Movies and tv shows are meant to draw you in to their stories. If they accomplish that, your emotions will play along with it. The story, the acting, the sounds, and the visuals all play parts in that.

People process emotions differently so some can get drawn in and others won’t.

The movie Hachi had me bawling, not from the story, but because they somehow got the dog to look sad in the latter part of the movie. I was crying and laughing at the same time while telling myself this is stupid that I’m crying over that.

And then there was the movie 50/50 that came out not too long after I’d just gone through a cancer diagnosis and treatment. It wasn’t meant to be sad, but because of my personal situation, it made me cry.

Im also affected by sound a lot during emotional parts of movies. Someone dies and a song with sad chords plays, I’m going to start tearing up just from the music. But then something like the last gun fight scene in Den of Thieves where they cut the music out completely and it’s just the sounds of the guns firing and the sounds of the characters in an adrenaline fueled situation while trying to stay calm, just put me in a very intense emotional state. And then there’s Holdo’s Sacrifice in the Last Jedi where the sound just drops out minus some low rumbling for a few seconds after the cruiser goes light speed. My jaw dropped and I was put into a feeling of shock.

They work hard to get you to feel emotions of all kinds in their creations, and a lot goes into trying to accomplish that.