(Whaddaya mean “You never saw part one”…? Honestly…)
“Previously in Lesser Blogfordshire…”
“I definitely claim to have an opinion on something…” “A passing reference to pornography…” “It’s a deep-seated desire…” “A sense of satisfaction…” “Watching sport is so much more popular these days…” “My awkward, geekish nerdy old mind…” “Now that I’ve got myself all worked up…” “I’m going to have to split it in half and leave you on some kind of almighty cliff…”
“And now, the concluding part of ‘SHHH!!! SPOILERS!’...”
…hanger, which will be very easily resolved, as you always knew it would because you probably saw all the publicity that got shown between parts one and two showing everyone who was in peril at the end of last week’s episode alive and well and running about in scenes you hadn’t yet seen.
What’s that? You didn’t see those? I don’t know! The budget must have run out again... Never mind. You probably weren’t missing much anyway, and it might very well have spoiled the surprise for you. It’s the old problem… how do you tease people into returning without showing them everything that they’re returning to see…?
I used to work in an office where one bloke used to ruin films for everyone as a matter of course and really didn’t seem to think that anyone would mind. He’d just sit there, chatting to his mates at the top of his voice, blatantly telling you (if you were unlucky enough to be within earshot) all the key plot points and significant events of the movie he’d been to see the previous day as if, just because he’d seen the wretched thing, he assumed everyone else must have done too. A few years of this kind of thing going on eventually meant that the opening weekend takings at our local flea-pit always got a boost from his colleagues because we all had to go on the opening weekend if a big film was coming out, so as not to have it completely ruined for us on the following Monday morning.
Of course, then the so-and-so started going to ‘special previews’ just so he could say he had seen something first, so that plan got ruined too because we didn’t even have the luxury of the ‘weekend buffer zone’ so rescue us. Later on, to make things even worse, he started to invest in the wicked practice of acquiring ‘bootleg’ DVDs of movies still to be released in this country, just, I always suspected, so that his kids could have “I’ve already seen that” bragging rights in the school playground. This, I fear, was a place from which I feel that he never truly escaped from himself. I was never able to shame him out of encouraging this despicable industry either, despite all the evidence of its unpleasant nature, because he always had a rather compelling fiscal argument to counter it with; it was cheaper to buy one of those than to pay to take the whole family out to the cinema.
There really is no answer to that. The even stranger thing is that, in general, we actually got on fairly well, but, nevertheless, when it comes to the matter of ‘spoilers’ then I simply will not take any prisoners. Interestingly, it was also that very same chap who managed to ruin a film series for me before some of the films had even been made, because he mentioned something that happened at the end of one of the books it was based upon and really didn’t think it mattered because “everyone” already knew what happened. Or so he thought. I, of course, hadn’t read the books, but had been to see each of the movie adaptations that had so far been released and which were at that point running about three books behind. Grrrr!
One of the most notorious ‘get out’ clauses he eventually developed, after being harangued by the rest of us once too often, was the “There’s a good bit at the end, well, not really the end, but near the end…” gambit which seemed, in his mind, to mean that it was okay to spill pretty much all of the beans, but few of us had much patience with that approach either. Whilst we haven’t worked together for nearly five years now, nowadays I think things could be much, much worse as I generally only watch ‘new’ movies (well, new to me anyway) on rental discs as I seem to have got out of that old habit of ‘going to the cinema’ and the incredible time-lag opportunities involved with that would be just ripe for dumping entire plots into.
Mind you, professional reviewers can be just as bad. Saying that “There’s a twist at the end” seems such an innocent phrase, but it can still completely ruin a movie for me, as I’ll then be looking for it, but even a slight slip, or a less than guarded choice of phrase chosen for the article or by an interviewer or actor on one of the film preview shows can instantly put me on my guard. Just as much annoying is knowing just a tiny bit of knowledge or a half heard hint which can make you realise that you already know something you shouldn’t about the fate of a character. I tend towards the view that just as you don’t know what’s going to happen next in real life, neither should you when you sit down to a new experience in storytelling. It’s not fair, and in some cases it can truly remove any potential enjoyment of it for me.
