This article contains parts from the essays written by Danielle Burgos : "Why Saying Movies Based On Tragedies Are Released "Too Soon" Is Total BS" (Bustle, Oct. 3, 2017) and  Sinead Stubbins : "How Long Does Hollywood Wait To Make Movies About Tragedies?" (Junkee, Jan. 19, 2017)

There's the wildly unscientific South Park declaration that tragedy becomes funny after 22.3 years, and a couple papers examining how soon is "too soon" for jokes says about the same. Having done some research, it appears that the average "complaint index" for movies about tragedies spikes when a film is made just a few years after the event, like Zero Dark Thirty, rather than over 10 years after the tragedy occurred. But in actuality, complaining that movies based on tragedy come out "too soon" is utterly absurd, and here's why.

Last year at the Sundance Film Festival a movie called Dark Night, which was inspired by the 2012 Aurora Shooting in the US, received some mixed reactions. To some viewers, making a film even loosely based on the tragic events in Aurora — when a gunman opened fire in a movie theatre in Colorado during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, injuring 70 and killing 12 — was too callous. According to FOX, some viewers considered Dark Night “senseless and too soon”, but to some like Tom Sullivan, who lost his son in the shooting, the film was extremely necessary.

“If we’re going to get any change, if we’re going to stand up and say this is the last time that something like this happens then you actually need to see it,” Sullivan said. “You need to understand what maybe led up to it.”

When discussing films that depict disturbing real-life events, the conversation is often rooted in whether these films needed to be made — the argument being that films about real gun violence or deaths related to prejudice and discrimination, or the human spirit overcoming horrific situations, are useful as traumatic teaching aids. They can provide answers as to what causes these misfortunes or offer reassurance that courage and patriotism can help humanity persevere through any tragedy (or what critic Amy Nicholson calls the “docbuster” genre concerned with “brave tales of real-life modern men”).

If the film checks out in the ‘we-can’t-let-this-happen-again-so-we-have-to-relive-this-terrible-event’ stakes, the next question is whether Hollywood has been respectful in the timing of the film’s release.

It seems like the time period between an event and a film’s release does appear to be shrinking. However films about specific wars, particularly in the cases of World War II, the Vietnam War and the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, often come out as soon as the war had ended or even as it continued.

Generally the question of whether a film was released ‘too soon’ after a sensitive event is dependent on how the event is depicted and who its intended audience is.

If a film is meant to inspire hope about America’s fortitude and resilience, audiences can be more accepting of a quick movie adaptation.

When it comes to what movies we cry "too soon" about, it's not all those based on tragedies, but just the ones about events, both big and minor, we feel strongly about. Hotel Rwanda, Sometimes In April, and Shooting Dogs all came out in 2004 and cover the Rwandan Genocide, the 1994 massacre of nearly one million people by the Hutu-led government (almost 20 percent of the country’s population), but although the films fell just within the 10 year "too soon" period, there was barely a whimper that they came out too quickly. And beyond reviews, there weren't many articles about the films' effect on the public at all, perhaps due to American audiences' lack of awareness about the events. (The same goes for The Killing Fields, which came out only five years after millions were slaughtered in Cambodia.)

Meanwhile, there was public outcry over a 2015 episode of Scandal vaguely based on the life of Princess Diana, and complaints that the 2013 biopic Diana,  made 17 years after the icon's death, still felt too sudden. And when the merest rumors of a Steve Jobs biopic came out in 2011, article after article asked if it was needed just yet, considering the Apple chief died only that year.

What's most interesting, though, is that there might not even be a reason for us to use that criticism. Some of the outrage over movies released quickly after tragedies stems from concern the films will re-traumatize victims, forcing them to relive the event again. But this doesn't actually have much basis.

Scientists believe that post-traumatic stress is caused by "failure of fear extinction," ie, that your fear doesn't diminish over time. One of the leading ways to cure it? "Extinction training" - repeated, controlled exposure to the source of fear in a safe, neutral environment. Sounds a lot like watching a movie might fit the bill.

With it comes to major tragedy, where we have already been exposed to morbid scenes via news and other media, it's just human nature to want to continue examining it to our own satisfaction.

Surprisingly, some of the people close to the tragedies have argued in favor of "too soon" movies. In a 2006 San Francisco Gate article, the widow of a United 93 pilot said she wished United 93'sfilmmakers had waited to make their 9/11-based movie, but only so they could utilize actual cockpit recordings from that day (the film came out so soon after the events, the recordings hadn't yet been made public). The article also notes that other victims' family members felt that general public had become "too complacent" about something that, for them, was extremely painful, and that they believed the visceral realism of a movie about 9/11 would be essential in reminding people of what was lost.

Even for people who truly feel upset when a movie comes out "too soon," they're likely not understand the reason why they feel that way.

Their outrage is a misdirection from their real source of discomfort, which is related to the uncanny valley between an event's raw information and how it fits in the larger story we tell ourselves about the past. History's only created in hindsight, but it takes time to codify and assign meaning to events.

Films place us in a world, and when that world is a fresh tragedy people are still processing, there's dissonance between the thoughts still forming and the concreteness of the story before us. This is compounded by the psychological need of simplifying complex events to reduce unbearable psychic pain, known as "splitting," which is also, surprise surprise, how Hollywood works with practically every story they deal with, based on real life or not. The nuances of reality and all its facets tend not to work on screen; even documentaries have an angle when presenting information. It's the nature of storytelling.

For most movies, though, it's impossible to avoid taking an angle when it comes to real-life events, for better or for worse. And often, that angle doesn't sit well with us, or comes off as too sudden or unnecessary. But what matters is that we examine the reasons behind those feelings: Hollywood's flattening of nuanced stories, the fact that history isn't neutral and is a construct, and the role media plays in shaping history.

So next time you find yourself watching a trailer and thinking, "That just happened! Too soon!", think of it as your brain's way of waving a red flag, and take a look at why you feel "too soon" instead.