Spoil Yourself

March 9, 2005 1:03 PM

It's all about the journey, not just the ending.
posted by Jim Jones (17 comments total)

Ooops, meant to add this link.
posted by Jim Jones at 1:07 PM on March 9, 2005

Curses. Spoiled again.
posted by wendell at 1:31 PM on March 9, 2005

This is NOT a spoiler. It is a plot synopsis. And, it's probably funnier than the movie.
posted by graventy at 1:36 PM on March 9, 2005

A triple-link that links back to the original two links in the post itself? My head is spinning.
posted by rafter at 1:41 PM on March 9, 2005

Don't forget this classic.
posted by gwint at 1:43 PM on March 9, 2005

Aintitcool has totally redesigned their site with the idea of spoilers in mind - whereas before there was a SPOILERSSS WARNING!!!!!!1 before posts with spoilers, now there is a fancy little outline (which sometimes just says "poile"). Obviously there is a growing concern on this topic.

Could it be that since movies today rely more heavily on twists near the end, there is more pressure on reviewers to keep quiet about them? There are less movies today which maintain a premise from start to finish, opting instead to refresh the premise to keep up with our waning attention span. Was it here that there was a discussion about this very topic?
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 1:48 PM on March 9, 2005

rafter, I wanted to post about moviemuckers.com and thebookspoiler.com but they're incomplete without the other two and if I'm going to mention the other two then I have to acknowlege their previous incarnation.
posted by Jim Jones at 1:54 PM on March 9, 2005

I whole-heartedly approve of Spoiler warnings, but I think The
Pacifier plot twists can pretty much be guessed before walking through the door.

Personally I love the surprise - a nice unexpected twist at the end can, in my eyes, redeem an otherwise boring movie (Hello Be Cool). Truth be told, I have been known to pester friends for endings if I have no intention of seeing the movie (I'm talking about you, The Village).

However, if you are the sort who wish to zealously monitor what sort of messages you/your children/whomever else see in movies, such sites could be a tremendously useful resource. The long term psychological benefit such actions provide may be open for debate.
posted by Dallasfilm at 2:07 PM on March 9, 2005

Dallasfilm: The way to monitor what your kids are seeing (without spending the cash) is going to Kids in Mind [warning : some annoying ads].
posted by psychotic_venom at 2:20 PM on March 9, 2005

Personally I'd rather go see the movie without knowing and debate the merits of the ending afterwards, maybe examining other viewpoints or possibilities. But then, I don't have kids yet.
posted by Dallasfilm at 2:25 PM on March 9, 2005

I am so so so so sick of twist endings. Especially now that they've become so common that you're taken out of the movie trying to figure out what the twist is going to be. More often than not, the twist is a creative crutch, a gimmick, an admission that there just isn't enough to the movie to risk a straightforward presentation.
posted by goatdog at 2:37 PM on March 9, 2005

Last-act twists are a trend - but their preponderance now doesn't mean they are without worth as a film trick. It's only if the trick is meant to make up for shoddy writing in the rest of the film that it is bad news. Cause if you don't care about the film up to the point of the twist, you won't care for the twist either - I can't think of a movie that was liked only for its twist.

Good writing and interesting stories are what make the best movies - sometimes it has to be one or the other. So you get something like The Matrix, which, lets face it, was written ok but kind of cornily, but the story itself was so engaging that people loved it almost universally. Then you have something like Dumb and Dumber, which is basically empty story-wise, but the jokes were genius so people liked it. Sometimes you get fusion, but not often.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 3:43 PM on March 9, 2005

He was dead the whole movie.
posted by unsupervised at 4:03 PM on March 9, 2005

Wikipedia is a spolier motherload
posted by stbalbach at 4:42 PM on March 9, 2005

BlackLeotardFront : "Then you have something like Dumb and Dumber, which is basically empty story-wise, but the jokes were genius so people liked it."

Stop it. Just stop it.
posted by graventy at 5:47 PM on March 9, 2005

Okay. Maybe Dumb and Dumber wasn't the best example for good writing. Rushmore, then. I love that movie. No twists.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 6:08 PM on March 9, 2005

Titanic spoiler: The boat sinks in the end and lots of people die!
posted by SisterHavana at 7:13 PM on March 9, 2005