When I look back upon all the fondest memories I have of the cinema it is the films that shocked or surprised me that still stand out in my memory. My first viewings of classic thrillers like “Jagged Edge” or horror films like “Aliens” still remain vivid experiences even after all these years. I remember being so tense whilst first watching “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” that I dug my nails deep into the chair arm of my cinema seat and only found out afterwards that my friend’s arm had unwittingly taken much of the brunt of it instead. The escape sequence in “The Silence of the Lambs” I still remember as being all the more enjoyably terrifying because of not having any clue beforehand about what was going to happen. I even managed to avoid the plot of “The Usual Suspects” until someone lent me the video.
Perhaps that’s the only solution; to be so out of the “pop culture” loop that no-one bothers actually telling you, although in the internet age it seems more and more unlikely that these things can remain a ‘secret’ for very long, but even in the old days you had to be very wary of the ‘professional spoilers’. When I went to an afternoon screening of “Alien 3” on the day it opened, I was appalled that a couple of mean-spirited so-and-sos deliberately chose to leave the only previous showing (which had started a mere twenty minutes earlier) in order to sit at the back of the cinema I was in and speak every line of dialogue at the top of their lungs just a few seconds before it was stated on screen. Why anyone would wish to do that is completely beyond me, except for that sense of self-satisfaction that might come from feeling you can say “I’ve already seen this” to those that haven’t.
Equally the “pop culture” references in shows like “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy” can completely ruin a film I haven’t seen as all those references are made upon the quite reasonable assumption that most of us will have already seen the films in question, although even I reckon that the big “reveal” in “The Empire Strikes Back” is probably widely enough known now for it not to matter any more… Not that I’m going to tell you what it is, of course, although “Luke’s Blog” (http://bit.ly/jFR9n5) written way back in November might give you a bit of a clue…
Granted, I do tend to think that there should be a statute of limitations on these things. I innocently ruined “Thelma & Louise” for someone ten years after its release on the assumption that everyone who really wanted to had probably seen it by then, but I once got shouted at by a friend for even discussing the events of “Psycho” forty years after it was first released and that particular someone who hadn’t even been born when it first came out. Equally, I’ve never personally seen “The Sixth Sense” but I’m pretty sure I know most of what happens and the ‘big reveal’ is now such a well-known cliché that it would have been almost impossible for a movie fan to have got this far without knowing what it is.
Mind you, I’ve never even seen “E.T.” for various reasons of personal choice, and there’s now only a select and dwindling band of us who can still honestly make that claim. It used to be one of the ‘pointed’ questions I would ask to discern the character of new people whenever I met them.
This probably explains quite a lot…
Some other M Night Shyamalan’s films were ruined for me because I went to see them fully expecting a twist and found myself looking for it (and finding it) as I watched the film. In one case - rather tragically I fear - it involved the anachronistic window furniture in some greenhouses seen in the opening seconds leading to a correct guess as to what the twist might be, but then, if you watch these things knowing that there is likely to be a twist of any sort, then your mind is probably already attuned to look out for these things. I’ve seen so many episodes of US crime dramas now that I can usually spot who the mysterious killer is the moment they appear on my TV screen, but it still wouldn’t make me any good at being a real detective.
I did make one exception, and I was a lot younger and a lot more foolish when I did it, so I think I’m going to let myself off with little more than a slap on the wrist. I was so invested in the character of Michael Corleone having enjoyed the first two “Godfather” films that I knew that I really wouldn’t be able to bear the tension of “Part Three” as it unfolded if his fate was uncertain, so I waited years before I finally watched it on a borrowed videocassette, and have to confess that I did manage to find out just enough to make the film bearable without ruining it for myself completely.
Nevertheless, I guess that that revelation comes as a bit of a bombshell to end on, after all I’ve said…
Bish! Bash! Bosh! Da-da-da-da-Dum!!
"THIS IS A WARRRR-NING!!!"
