The problem with "spoilers"

Mike Boody, Columnist
Published On: 11/ 3/2009

Stop reading this immediately if you don’t know and don’t care to know the twist endings of the following flicks: “The Sixth Sense,” “Fight Club,” “The Usual Suspects” and “The Empire Strikes Back.”

If someone told you these great turnarounds before you had the chance to see them, then I apologize for not getting to you sooner.

Spoilers. I’m not talking about no-chance political candidates who take votes from the competition, or those aerodynamic protrusions on the backs of our cars that reduce lift, or even those delinquent scavengers in the old cereal commercials that show up occasionally and put Captain Crunch in his place (actually I think those were the Soggies, but they’re one and the same, really). I’m talking about those unholy, inconsiderate folks you know who jump right in before you’ve had the chance to see a movie and tell you the ending without a second thought.

Spoilers. You know who you are. And if you don’t know the turnarounds of the flicks I just mentioned, then go ahead and keep reading. You deserve to be spoiled for once.

I don’t want to be dramatic, but the Spoilers are ruining America.

It’s not the mortgage crisis, the poor health care, or the ongoing wars we can’t get out of. But Spoilers. Pure and simple.

Maybe that was a tad dramatic, but humor me.

Spoiler alerts. What are they? If you don’t know, then you’re a Spoiler. Brad Pitt and Ed Norton are the same person in “Fight Club.” How does that feel?

The Spoiler alert seems understood and perfunctory, implied and mandatory.

It seems something one accepts in everyday life, out of thought of not spoiling the experience for others — like not going to work if you’re sick, or telling members of your hunting party to get out of the way before you shoot something.
It’s simple consideration. You learn it in grade school.

It all seems blatant, but still the Spoilers thrive — only to dismember the part of us interested in the fresh escapism and surprise element that comes along every time we check out a new flick. It’s like Darth Vader chopping off Luke’s hand at the end of “Empire,” then spouting off that most famous spoiler-candidate of all time, “I’m your father!”

It always surprises me when these Spoilers go to movies, find themselves surprised at the plot developments, and then go back out into the world to tell everyone what happened without thinking they might be surprised as well, and might want to share the same experience.

Why do they do this? Maybe I’ve been too hard on Spoilers, because perhaps they divulge stories in the first place because they don’t know any better. If they indeed don’t know any better, then you’re toast in a conversation about a flick you’ve yet to see. Here be some warning signs:
The Spoiler says to you, “Now I don’t wanna give away the ending, but…”

Of course they wanna give away the ending. The whole implication of this precursor is to give away some aspect of the ending that might imply the entire ending itself. What ends up happening is you spend nine bucks on the flick, put two and two together halfway through, and know the revelation long before it’s even revealed.

Example: “Now, I don’t wanna give away the ending to ‘The Usual Suspects,’ but Kevin Spacey isn’t always telling the truth.” Translation: Kevin Spacey is Kaiser Sőze.

2. “I couldn’t stand that ending! It was so stupid!”
If you’re ever talking to someone and they pull this line on you, you better leave. It doesn’t matter if it’s President Obama talking to you about “The Sixth Sense” in the Oval Office; if you ever want to see “The Sixth Sense” with some surprise, you better excuse yourself like you just drank a quart of laxative. These Einsteins-in-Reverse will assume that since they didn’t like the ending, no one else will either, and therefore, it’s okay to tell them what happened. This recently happened to me when someone divulged the ending of “Orphan” because they hated it so much. They were well within their means to hate the ending, because it really was a stupid twist, but still, you never know if someone may like it.

There’s really something much more serious under the surface of the Spoiler. They might starve for attention, find difficulty searching for things to talk about, or have trouble telling jokes. This tripod of social ineptitude forms the natural formula for major league movie spoiling. They hope to get attention, conversation and laughs out of revealing the plots for movies you mention you’d like to see. They may think they’re doing you a favor, but all they’re really doing is giving you the punchy ending without the entertaining journey it took to get there, not to mention the $100 million production value.

It’s like delivering a joke without any context, which reminds me of that Polish textile factory that burned to the ground – they’re still in business.

Whenever a movie is spoiled for me, I always remember a ’50s flick called “The Bad Seed” about this young girl who murders people (that’s the plot, not the twist, mind you). After the dramatic final showdown, a disclaimer appears on the screen, just before the credits:
“The producers ask that you do not divulge the ending to this film. Thank you.”

Audiences today would look at this and say, “I can’t believe they’re telling me not to tell anyone the ending — that’s fundamental.”

Of course, “The Bad Seed” was made in the heyday of cautious Hollywood, when studios assumed the average intellect of the audience member was somewhere between that of a horse and frog; they didn’t outright trust people to keep the ending to themselves. Today, we don’t have these disclaimers because studios, I guess, have learned not to underestimate their audiences.

But, Spoilers, I guess they’re just overestimating you.

Email: diner822@yahoo.com