Avoiding Spoilers & Reveals

[isiolia]

While I don't really think anyone is exactly a captain of wit for deliberately spoiling things for people (it's a dick move, plain and simple), I don't think the whole concept of spoiler culture has made for very good storytelling.

To a fair extent, I think it's less a change in how stories are told (barring changes like fixed movie start times), and more the sheer volume of information that we're subjected to these days. Practically anything has that surge of attention in any number of new channels, social media discussions, to memes or whatnot posted on image boards. Since it can be difficult to precisely filter out exactly what you see on those, having that polite window of time to avoid spoilers is appropriate.

I'd tend to agree though, that the responsibility (such as it is) does shift as time goes on. It may still be polite to ask, warn, or require extra steps to see spoilers, but at some point it's on the folks who have yet to see a movie (or whatever) to actively avoid that info. Good stories, of course, still hold up regardless, but it may be a different ride.


Personally, while I'd agree it's harder to do now, I can't say I find it nigh impossible to avoid spoilers. Sure, as mentioned, there tends to be a lot of information out there ahead of time, but usually, the peak time for that is within the window of people actively trying not to spoil a new release. Makes it fairly easy for me to avoid things that are going to dive into the details. By the time that fair window has ended, chances are, media attention has moved on. Either way, I just take it more on myself to avoid soaking up information on something I want to go into fresh.

[MrPopo]

I think the only way a spoiler can ruin my enjoyment of something is if, when I had experienced that in a blind go, I would be upset enough that I wouldn't want to experience the story again (or even cease engagement in the first place and not finish). This would be some sort of unearned twist with no setup, or something similar. Let's use Star Wars, as an example. If the big twist in Empire was that Boba Fett was Luke's father it'd be stupid; there's no reason for it. Having Darth Vader be Luke's father creates a connection between the primary villain and hero, and ties in with the story Obi Wan first told of the connection between what Luke thought were two separate people. Now, if you rewatch it you can see that this probably wasn't always intended from the get-go (hence the certain point of view conversation), but it was able to work. And while you lose the immediate emotional impact of the "WHAT?!" when you experience it in the movie blind, it doesn't harm the overall narrative to know it ahead of time. Another good Star Wars spoiler example; the marketing for Attack of the Clones was very careful to never show Yoda being anything but ancient and sage. So then we have the climactic scene where Dooku has just disarmed Anakin and has Obi Wan down and out. All hope seems lost, but then we hear the tap, tap, tap of a cane. The theater went NUTS when we realized that Yoda was here and about to throw down. If that had been spoiled for me going into the movie I would have lost that "no way!" and instead have gone in with anticipation of "I can't wait to see Yoda kick some ass!"

[Ziggy]

I wanted to bring up a Star Wars example, actually, but I didn't want to post a spoiler.

So... SPOILER if you haven't seen Star Wars Episode 7.

Even before the prequel trilogy, you always heard the story that Harrison Ford apparently told Lucas that he should kill off Han. That is apparently why they froze Han in Empire, because they didn't know if Ford would return. Then fast forward to Episode 7, I believe again Ford was quoted a few times as saying he had no interest in continuing the role or something along those lines. So when I watched Episode 7 for the first time, I was not at all shocked when Han was killed. Like, 0% shock value.

[Ack]

I generally don't care about spoilers. People tend to talk immediately about things upon release, so doing something as simple as hopping onto a forum I enjoy may ruin my day if I let seeing a spoiler do it. Instead, I learned to accept that media has a variety of other things which interest me, so even if I know a twist is there, there is so much more about a work that I can appreciate. Sure, a character may die or something, but it's not about that, it's about how they got to that point and how that death was written/shot/handled...

...unless I find a "twist" so ballsy that I am in awe. Then I find the twist so devastating that I refuse to even talk about what it was in. There is a 35-year-old movie I refuse to even name because of how ballsy the twist is. I want to recommend it to you, but now that I've said there is a twist, I can't.

[prfsnl_gmr]

If I’ve told you once, Ack, I’ve told you 1000 times....Everyone expected Mahoney and Hightower to graduate in Police Academy. There’s nothing daring about it, and it isn’t a twist ending at all.

[Ack]

If I’ve told you once, Ack, I’ve told you 1000 times....Everyone expected Mahoney and Hightower to graduate in Police Academy. There’s nothing daring about it, and it isn’t a twist ending at all.

HOW DARE YOU RUIN THAT CINEMATIC MASTERPIECE

[Ziggy]

We've been mainly speaking of the story and plot points. But what about gameplay?

On one hand, trailers for video games need to reveal the gameplay to help you decide if you want to buy it or not. On the other hand, sometimes there's so much pre-release content out there that it's a little nutty.

For example, Super Mario Maker 2 had a TON of videos before it was released. Every 2 minute trailer had an hour long video picking it apart! But, being the type of game that it is, that's not really ruining the experience for you. But there must be something to spoiling gameplay because a lot of us were using spoiler tags in the Bloodstained thread.

[bmoc]

Ack was clearly talking about The Muppets Take Manhattan. Instead of actually taking over Manhattan, Kermit and Ms. Piggy just got married. I mean, who saw that one coming?

More on topic though...I have been actively avoiding all the Astral Chain videos that are being posted by Nintendo. Apparearly they have posted a good portion of the game in various trailers. They had me with the first trailer. When I saw that the others were 10+ minutes of gameplay, I just ignored them so that I could be surprised when I get around to playing it.

I suppose these sorts of videos could sway someone on the fence but I knew they weren't for me.

[Ack]

Nemoide had a pretty sensible approach. He asked me to give him the names of five movies with the one mixed in, so I did. He admittedly never said they had to be good movies.

[pierrot]

I feel like this partly comes down to whether or not someone tends to like surprises. How much I personally care about spoilers can really be on a case by case basis (don't really care about Avengers spoilers, because the only MCU movie I've seen is Black Panther, I don't really buy that any of the others are really all that great, and I probably won't ever watch them anyway). There are also times where I would rather be surprised by something that's new to me no matter how old it is. It's probably not necessary for everyone to stop talking about anything I haven't played/seen/read before, though. Without even really trying, I've managed to avoid any real "spoilers" for Zelda II for my entire life. Although it's also possible (maybe even likely) that I just forgot about them because I didn't really have enough context for anything to stick with me.

At any rate. I think there's really a middle ground that's not that difficult to achieve, and would make people on both sides of the discussion happy.