They care far more than you'd expect.

Almost everyone watching a movie has seen hundreds if not thousands of movies. They're experts on movies.

They might not be able to explain their expertise, or turn it into creation, but they recognise and have feelings about the structures and the tropes.

They may like them or they may hate them, but assuming your audience is ignorant of the cinematic form is one of the big newbie filmmaker mistakes.

The mistake is assuming audiences don't want the age-old well established hugely popular and profitable cinematic forms.

One of the things they don't tell you about getting old (or you don't believe it, or you ignore it) is that once you've seen/heard enough stories/music, it all starts to sound/look the same. I can tell from a trailer or sometimes even a movie poster exactly how a movie will play out to the point I don't want to see it because I'll be bored to tears. This is also why Hollywood markets to the young: they haven't been alive long enough yet to recognize the repetition.