There was some recent anger in the Hobbit fandom from someone who had read the book so long ago, she’d forgotten that Thorin Oakenshield, Kili, and Fili all die in the end, and was pissed that a fanfiction spoiled the third movie for her. General consensus was that she should get over it, and not read fanfics for 70 year old stories if she doesn’t want to know how they end.
Still, giving away the ending on a TV show is a bit different. I have a feeling the studio wasn’t exactly thrilled with Miss Hathaway.
I didn’t know who died in Les Mis before seeing the Liam Neeson movie, or that Darth was Luke’s father before seeing Empire (or about the ending of Sixth Sense, but I saw that one when it came out, so doesn’t really count). You’re not born knowing this stuff, and I think even for the really famous ones plenty of people manage to make it to the original film/book/etc without spoilers.
Plus, its not like deaths in Les Mis are anywhere close to the Skywalker family tree as far as pop-culture presence goes.
Hey I knew about Darth but managed to totally not discover the identity of the Emperor until I watched the movies. I really didn’t know, and I am VERY good at avoiding spoilers most of the time.
I’ve told this one before, but during college I was working at a video store and a woman came in to rent Oliver Stone’s “JFK.” As I’m ringing her up, I jokingly lean over and in a hushed voice say, “Ya know he dies in the end, right?” She was NOT amused.
Yeah, but the deaths in Le Mis are nowhere close to that shocking. You know they are coming and Valjean’s death really is equivalent to Dorothy going home at the end of The Wizard of Oz, it’s just the close of the story. Fantine is more or less only in the story so she can die, it’s the reason for her existence as a character (sort of).
This spoilerphobia has nothing to do with ruining a movie (if knowing the ending ruins a movie, no one would ever watch a movie more than once), and all to do with snarky phony outrage in order to get attention.
I’ve known the endings of The Crying Game, Psycho, King Kong, It’s a Wonderful Life*** and dozens of films made from books I already have read and I still enjoyed them just as much. And a recent study indicates this is true of everyone. Spoilers don’t necessarily ruin the experience, and the current moral outrage about them is ridiculous.
*The National Lampoon had an article in the 1970s called “spoilers,” which gave endings for about a hundred films and popular books. I read it many a time and before I saw quite a few of the works.
There was an anecdote that Toots Shor, the New York restaurant owner, used to tell about himself. Somebody gave him tickets for Hamlet, the kind of play he would never have gone to on his own. He said, “I bet I was the only one in the audience who went back in after intermission just to find out how it came out!”
Being upset about learning that Fantine dies is like being upset at learning that Uncle Soondead and Aunt Gonnabiteit don’t survive A New Hope. It’s preliminary action that kicks off the main plot and the internal struggle of Valjean regarding what it means to be moral.
