Spoilers, spoilers.. everywhere!!!

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I run a number of social media accounts, and I am constantly facing people in this day in age that are incredibly sensitive to spoilers. It's an entirely subjective term, so it is hard to quantify, but what do you deem a spoiler?

In my opinion, a spoiler is;

Plot point or twist. I guess you could argue it is the same thing.

I bring this up because the new Damien Chazelle movie 'First Man' has faced controversy for NOT including something in the film. So if I told you now what the film did NOT include, that may bother some of you. However, from my point of view I could go on forever about things it did NOT include. Catch my drift?



Sorry if I'm rude but I'm right
SPOILER Jesus dies.
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28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
I know what they did not include because every media outlet is talking about it. I don't see how that would be a spoiler at all to be honest. Are Americans so enraged about it that they are going to boycott the film? I wouldn't put it past them.

Spoilers are tricky because what one person considers a spoiler, another does not. It doesn't always have to be a plot-point or twist. Just saying there is a twist without revealing it, is in itself a spoiler.

When I wrote reviews on IMDB, I would only tag the review containing spoilers if I thought there was one, but then people would tag some reviews as spoilers regardless.



28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
SPOILER Jesus dies.
I hear he comes back in the sequel though.
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Suspect's Reviews



I know what they did not include because every media outlet is talking about it. I don't see how that would be a spoiler at all to be honest. Are Americans so enraged about it that they are going to boycott the film? I wouldn't put it past them.

Spoilers are tricky because what one person considers a spoiler, another does not. It doesn't always half to be a plot-point or twist. Just saying there is a twist without revealing it, is in itself a spoiler.

When I wrote reviews on IMDB, I would only tag the review containing spoilers if I thought there was one, but then people would tag some reviews as spoilers regardless.
Just saying there is a twist is a spoiler? See, I find that interesting. How can a movie be spoiled if you have absolutely no idea what the twist is? Hmm.



28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
Just saying there is a twist is a spoiler? See, I find that interesting. How can a movie be spoiled if you have absolutely no idea what the twist is? Hmm.
People will say the knowledge that there is a twist hinders the viewing experience because you'll be expecting it, looking for it versus enjoying the film and being surprised by a twist at all. Not knowing what it is is irrelevant, knowing that there is one changes the expectations. Maybe you won't be as surprised because it was ruined that there IS a twist.

Imagine going into The Usual Suspects and being told there is a huge twist at the end. What is a generic crime film becomes something else that you analyze, maybe even figure out because you are now on alert.

Or The Sixth Sense...being told there is a twist could easily make me figure out the ending.

Just an opinion.



I'm 100% with TUS on this. I don't know if he's talking from experience or just in general, but I can tell you that, for me, being told there's a spoiler is the biggest spoiler you can give. If I know there's a twist, just tell me what it is because I'll be doing nothing else but working on the twist. I saw The Usual Suspects on the Friday it opened and they were talking about it on the radio. DJ said something along the lines of 'I'm not going to ruin it for anyone but you'll never see the twist coming.' Job done mate. I was confident about the reveal in the first scene they appeared.

Six Sense was another I worked out straight away, however, that film was so well done (or I became so wrapped up in it) that the film convinced me I was wrong until much later on when I decided I was right to begin with.
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It's hard to say. I feel that trailers and synopsis sometimes give too much away.

For example in Tucker and Dale vs. Evil --

SPOILER



The trailer gives away that the guys in the truck you think are creepy and possibly dangerous in the opening of the movie, are actually just a couple of dummies who are not dangerous or sinister at all.

But the trailer gives this away, and robs you of the surprise. But if the trailer didn't, they wouldn't be allowed to show near as much.

So it's a tough call.

Plus when I read Roger Ebert's review of The Last House on the Left, he gave away --


SPOILER

That the kidnappers coincidentally meet the parents of the murder victim and that the parents get revenge.

How could Ebert give a spoiler like that away!?



I just finished the excellent mini-series Sharp Objects. I kept away from twitter, etc. as it would have ruined it for me if I knew who dunnit. People knew because they’d read the book.

Nobody should post spoilers when something is in play, but when it’s over & done I think it’s okay.

If you don’t want to read spoilers stay away from forums like this & other entertainment sites.
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Good thread. Has slightly altered my perspective. True that being told there’s a spoiler constitutes a spoiler in itself, but I don’t know, I guess because I grew up in a cinephile family, we would constantly spoil things for each other. In my experience, often even if you know full well that happens “at the end”, you don’t know “how”, do you?

My mother is incredibly sensitive to spoilers. Militant about it, gets genuinely annoyed at people for discussing anything at all. It can turn into a proper argument. My father and I have to hide away.

It does perplex me in a sense, because to me, if you watch this many films, you’ll have a natural, intuitive understanding of all the tropes. Then everything becomes a spoiler. I remember I was a kid and something was on on TV. My parents turned it on halfway through and my mother says, “I don’t understand who this guy is, is he evil?” My father says, “Of course he’s evil! He just stomped a cigarette with his boot.”

That kind of thinking is flippant and doesn’t always pay off (I think in Breaking Bad we see Skinny Pete stomp on a bug for no reason, and he’s definitely not evil). But I feel like once you have a general idea of how films work, you’ll be able to gauge a lot from the kinds of things amateurs won’t even notice.

Then the question is, does the director try to work around that and keep you on your toes, therefore, arguably making highly sophisticated films for aficionados only, or does the director accept that you might occasionally get bored? Therein lies the difference between Lynch and Fincher, though I love both.



