I hate people who spoil things unasked with the fire of a thousand suns. I am super super super careful to hesitate and not say something, or, if I am asked, say “That’s plot-relevant, are you sure you want me to tell you?”
To the point that I do avoid news and reviews and comments about upcoming books and movies.
And somebody spoiled the big Harry Potter secret for me, as they were handing me the book to borrow. I looked at her like she had just kicked my puppy. This was after a couple of weeks of avoiding threads, news, comments, reviews on it. GAH!
Were you lying to your husband to get a rise out of him, or did you not realize that Paul Rudd’s character was Paris? You were messing with him right? Because that’s not what happened to Mercutio in the play or the movie either…
The worst spoiler I ever blurted out was accidental. See, we were just finished watching the Sixth Sense, and my little brother got home whle the credits were rolling just in time to hear me say I can’t believe I didn’t realize he was a ghost earlier.
For some reason, the novelization of “The Empire Strikes Back” came out a week or two before the movie, and I read it. I wound up telling my brother and all my friends that Darth Vader was Luke’s father. They were not amused.
This is the funniest time I’ve ever been non-spoiled, although I thought I had been.
I’ve never read the LOTR trilogy. I tried once, back in high school, but I was never a fan of Tolkein in general–I find him to be a bit ponderous, and his descriptions are overly long. So when the movies came out, and my husband made me watch them, I came to them with as little knowledge of the plot as one could have. I watched the first two on DVD, and then ROTK came out in the theaters.
The day before release date, I was on LiveJournal, and someone had an icon that said:
On (release date), LEGOLAS DIES!
I told my husband I had been spoiled as to the ending thanks to some tool on the internet and was really bummed. My husband, goofball that he is, didn’t tell me that what I had read was completely wrong, and let me watch the entire movie thinking that he was going to be some tearful casualty at the end. When it was over, and I brought it up, he laughed at me for a good five minutes.
I’m having trouble believing that. I know I’m not the only person who ever re-reads a book or re-watches a movie; what’s the point of doing that, if the plot is so important that if it’s spoiled, it ruins the whole thing?
To me, plot is important, but it’s far from the most important part of a book. Any book I like, I’ll end up re-reading it, sometimes many times. Things like mysteries that hinge primarily on plot can sometimes be good reads, but I never really consider them great books because once you know the plot, that’s all there is.
Because the repeat watchings are different experiences. I like forming my first impression on the first time through, then comparing and contrasting future experiences if I choose to read/see it again. I would rather create my own first impression than rely on the viewpoint of someone else’s and have it shade my first perspective irrevocably.
Movies with Big Reveals are prime for this - you can watch the first time, make your guesses, then go through and see it again, or just discuss it with others, and look for any hints, glimpses, or foreshadowing of what the secret is, or find places where the filmmakers deliberately mislead you into believing the cover story. You can do the same with books, and often (since I read quickly) I will find details that I missed in my first reading that aren’t even related to a secret, or will find things that I barely remembered if there was a passage of time between readings. But major plot details? Those can’t be unremembered.
I still remember the time I was spoiled by my dad. My dad goes absolutely apeshit if you breathe in the wrong direction when discussing a movie or plot that might be spoilable. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t even seen it yourself and you’re just talking about a preview…you’re discussing the movie! Stop!
So he VCRed Star Trek the Next Generation because I was at a friend’s house and couldn’t watch it. It was the one where Picard was kidnapped by a mysterious entity and transported to a holding cell with three other people and they’re all trying to figure out what brought them here, who brought them here and what the heck was going on.
So 20 minutes into the episode, my dad wanders by and says
“So have you figured out which one of them did it?”
What the? seriously? They hadn’t even hinted at the possibility of it being one of the other prisoners yet! Why the heck did you just ask me that?
But that was 18 years ago and clearly I must be over it by now.
