During the weeks leading up to the premiere of “Avatar,” I did what any self-respecting movie enthusiast should do: I stayed away from reading or seeing anything about it. It is something I’ve practiced since the release of the seventh and final book of the Harry Potter series. Back then, news had hit the Internet that a leak of the entire book was online. That meant one thing: SPOILERS.
Although I vowed to keep off the Internet, I broke my promise to look for music to download. I stumbled upon a file of the Potter leak. I wondered how exactly a book leaks. Curiosity got the better of me and I downloaded it. The culprit photographed every single page and it was 99 percent readable. After an internal struggle unrelated to what I ate, I came to the decision to begin reading the book. I did so to avoid overhearing a spoiler at the release party. If the book was going to be spoiled, it was going to be on my terms and how J.K. Rowling meant for it to happen. Sure enough, the day of the release, there were slips of paper all over Barnes & Noble listing every character that dies.
I am an anti-spoiler advocate, but the leak made me realize I’m also an advocate for untainted storytelling, which is almost the same thing.
The consensus is that a spoiler is a piece of information that reveals a major plot point of a film or story (source: me) thus spoiling the surprise. The twists that made M. Night Shyamalan of “The Sixth Sense” famous are a good example.
I’d push to broaden the definition to include anything revealed about any part of a story. That includes interviews with the storytellers (cast, crew, actors), trailers, sneak peeks, pictures, or data.
Directors and authors tell stories in a specific way. They want their audience to discover information in a specific sequence because they want to elicit a certain reaction. They also withhold information until it is appropriate to do so. Movies and books are all about storytelling. You wreck a storyteller’s vision by revealing any information ahead of time to one of their audience members/readers.
Ideally, you are never meant to know a single thing about a movie when you first watch it because that’s how movies are made. Unfortunately, the only way the industry knows how to get you to watch their movies is by revealing information to pique interest. At that point, why bother creating an allure or mystery about the plot if the person watching is probably doing so already knowing what the plot is?
You owe it to yourself to practice this for the time you spend to download, rent, or attend a screening and for paying ridiculously high ticket prices. I for one refuse to pay for another pair of 3D glasses!
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