Spoiler Alert: you’re all driving me crazy.
We once again have come upon Summer Movie Season, the Holiest Time of the year for a Young Bad Shakespeare, as we askew the sun and delve deep into the heart of a darkened, air conditioned movie theater and go to see our heroes on the big screen. Whether it’s Tony Stark saving the world solo as Iron Man, or Captain Kirk doing Captain Kirk things, or Superman returning to us in a movie that won’t break our hearts (Damn you, Brandon Routh) summer movie season is now upon us. Let us all rejoice and break out the extra big tubs of popcorn in celebration.
That being said, everyone needs to calm down with the spoiler alerts. People have been acting lately like spoilers, any spoilers (including movie trailers, which are legally obligated to show you the best parts, turning even the stupidest Adam Sandler comedy into, hey... I want to see that) are personally coming into their house, stealing their kittens, and feeding them to an evil dragon I’ve just named the Spoilerator. He’s big and instead of breathing fire he breaths the name of the villain in the new Star Trek movie, or the twist ending of After Earth where it turns out the movie may not suck. He’s evil, that one.
But really, people you’re going to far with trying to avoid the “shocking twist” which really isn’t that shocking.
The most annoying came in the form of a “shocking twist!” of a movie I wanted to see, but missed in the theaters called The Loneliest Planet. It was about a couple that went on a hike, then something twisty happened, an no reviewer on the planet could spoil it because your enjoyment of the movie would then be robbed and fed to the Spilerator and your future children would then have to live with the shame that you were “spoiled” by the “shocking twist!” that occurred in the first fifteen minutes of the movie. I’m going to ruin it here. The couple is threatened by a gunman, then the man hides behind the woman. The rest of the movie is her dealing with his cowardice. I hate to break it to everyone, that’s not a spoiler, that’s the plot of the movie.
We’ve gotten to the point where people debate how trailers, which often are the best part of the movie experience sometimes, are obviously spoilers because they show scenes from it, and they want to stay spoiler-free. You’re not staying spoiler-free, you’re being ridiculous. You’re not watching the thing that tells you what the movie will be about. Yes, sometimes it tells you too much. Most of the time, it just tells you that this part will be explody, and this actor is in it.
The funny thing is, sometimes spoilers become iconic. Such is the case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which was the Fight Club of it’s day. Originally, back when the internet was a bunch of people meeting at a bar and discussing what they read, no one knew about the shocking ending where it turned out they were the same person. (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Not Tyler Durden and the narrator, although I guess that counts as a spoiler, too. And technically the same spoiler, I guess.) The shower scene in Psycho was once a huge spoiler, and trailers for the movie begged you to get there on time as to not ruin it for you and everyone. (Fun fact: before then people would just show up to the movies any time, like rude people do now. This helped to set movie times. LEARNING!)
Basically, this is an impassioned plea from everyone to please calm down about spoilers. Also, if you manage to see Iron Man before me, please don’t ruin the end credit tag that leads into Avengers 2.
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