A few years ago, the night after the season premiere of South Park. I had a food delivery job at the time, and arrived at a customer’s house who answered the door laughing. He said “sorry, just watching the new South Park.” So I immediately blurted out “I can’t believe they killed Chef! Uh, I mean… the show isn’t over, is it?” :smack:
This might be a factor – I often don’t care if the plot is spoiled, for various reasons that other people have already described. HOWEVER, I need to be the person who asks for spoilers, I most definitely do not want someone else just blurting it out when I’m not expecting it.
Book spoiler don’t bother me. I have been known to flip to the end of a book - Under The Dome was a good example. I had gotten so far and just wanted to know if they ever got the damn thing down.
Once I knew, I could enjoy the rest of the book in peace.
Actually, I don’t care all that much about spoilers either. A lot of times I will read spoilered discussions of tv shows and movies on message boards and stuff, and then usually have forgotten while I’m watching, either because the names didn’t mean anything to me before I started watching or because the movie occupies all of my attention and I don’t start thinking about things to come.
However, even beyond that, sometimes books and movies are better to watch when you know what happens. Maybe not better, but a different experience. Sure, maybe being on the edge of your seat not knowing is fun once, but so is seeing things you missed out on later. Also, even if spoilered, you can look at it as trying to guess how that particular sequence of events will come about.
But to answer the question, I once intentionally said something like “That thing is RED, so it must be important” when walking through while someone was watching “The Sixth Sense” for the first time – I didn’t think it was too much of a spoiler, but he got mad at me for that.
My sister mentioned to me that she and her boyfriend were watching the first season of Dexter. Somehow, my mind put “watched” in there instead. So I started talking about how the television show was much better than the book, especially in building up the fact that
The Ice Truck killer was Dexter’s brother.
My sister yelled at me for awhile, and then had to go and find her boyfriend and tell him the same spoiler just so she wouldn’t have suffered alone.
I actually managed to almost spoil a movie for myself! My then-boyfriend’s quick action caused me to forget what I had done until after the credits rolled.
The movie was The Usual Suspects. I’d managed to miss the big reveal in the over ten years that the movie had been out. I had expressed strong reluctance to seeing it based on one actor who played a main character in the movie, but I was talked into watching it.
Okay, so Kevin Spacey always creeps me out. And he’s got a rather distinctive voice, so what’s the first thing I say when Keyser Sose opens his mouth? “See? Creepy!” Boyfriend, remembering that I had managed to remain insulated from the movie, just replied in a soothing voice, “No, that’s Keyser Sose.” I, of course, completely bought it.
I would say Fight Club is definitely one of those movies where the movie’s impact is completely lost if you find out the big secret at the wrong time. Sure, the movie stands up to repeated viewings due to all of the delicious foreshadowing, but that feeling when it all falls in place is what makes it the first time around.
Citizen Kane, on the other hand, IMO benefits from you knowing the big secret coming in. I mean, if sighI had found out that Rosebud was his sled at the end of the movie instead of years before like everyone born after 1941, my reaction wouldn’t have been “Oh, how sad, his whole life he was trying to regain the happiness of his youth” like I actually had, but something more like, “A SLED? A FUCKING SLED? THAT WAS THE BIG MYSTERY?”
The closest I’ve come was on this very message board. Someone posted a thread idly wondering if, in the last couple seconds before you die, time seems subjectively stretched out to infinity for you so it feels to you that you do “experience” eternity. I of course answered It’s longer than you think!
Some people considered this a huge spoiler, but IMO, if you don’t know what that’s referring to then nothing will be spoilered. On the other hand, I haven’t read the original story, so it may have been a key mystery phrase which is only solved later at the reveal. On the third hand, I haven’t read the original story, but I still know the phrase, so how obscure can it be?
Did your husband miss the prologue that says “A pair of star crossed lovers take their lives”? In fact, in Lehrman’s movie that prologue is repeated 3 times. I mean, it’s spoiled in the first 30 seconds.
Were you lying to your husband to get a rise out of him, or did you not realize that Paul Rudd’s character was Paris? You were messing with him right? Because that’s not what happened to Mercutio in the play or the movie either…