I recently posted a thread about an old movie from the 1950s (12 Angry Men), and provided spoiler warnings. More than one person replied jokingly that they were grateful for the spoiler warning for a 70-year-old movie. I’ve heard the same comment in one form or another many times over the years, and I really don’t get it.
What’s the expectation here? That we’re all LLMs who’ve been trained on every movie released prior to 2010? It would be literally impossible to watch every film - even excluding obscure or foreign films - that humankind has produced since the beginning of cinema. I’m a huge movie fan who watches 2 or 3 new (to me) movies a week from pretty much every era, but I had only watched this very famous movie from the '50s in the last year, because I’m not a magic space baby with a brain containing all of the film scripts in history. The more films that are made every year, the less they will be watched by future generations, because time is a straight line and we haven’t figured out how to pause the fucker yet so we can all catch up on 100 years of film.
I’m grateful that this old movie hadn’t been spoiled for me, because I wasn’t even an itch in my father’s nutsack, nor he in his, when the film was first released. But the jokes in that thread would seem to imply that I would have had no right to be annoyed if the film had been spoiled for me, because… what? I should have had the good sense to be born during the depression instead of the '80s? I should have a working knowledge of every story every told prior to my birth? The fact that this very famous and very old film hadn’t been spoiled for me shows that even very famous and very old movies don’t automatically weave themselves into the fabric of your reality by the mere force of time itself. I had no clue what the movie was about beyond the very basic premise, because even spoilers for old movies are hard to come by when there’re so many movies in existence. The jokes would only make sense if the opposite were the case.
If you care about spoiling films for other people, then there is really no time frame for a film’s release that makes it ‘fair game’. People have varied and unpredictable lives when it comes to the media they’ve consumed, and more often than not they’re busy watching the current output of Hollywood rather than watching their grandparents’ favourite films featuring actors who are all long dead, and before colour image was even technologically possible. The noble spoiler warning should be eternal.
And all of the above also applies to novels, plays, TV shows, video games, and anything else where spoilers might ruin one’s first taste of it. Spoiler warnings are free, but they can conjure great cultural value seemingly out of thin air for those who are protected by them.
First, avoiding spoilers often means not discussing what are arguably the most interesting parts of the movie.
Second, asking the entire world to not talk about something just so you personally don’t hear something about a movie you may, not even necessarily will, watch, is wildly selfish.
Third, spoilers don’t matter. Movies are about so much more than a twist. Cinematography, acting, story, direction, etc. are so much more important. We as humans rewatch plenty of movies when we already know the story or twist and happily enjoy them anyway.
If you care about discussing films with other people, then there is really no time frame for a films release that makes it fair to prevent talking about it.
I absolutely agree, specially as someone who rarely watches stuff as they get released.
No matter what you do, someone is always going to complain
Putting spoiler tags is always the right thing to do, even when it might seem unnecessary
You should have used spoiler tagged i could have learned that myself.
Haha god damn it
Appropriate? Fine. Necessary? Lol no
People get way too upset about spoilers is my unpopular opinion.
I remember I spoiled Jurassic Park 1995 for a coworker who wandered into our conversation. They spent a minute doing performative stressing over how they now have the experience ruined.
I asked when they were planning on watching it.
Some day, they said.
Oh fuck off.
It’s been ages since I watched Jurassic park but what could the spoiler possibly be? The dinosaurs escape? They have a predictable happy ending and get out okay? It’s a good movie but it’s not really a “plot twist” kind of movie
You’re entitled to your opinion. I can’t stand spoilers. My SOs are entire family are horrible walking spoiler machines. It’s very frustrating, I do not discuss anything I have my already consumed with them
I’m convinced that the whole concept of spoilers is driven mkre by modern marketing agencies than genuine original feelings.
“You NEED to hurry up and see the latest movie, in theaters, or else your coworkers will spoil it for you!”
“You NEED to buy and play this $80 bug-filled game as soon as it launches or else you might stumble across a comment on the internet that SPOILs IT!!!”
“You NEED to watch the SuperBowl or whatever else on live TV (and coincidentally sit through all of the advertisements) or else someone will SpOiL it for you!!!”
Great stories can stand up to being told over and over again. In fact, they’re usually BETTER on subsequent experiences because you can pick up on little hints of foreshadowing. I’ve never heard anyone say “I’ve only read Lord of the Rings once because it’s boring once you know how it ends”.
For me, I don’t want spoilers because I want to enjoy the first time watching a movie as the first time to experience it, like the director intended. I want to know enough to judge whether I’d be interested in it, but don’t mention a twist or something major happening in the plot. I’d rather be lost in the story and surprised at the twist or whatever the story may bring.
