This is an important point. I believe it actually is to large swaths of adolescents with their developing cognition/emotions and others with deranged minds. To regular stable adults, not at all, since they can view a film production for what it is. The former groups not so much, so they are more fully impacted by it.
Another, even more malignant manifestation of this problem, is the gansta rap subculture. Would you also deny its immense influence on certain groups? Both the direct effects of those who subscribe to it and the indirect consequences to larger society? Surely not. It compels some to lives of lawlessness and hedonism while promoting racial hatred and misogyny.
I doubt you'd deny the latter but I would anticipate you'd say it's a jump too far to conclude that a movie franchise could be complicit in a mass shooting. Unfortunately it isn't so.
But again the violent crime rates are going down. Doom, the video game that generally is used to start the age of “popular violent entertainment” turns 20 next year, we have an entire generation that has now been brought up in that era, that know no pre-Doom world, and the violent crime rate is down. So if there’s a large swath of adolescents being effected by this entertainment where’s the crimes?
The dirty secret of gangsta rap is that their primary consumer is, and has been for a long time, middle class and higher suburban white kids. And again if there’s a large group “compelled” to lawlessness and hedonism by it where are the crimes?
It’s actually 3 or 4 jumps too far to conclude a movie franchise is complicit in a mass shooting. It’s so many jumps too far as to frankly be a stupid thing to say. Hundreds of millions of people have watched these movies, and 1 of them turned into a nut spree killer, and he didn’t even dye his hair the right color. He didn’t kill ANYBODY because of some movies, he killed because he’s insane. His look and timing might have been inspired by a movie, but somebody that nuts is born, not made, he was gonna snap at some point.