(I think in Breaking Bad we see Skinny Pete stomp on a bug for no reason, and he’s definitely not evil).
LOL. I loved Skinny Pete & Badger.



I'm very... very much against spoilers. If I find out about a film's twist or whatnot, it kinda turns me off of it. I know that a good/great film should stand on its own even if, but in most cases, directors and writers construct the film and the pace and narrative flow based on that twist. So, even though I can agree to a certain extent about that a film should stand on its own anyway, that doesn't diminish the importance of a twist and the effect a spoiler might have on the overall enjoyment of a film.

There are two main "spoiler" types that annoy me the most. First, there are the dumb people that for some reason feel they need to spoil a film whenever they're "selling" it to you. These are the kind of people that seem to be oblivious to the fact and just go "Oh man, that film was so good! In the end, John Doe comes back from the dead and does this or that!! You gotta see it!"... Well, not anymore, ****o. Cause you just told me what happens. I know I can't control what people say, but I just find it incredibly stupid.

The second one is the most prevalent now and is the social media guy that wants to be the first to post, tweet, share some big reveal. And I find that to be such a bad faith approach to the experience, especially because so many of these people think they're being so clever with how they reveal their stuff... Ugh.

Yeah, I know. I'm very passionate about it. I should hang out with @AgrippinaX's mother.
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Victim of The Night
I run a number of social media accounts, and I am constantly facing people in this day in age that are incredibly sensitive to spoilers. It's an entirely subjective term, so it is hard to quantify, but what do you deem a spoiler?

In my opinion, a spoiler is;

Plot point or twist. I guess you could argue it is the same thing.

I bring this up because the new Damien Chazelle movie 'First Man' has faced controversy for NOT including something in the film. So if I told you now what the film did NOT include, that may bother some of you. However, from my point of view I could go on forever about things it did NOT include. Catch my drift?
I think you're wrong. If it's a major point, frankly if it's anything significant that happens in the film or happens past, say, the 20-minute mark, I consider it a spoiler and the revealer of said information to be an inconsiderate jerk.
That's just my .02.



Victim of The Night
It's hard to say. I feel that trailers and synopsis sometimes give too much away.

For example in Tucker and Dale vs. Evil --

...But the trailer gives this away, and robs you of the surprise. But if the trailer didn't, they wouldn't be allowed to show near as much.

So it's a tough call.

Plus when I read Roger Ebert's review of The Last House on the Left, he gave away --

...How could Ebert give a spoiler like that away!?
I agree with you on both points. Strongly.
The T&DvE thing infuriates me. Really the whole contemporary thing of trailers basically giving away the whole movie and watching the film is really just an exercise in either enjoying or not enjoying the execution for 2 hours is like a major cultural shift to me and represents something that is deeply wrong in our modern perspective.
Ebert's failure - yes, it's a failure - is almost inexcusable for someone like him. Funny, I actually just read this review the other day and I was like, "Dude, what the actual f*ck?!"



Victim of The Night
I'm 100% with TUS on this. I don't know if he's talking from experience or just in general, but I can tell you that, for me, being told there's a spoiler is the biggest spoiler you can give. If I know there's a twist, just tell me what it is because I'll be doing nothing else but working on the twist. I saw The Usual Suspects on the Friday it opened and they were talking about it on the radio. DJ said something along the lines of 'I'm not going to ruin it for anyone but you'll never see the twist coming.' Job done mate. I was confident about the reveal in the first scene they appeared.

Six Sense was another I worked out straight away, however, that film was so well done (or I became so wrapped up in it) that the film convinced me I was wrong until much later on when I decided I was right to begin with.
Yeah, this also infuriates me. If you tell me a movie has a twist, you can just go ahead and die.



The whole notion of 'spoilers' is fairly recent, so Ebert wasn't doing anything spectacularly inappropriate for the time. I've read dozens if not hundred of older reviews, from established critics, which generally explain the entire plot of a film. It's pretty common.



As a person who definitely wants his films spoiled as little as possible going in, I get the anxiety and anger people have towards those who liberally talk about every little surprise a film offers. It's a pretty obviously obnoxious thing to do, especially how well understood it is now that you should have a little sense about how much you give away about a film you've seen. But at the same time, it has gotten to the point where it is now almost impossible to tell what can or can't be talked about openly anymore. Technically, almost anything can ruin the experience of a film if learned before hand. It's made it so no one can even openly talk about film in any kind of detail anymore unless they hide virtually everything behind spoiler text, which discourages most people from reading anything out of fear that the spoiler may be the kind of thing they don't want spoiled. Frankly, it's gotten stupid, and I wouldn't be surprised it is one of the many elements that has essentially destroyed film criticism over the last ten years or so.



I agree with you on both points. Strongly.
The T&DvE thing infuriates me. Really the whole contemporary thing of trailers basically giving away the whole movie and watching the film is really just an exercise in either enjoying or not enjoying the execution for 2 hours is like a major cultural shift to me and represents something that is deeply wrong in our modern perspective.
Ebert's failure - yes, it's a failure - is almost inexcusable for someone like him. Funny, I actually just read this review the other day and I was like, "Dude, what the actual f*ck?!"
Seeing as this is a spoilers thread, you would think people would realise that quoting previous posts removed spoiler tags, so that whatever was originally hidden is clearly visible in the reply… (This was meant in reference to @ironpony’s post that was quoted).

I agree with @crumbsroom that it feels like a rather extreme contemporary issue that I’d argue stems partly from pervasive social media use.

To me a good review, which may not be synonymous with but occasionally will constitute simply an engaging essay, must involve deep discussion, which is impossible without going into the detail/including spoilers . This feels like going around in circles by now.