For instance (spoilering this because the thread question has not yet been answered)
(Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows spoiler)
[spoiler] When can we discuss The whole Professor Snape= Good guy afterall thing? I always felt there was something good about Snape (Maybe it was Dumbledore’s trust in him and being unable to contemplate the possibility that dumbledore’s trust could be misplaced)
edi: In fact I am itching to talk about this. I even think there are parts in the books where (intended or not) I get the hint that there is a tiny hint of ill-supressed affection in the way that Snape interacts with the only son of the woman he loved[/spoiler]
If people are discussing, say the various bad guys Alan Rickman has played and you come in and throw out that of course he doesn’t always play bad guys, because for instance Snape wound up being a good guy even though he killed Dumbledore, well that would just be out of line. You’d want to spoiler that a bit, because people might not be expecting it and there’s no reason to not be a bit circumspect.
Now, if you were talking about some relatively minor point (nothing I could think of felt right to mention without a spoiler … sorry) or if the thread was already about Snape, or if someone had said open spoilers were okay, maybe that’s a different issue.
Back during the first season of 24, when the 24 Club was basically me, Munch, Montfort, and the occasional passer-by, someone came into the “Please don’t discuss 24 with me” thread and told us about Teri’s amnesia. Kind of rude, y’know? (See how I spoilered something that kind of came up out of nowhere, and someone might not have expected to have pop up in this thread?)
Spoilers are easy enough; you should always err on the side of politeness. I say if the effectiveness of a work relies in some degree on a spoilable plot point, no matter how old it is, it’s more polite to avoid spoilers.
If the film won at least one Oscar, and it was long ago enough that the awful haircuts the cast/crew had during their acceptence speeches are coming back into style, it’s safe to forego the spoiler space.
Back in the late '70’s Robert Kline was to be the guest host on SNL. He did a commercial in which he told people to watch him because the only other things on that night were old movies. He then gave away the major plot points to “Psyco” and “Citisen Kane” I have never forgave him.
I was actually kind of ticked off by a Peanuts comic strip that gave away a Citizen Kane plotpoint (of course, the subject of the strip was that Lucy was spoiling the movie for Linus, who was watching it for the first time). I read the strip way before I saw the movie, and still remembered the spoiler when I finally did see it. A minor plot point, really, and not even the reason to watch Citizen Kane… but still.
I think lissener’s suggestion is best; if a story relies on a plot point, be kind and spoiler it. Suggesting there’s a time limit on spoilers ignores the fact that there will always be new generations of viewers/readers for any given work. I had Citizen Kane spoiled for me forty years after its release.
My feeling is that there should be a expiration date on spoilers. Yeah, you can be “spoiled” by finding out that Rosebud is Luke’s father and Soylent Green is the name of his sister and I agree that you should spoiler new and recent releases, but I think that by the time a movie is out on DVD or the book is out in paperback then 99% of the people who have already seen it or read it. If not, it obviously wasn’t that high of a priority to them anyway.
And I know that some of you disagree. To each their own.
FWIW, I really want this shirt. (Spoilers? Oh yes, there are spoilers.)
I’m sorry to take issue with this, but you are clearly out of touch with the way movies work nowadays. Sad to say, the theatrical release of a film is little more than an extended trailer for the DVD, and huge numbers of people don’t watch a movie until they can Netflix it.
I’m one of those, and I stay out of threads that are about a specific work I plan to watch or read until I’ve done so. I think in a broader survey thread such as “Surprise Endings You Saw Coming” which invite references to a variety of works I’d appreciate spoiler coding for things released in the last 12 months.
Of course in 2006 a colleague stomped out of the room cursing because I said Soylent Green is people One would think that 30 years is long enough…
I think once the Simpsons quotes that parody a movie are well known it’s probably okay to skip the tags.
1.) If a movie is still in theaters, you cannot have spoilers. There is still a reasonable expectation to see the movie.
2.) If a movie is out of theaters, but won some sort of important award, you cannot have spoilers. A lot of times movies win awards after their theatrical run and the award generates more buzz to see the movie.
3.) If the “twist” is an important part of the movie, like say,
The Usual Suspects …you cannot have spoilers. Period. Don’t do it.
There is one exception. If a movie has been around long enough for there to have been two media format shifts between its release and now (making it difficult to see an original release with current technology), and if that twist is so widely known to have become part of the Collective Knowledge, it’s okay to have spoilers. Everyone knows the end of Soylent Green without having seen it. So are you really spoiling it?
…then again, some movies are so valuable that even as classics, and even as often spoiled as they are, you probably shouldn’t spoil them. Citizen Kane shouldn’t ever be spoiled.
