without building this, they feel pointless and jarring. The best parody of this is in Men in Tights when Robin bursts into a love song out of nowhere and it scares the hell out of Marian.

I’m trying to provide examples of love scenes I actually like in films, and to be honest, I’m coming up blank. I think it may just be a lot more difficult to generate romantic tension in the average timespan of a film. It’s easier in television, where you get more time to tell the story. I think my favorite intimate scene in tv is in Game of Thrones season 3 when John and Ygritte are in the cave.