I love spoilers. Or, more accurately, I demand spoilers. And I don’t understand why you don’t. Let me explain to you what you’re missing out
on.
I hate reviews that mention they are “spoiler free.” This isn’t because I think reviews should have spoilers in them. It’s because, by mentioning spoilers at all, they screw up the results of my
desperate online search for spoilers. The more I
look, the more I come up with results that assure me, “Don’t worry. No spoilers beyond this point!”
I rage at recaps that don’t actually recap anything. And I want to design a level
of hell for people who recap a book nine-tenths of the way through, and then
say, “I won’t tell you the ending.” Why
would anyone who doesn’t want to know the end read through a retelling of
90% of the story? Why do you care that I read those pages? Do you own
the rights? Finish it, damn you! I fully believe that if those people were
medieval jailers they would be the kind to hang the keys to the cell just out
of reach of the prisoners. Petty tyrants, the lot of them.
There are only a few types of media I consume without spoiling
myself first. For the most part, they
are half-hour shows lighthearted enough that I know no one is getting murdered in the
last two minutes. And while I
understand, through extensive experience, that some people like to watch, or read,
something without knowing the ending, I don’t actually understand why. Spoilers make things so much better.
For one thing, they save time and money, especially when it comes to horror. When horror gets really bad, I like it. I know what’s going to happen and can have
fun in my own way as the movie goes along.
But when’s the last time there was a really good home invasion
movie? How about a really good movie
about ghosts threatening a family? Has
there been one in the last decade?
Perhaps there has, but there definitely haven’t been three.
These movies are pretty simple to get
spoilers for, since the trailers are like those sadistic book reviewers, taking
us through 90% of any given movie before we even lay down a dime. We know the premise, we know the
aesthetic, we know the twist at the beginning of the third act. The only thing left to find out is
whether or not the ghosts-slash-demons-slash-intruders-in-creepy-masks actually kill Ethan Hawke’s character and his blandly
forgettable family. And who considers that reveal worth wasting two hours and 12 dollars?
Perhaps I shouldn’t be too hard on the people who do this. I, too, watch crappy movies. I do it with joy in my heart. I do it because I don’t go in expecting them
to be great. I don’t think this clever
and ambitious premise is going to work out, because I know it isn’t. I don’t get invested in a wonderful character
who is going to get their throat slit to provide the bland protagonist with
motivation, because I know they are. I
know when to fast-forward (if I can) and when to walk out (which I do). I can accept movies, or books, or tv shows,
for what they are — because I know what they are.
You might argue that that takes away from the emotional ride of
the medium. Occasionally it does, but in
the end, I love spoilers because, for me, they allow me to experience the ride in ways I otherwise don’t. I watch television, and I watch movies, but
the medium that started me combing for spoilers is books.
Books, as many people have noticed, take a while to
get through. Often we read through them
on fire for the mystery, or the key emotional element, that we spotted in the first
40 pages. I got so I literally couldn’t
stand the wait. I would flip to the end, but the end of most books are so complicated that they are pretty
much inscrutable for someone who hasn’t read the plot. I would get to the reveal, and it would mean
nothing. I missed all the things that
were important to understand on the way.
And so began the furiously frustrating process of flipping back to get the
reference, then flipping forward to reread the end, then flipping back to get
the next reference.
I was so impatient to know what happened that I couldn’t enjoy experience of it happening. In this
way, at least, I know that I differ from many people. Some readers turn the pages anticipating the
next wonderful surprise. I get too
frustrated at not knowing the surprise to care what’s happening in the book, or
the movie, or the tv show. When I get
spoilers, I can sit back and enjoy the story in front of me, not checking my watch and waiting
for everyone to get to the point.
It helps, of course, that I actually know the point. This is where the spoilerites have it over
the rest of you saps. We don’t have to guess at the point of a story. That can be
valuable. As I recall, there was
recently a television series about a couple of detectives. Half the internet went into a frenzy trying
to guess the answer to the mystery of the series.
The other half insisted that no, no, silly conspiracy-hunters! That wasn’t the point of the series! Was it? Oh god, what if it was?
Well, now we know. And at
least one side is angry about it, having been following a tv series that never
was. They had imagined it one way, and totally missed that it was really something else. It dissolved on them. Now they have to go back and
watch it again, bitterly, like a football player with a blown-out knee watching
grainy footage of the winning pass he caught in high school. Wouldn’t it have been
nice to find the series spoiled in one, discreet corner of the internet so you
could have focused on the meaningful part, the part the creator obviously
intended you to focus on, the entire time?
