I think you're painting with too broad a brush. Uncle Ben's death in SM1 is emotional. Peter lifting the rubble in SM:H is emotional. These are scenes that have been praised. All films are inherently manipulative - some films just hide their manipulation better than others. A relevant film I can think of where the story blatantly dips into emotional manipulation is GOTG, where Peter's mother is in the movie for about 30 seconds and somehow we're supposed to form an emotional connection with her just because she has cancer and liked some 80s greatest hits. Having had family members pass away from similar diseases, it's a little insulting to have such a thinly drawn character be held up by her disease and manipulate us based on basic empathy. THAT is emotional manipulation, and that's the sort of thing critics refer to when they use that term. Spielberg is certainly guilty of that in some of his lesser films.