Two comments from Spielberg really struck me; the need to create empathy and the frustration of unintended results.

Without empathy for a character, unintended results are at best boring and could potentially loose an audience or more importantly the reader. But with empathy, unintended results can move the plot forward in a new direction or with renewed vigor.

Thanks for raising that point, Tom. We had a discussion recently on sympathetic protagonists, but there's a difference between 'sympathy' and 'empathy,' at least in terms of screenwriting.

If I hear a development note to make this character or that more "sympathetic," what they want is 'make the character a widower,' basically add some personal history or personality tics with which potential viewers will sympathize.

Empathy is used more about a character with whom we are not necessarily supposed to feel sympathetic; that note is about creating some sort of element with which we can identify. This is a note that comes up about antagonist / nemesis characters; we're not supposed to actually like them, but we should find them fascinating, we should be able to find something in them we can identify with, humanize them.

In Munich, establishing empathy for the characters was probably, I would imagine, one of the biggest struggles in the writing process. And you are so right: If we don't have empathy for characters, don't connect with them, nothing much that happens on screen will have an emotional impact on us.