That’s exactly it for me. The moment I discover I might want to watch something, I immediately avoid anything related to it. Stupidly, I probably only watch ~20-40% of those 😅
But yeah. I don’t want the marketing firm’s take, I don’t want to know what the Internet or friends think, none of that. That’s fun after. I exclusively want to experience what the artists involved intended to deliver. What kind of jackass interrupts that?!
Previews and everything else are a bane on dope art.
Yeah I agree.
This just ignores that being concerned about spoilers has existed for longer than modern marketing strategies. People have been concerned about having their first-time experience with a piece of media spoiled since at least the 50s. The end credits to Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1955 film Les Diaboliques includes a card with an early anti-spoiler message from the director. Similarly, Alfred Hitchcock asked audiences not to reveal the ending of his 1960 thriller Psycho, saying “Please don’t give away the ending, it’s the only one we have.” The term “spoilers” itself in that context has been around since the 70s.
People still cared about having the story of certain story-rich games spoiled way before games were able to be patched after the fact and it became normal to ship out a buggy, unfinished mess.
It’s simply that some people care about having an untarnished first experience and feeling that wow moment of a plot twist being revealed in the way it was intended. That’s all there is to it. It isn’t some hairbrained conspiracy
And , I’ll be the first for you. I’ve only read Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit once because I find it incredibly boring to re-read a story that I have already read before because I know how the story goes already. I would much rather read something new than go back and re-read something.
How upset is too upset?
If you get mad at me in any context because I accidentally spoiled something for you then thats too upset.
A few of my favorite pieces of media are things I watched because I got the ending or twist spoiled and was like “that’s fucking awesome”. Would have never picked them up otherwise.
I think it greatly depends on the media and what the spoiler is.
If it’s a story where the big twist is the thing that makes it so great, or if the depth of the story is greatly amplified when you can get immersed before a big event occurs, then spoilers are purely an asshole thing to give without warning or permission.
Though if it’s just Disney slop where the whole damn thing is formulaic and rather predictable anyways, then what ever, spoil away.
Yeah I’ve never cared, nor do I understand why others care so much. Nothing will replace the actual experience of consuming a piece of media so I couldn’t care less if I know how it ends or find out what the “twist” is.
Well if we’re out sharing unpopular opinions then here are mine:
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Add spoiler warnings if you want, but there should be a statute of limitations and every discussion regarding movie and TV can’t consider if everyone present has seen it or if they plan to. Most references are to memes that are so ingrained in culture now anyway. Darth Vader’s “no, I am your father” is hardly a spoiler anymore.
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People are over concerned about spoilers generally. The surprise element is a very tiny proportion of the value of the art. You could literally tell me the ending of Se7en or Sixth Sense and I will argue that my enjoyment of good art is not affected at all. Everyone doesn’t need to be as extreme as me, but the over reliance on the surprise element of art is bordering on absurd now. Even saying “there is a twist” is considered a spoiler.
The Closer Look channel has an excellent video on how spoilers make a movie better (on Nebula currently, will take another week to get onto YouTube)…although he is talking about the intentional use of spoilers by the creator, I think the message carries over to all media.
Adding to #2, I recently read this article: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/spoiler-alert-spoilers-make-you-enjoy-stories-more
For #2, I’d definitely say it depends on the type of spoiler. Merely giving away the general events isn’t going to ruin good media. Though if someone is basically in effect recreating the whole scene(s) lazily in a different medium, then that can ruin the ability to experience it in the same way.
I would liken it to how the Red Wedding in GoT was portrayed in its own media: As done in the earlier seasons, it was a crazy surprise of an experience. If it happened in season 8, it would’ve been a shitty, “here are the things that happened” kind of portrayal and it would’ve been kinda’ what ever.
That’s not even speaking to spoilers, but story telling in general. If they’re doing a shitty job of telling the story, spoiler context or no, then it’ll kinda’ ruin the story either way. Spoilers are themselves story telling. It’s not all black and white good or bad. It’s how it’s done and what is covered that makes it good or bad.
Though with spoilers, it’s far less likely that people are going to try to really do it justice, especially in a meta-context like talking about the show, so spoilers are more often given in poor form for story telling.
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They all end with credits. Come at me.
Some older movies just end with The End, because all the credits appear at the beginning of the movie while the overture plays.
Jeez! Put a spoiler warning on this comment!
You horrid beast.
You’re also wrong, because most old movies begin with the credits, nah nah.
Whoa! Spoilers!
😆
I think it’s fine for you to put spoiler warnings on stuff if you want to. I also think it’s fine for someone to make a joke about you putting spoiler warnings on a post about a 70 year old movie.
(On a personal note, I don’t think you could spoil 12 Angry Men by knowing the outcome. I feel like it’s somewhat predictable, but it’s the interactions that make it a great film anyway.)
