The blog’s list of (really) non-spoilers

The movie came out in 1941. By any reasonable standard, it should be OK to talk about the ending. That’s especially true in this case. It was a joke on The Dick Van Dyke Show in the 1960s and an Iron Man comic book in the late 1970s/early 1980s.

The blog was reminded while publishing a post about spoiler sensitivity. It’s a subject the blog has written about a number of times including HERE, HERE, and HERE.

In THIS 2011 POST, a reader yelped that a “spoiler alert” should be tagged with a spoiler alert about a movie that had come out years before (seven years at the time of the post, 14 years ago now).

I ended up doing that, but regretted it later. Spoilers should have a sell-by date. But spoiler extremists insist on spoiler alerts on everything, no matter how long ago the film or TV show came out. By that standard, it’s never OK to talk about any movie, now matter how old.

Spoiler police: “That’s a spoiler! You’re spoiling it for the 19-year-old who’s never seen The Great Train Robbery!”

If you suspect the blog is kidding with this example you’d be right. Still, The Great Train Robbery (1903) is considered a major example of early cinema, including the ending above. But if we take the position of the spoiler police to its logical conclusion, the ending would be forbidden to talk about.

More recently, but still back in the “old days,” trailers often gave away the best bits. Example: Trailers for The Spy Who Loved Me showing the ski jump Rick Sylvester performed while doubling for Roger Moore.

For that matter, sometimes soundtracks — which came out before the movie —  had track titles beginning with “Death of” followed by a character name. See the soundtracks for From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball and You Only Live Twice for examples.

At that time, if you were disappointed about a spoiler, you sucked it up. You manned up and moved on. Today, it’s the source of complaining, complaining and more complaining.

I understand the concern about spoilers. You should be considerate, especially before and during a movie’s release. But I do think some people complain too much about them.

The idea of a forever ban on spoilers isn’t reasonable. Nineteen-year-olds have plenty of chances to catch up on classic movies without a gag order on the rest of us. And some members of the spoiler police define a spoiler as saying anything about a film.

So, with that in mind, here’s the blog list of not-really spoilers (but may offend the spoiler police).

Classic Movies

–Rosebud is the sled.
–Rhett breaks up with Scarlett.
–Ranse really didn’t kill Liberty Valance. Though I’m told some film analysts actually debate this point because it’s in a flashback. (Actually a flashback within a flashback, to be precise.)
–Shane decides to ride off.
–“Nobody’s perfect!”
–“WTF just happened?” (audiences at 2001: A Space Odyssey)
–Lawrence went home after the war, shaken and disturbed.
–“I’m ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille!”

Genre Movies
–Harry still had a bullet left.
–The money got incinerated.
–The castle blows up.
–The lead character was really dead all this time. (multiple movies)
–Rock lost one leg, but is still alive even if most of his officers aren’t.
–Iron Man wins.
–Captain America wins.
–Batman wins.

James Bond Movies
–Bond wins (multiple films).
–Tracy dies.
–Vesper dies.
–Quarrel dies.
–Fiona dies.
–Aki dies.
–Tilly dies.
–Jill dies.
–Vijay dies.
–Kerim dies.
–Paula dies.
–Plenty dies.
–Scaramanga dies.
–Oddjob dies.
–Goldfinger dies.
–Largo dies.
–Dr. No dies.
–Klebb dies.
–Q gets a laugh from the audience showing Bond a gadget (multiple films).
–Q gets annoyed at Bond. (multiple films)
–Bond has sex with women characters (multiple films).
–Bond flirts with Moneypenny (multiple films).
…..There are many more, but you get the idea.

Skyfall and spoilers

“NOOO! It’s a SPOILER!”

No spoilers in the text. But there are in the links. So if you don’t want to know, don’t click.

On Oct. 21, The Sun newspaper in the U.K. had a Skyfall spoiler. The story (which you can view BY CLICKING HERE if you don’t mind spoilers) had the giveaway in the headline and the URL of the online version.

In other words, if you picked up the paper or looked at the Web site, it was in your face. That includes Americans who traveled to the U.K. to see the movie this week, first for its premier and then for regular showings, who had tried to avoid spoilers.

To avoid specifics in this post, we’ll just say it was a spoiler that was categorically denied (or worded very carefully to make it sound like a categorical denial) by the principal involved and 007 FAN SITES TOOK THE DENIAL SERIOUSLY. Now, it turns out….well, we said we wouldn’t tell you because, well, it’s a spoiler.

The internet has increased the difficulty in remaining spoiler free. This, in turn, has made some fans more and more angry about spoilers.

Back in the early ’90s, just as internet message boards were getting popular, somebody wrote a post on the old Prodigy system about Alien 3. It’s title? “ALIEN 3 — RIPLEY DIES!” Responses quickly were written urging new laws to prevent this sort of thing. Those were among the milder of the responses.

It has continued since. Some folks get concerned when you give away the ending of an old movie. They don’t necessarily get upset if you mention that Rosebud is the name of the sled, but will (with a straight face) object to talking about the ending of an eight-year-old film such as Layer Cake (which has a major connection to Skyfall; we won’t tell you what it is, because it’s a spoiler).

At one time, the 007 movies didn’t seem too concerned about spoilers; soundtracks had titles such as “Death of Fiona” or “Death of Aki” among their tracks.

Skyfall’s publicity has been different, with references to all the twists in the film’s story and thus it had to be hush-hush. On the other hand, there was a press preview two weeks before Skyfall was scheduled to be shown in U.K. While most of the critics who have written about the film have been restrained with plot details, it’s hard not to give anything away.

For U.K. fans, you only have a few more days to dodge the dreaded spoilers. U.S. fans have a tougher job, especially once U.K. 007 fans start writing on the internet about the film two weeks before it shows up in U.S. theaters.