1. There are good and evil, only. The role of good is to fight evil, using violence.
2. The origin of evil is either irredeemable people or irredeemable ideologies. They cannot be reasoned with and do not have internal logic. The only way to end evil is by force.
3. Wishy washy good guys negotiate, but it never works. Manly good guys shoot first. That works.
4. If you are not succeeding with violence, use bigger, shinier violence.
5. Violence solves the problem, and once it's solved, it's over, and everything goes back to happy.
The unrealistic settings are due to the narrative demands of action-oriented storytelling. If you're watching the Ninja Turtles or Superman or whatever, you want to see the good guys kicking the bad guy's butts.
If a show is about engaging the bad guy in a big moral debate and realizing there are no good guys or bad guys, it would just be lame -- not as much entertainment value.
That being said, I love shows that have moral ambiguity. Four that immediately come to mind are Death Note, Game of Thrones, Puella Magi, and Gunslinger Girl. But that's not everyone's cup of tea. And even though that's my taste, I don't want all my entertainment to be in shades of gray -- I watch Fairy Tail, too.
I get all that, but to me it fits in line with my good vs evil being older than the written word thought. Most of what you wrote I can find in a history book.
I dispute that this is really all that ancient a view.
Christianity, for example, regards violence as only useful backed by supernatural aid, and doesn't see it as the only way to fight, only assigns irredeemable evil to supernatural entities, nominally prefers peace, and does not expect human agency (exploding or otherwise) to be sufficient alone. The 80s could well be viewed as a repudiation of christian ideas of evil.
Well, I don't have sources on hand but I'm fairly certain that what you describe is not necessarily a Christian invention. Many of the stories I recall reading that pre-date Christianity have similar themes.
1. There are good and evil, only. The role of good is to fight evil, using violence.
2. The origin of evil is either irredeemable people or irredeemable ideologies. They cannot be reasoned with and do not have internal logic. The only way to end evil is by force.
3. Wishy washy good guys negotiate, but it never works. Manly good guys shoot first. That works.
4. If you are not succeeding with violence, use bigger, shinier violence.
5. Violence solves the problem, and once it's solved, it's over, and everything goes back to happy.