And, if someone has written a post/article about a movie or book or whatever, and I don’t want spoilers, I think it’s up to me to decide whether or not I should take the risk of reading the post. If I’m reading about something that is already out and there happens to be a spoiler in it, that’s on me. Hell, I don’t even like watching trailers if I don’t want a movie spoiled. They are notorious for showing the ending and best scenes.
As you said, there is no time after a release that is fair game for spoilers - but to me that’s on the shoulders of the reader, not the writer, otherwise everything we write about will be a never-ending stream of spoiler warnings.
The only exception, in my opinion, is people who deliberately try to fool people into reading/seeing spoilers, e.g. by putting the spoiler in a post title or as part of something unrelated. Fuck those guys.
Totally valid opinion. Has my vote.
I’m with you. I just posted about the ending of Psycho the other day and put it behind a spoiler tag. Sure, most people who have heard of that movie have also heard about how it ends, but the ones who haven’t should still have the chance to experience it for themselves.
Rosebud...
…Was his sled!
I never understood why this is considered a spoiler. I’ve seen the movie twice and never once considered this a mystery anyone really had to solve.
And it is said in the opening scene of the movie.
Exactly. It’s like getting mad if someone tells you that in Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, Marley was dead to begin with.
The only time I spoil a movie on purpose is when I hate it so much I want to make sure no one gets tricked into watching it.
I would love to spoil Gods of Egypt for that very reason. No one deserves to sit through that pile of non-movie. Problem is that I have no memory of the plot, so it is impossible to spoil. You could probably convince me that anything happened in that film and I would believe you. All I know is that it was so anti-immersive, that I ended up becoming painfully aware of the fact that my friend and I were sitting in her apartment, in front of a black box that makes color and noise for two ours. It is that bad.
Btw, 12 Angry Men is a great movie. I think I had it spoiled for me back in the day, but I still thoroughly enjoyed the movie, because it’s not so much about the conclusion, it’s the journey through their conversations and arguments that makes the movie so appealing. In fact, I think that most people watching that film will know exactly where it ends up and roughly how it gets there, but the execution is still so fucking good that it doesn’t even matter.
Btw, if you’re still in the mood for oooooold movies that are great, I would highly recommend Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) which is a silent film about an unfaithful man who decides to kill his loving wife in order to be with his mistress. What happens after that is, in my opinion, one of the best silent films ever made. Fantastic acting, emotional music and beautiful visuals. You forget that you’re watching a silent film where no one is saying a word. You forget that it is in black and white. You forget that you have seen a hundred years og technical improvement in film. You are reminded that actual skill and quality is timeless. It made me cry the first time I saw it. It just fucking wrecked me in a way I didn’t expect and it is legit on my favourite movies of all time. It’s old enough that you can watch it on youtube or some other video hosting site without issue. If there is any achievement in this world that I would be proud of, it’s to know that I helped someone find this move.
You don’t have to put up spoiler warnings for old films, but it’s still thoughtful to do so.
I definitely put up spoilers for old films if I’m telling people to watch something and I think it is improved by the twist. But I also don’t think we as a collective society need to avoid openly talking about The Sixth Sense to protect people who haven’t seen it.
So I guess you’re not in the wrong to spoiler tagging, they’re not really in the wrong for thinking it’s funny to spoiler tag a movie that’s older than some of our grandparents. Unless they’re actually, legitimately, shitting on you for tagging spoilers, then they can fuck right off
I’m of the opinion that we can’t spoilerblock everything or even most things because we can’t know in advance what is in retrospective a spoilerblock-worthy piece of information (Darth Vader was Luke’s father? Eeeeehhh… Luke has at least one sibling? Eeeehhhhh… Abel was slain by Cain? Eeeehhhhh…). Plus, it makes conversation much more annoying and hard to follow, like one of those shitty redacted “Trump mention in the Epstein files” reports. Also, Trump is in the Epstein files? Not worth a spoilerblock, no matter how much it ages.
Heck, in a certain way it’s even better to not go overboard, when you are able to freely talk about old cinema that was by all accounts better than the cinema that we have now. Might inspire someone to go check.
tl;dr: Some respect is fine, but I won’t bend backwards or make conversations more complicated over it, nor do I expect others to do it for me.
we can’t know in advance what is in retrospective a spoilerblock-worthy piece of information (Darth Vader was Luke’s father? Eeeeehhh…
This one was obviously going to be a spoiler just based on how it was withheld from the cast and crew of the movie. The only 3 people on set during filming who knew about this were Irvin Kershner (the director), George Lucas, and Mark Hamill - obviously James Earl Jones knew, but his lines were recorded separately. David Prowse’s line on set was “No, Obi-Wan killed your father” so everyone working on the film assumed it was a completely different spoiler.
Soylent green isn’t what you expect it to be
Its dookie
Don’t fuckin’ eat it!
