I'm going to push back and reject this premise. In my much longer life, there's never been a time where people didn't care about having media spoiled for them. If you had come out of a movie theater in 1999 and told everyone about the ending of the Sixth Sense, you'd be just as much of a dick as someone doing the same thing now.
The only difference in spoiler culture is that it's much harder now to inadvertently avoid spoilers
There’s a pretty big difference between telling someone about Neo dodging bullets and explaining how he swallowed the Matrix because in the end scene he could manipulate the code of a humanity enslaving AI.
OP is talking about describing the best light saber choreography on screen at that point, involving a character that was in the trailers. His teacher wasn’t spoiling twists and explaining who Kaiser Soze was, he was hyping them up for the best scene of the movie.
It’s a big difference.
For example, seeing all of the talk about Tom Cruise driving a motorcycle off a cliff doesn’t ruin the movie. It just makes me more interested in seeing that scene in context.
True, talking about certain vague parts out of context like the MI7 motorcycle jump is fine, but I still think things like that that aren’t specifically relevant to the plot can spoil the experience if you see it before you actually see the movie. I feel that they spoiled that moment by plastering it all over the marketing even though it didn’t reveal anything about the plot surrounding the jump. That’s why the scene with the falling train cars was a cooler scene for me while watching even though on paper it’s a less impressive scene.
Spoiler culture is not new. Over 40 years ago, [NPR found itself in hot water](https://www.npr.org/2023/05/26/1178361638/star-wars-return-of-the-jedi-spoilers-npr-apology) for revealing major spoilers in an interview about RotJ. I have an RotJ-era Kenner toy catalog where all the pictures of [Jabba](https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/rnb0kh/top_secret_new_jabba_the_hutt_figure_vintage/) and the [Ewoks](https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/rpoza5/what_do_you_think_these_new_ewoks_will_look_like/) are blacked out to prevent leaks before the toys were released.
The difference is that it was easier to avoid them. Some loud-mouthed kid might reveal something on the playground before you had a chance to see the movie, and there was a chance something would slip in a TV interview. It wasn't like today where you open up the internet and there are dozens of articles and posts in your social feeds with shotgun spoilers in the titles.
For sure pre-Disney Lucasfilm generally just didn't worry about spoilers the way modern Lucasfilm does. The novelization of The Phantom Menace (complete with full plot spoilers) came out a couple of WEEKS before the movie. They would NEVER do that today.
I'm also much older and the Sixth Sense would be an outlier.
Sure people didn't like having the ending of a film spoiled, but people go a little overboard where even talking about a film trailer is considered to be a spoiler. Like if you don't want to know ANYTHING about the film, it's on you to avoid places where fans will talk about it
> For sure pre-Disney Lucasfilm generally just didn't worry about spoilers the way modern Lucasfilm does.
Sure didn't. Hell, they had a live webcam on the set of ROTS for *Hyperspace* fan club members back in the day.
wtf, that’s nuts. I guess it didn’t matter too much since at that point anyone could know the general plot of the movie and not a ton is getting spoiled visually since I’m sure it would be hard to tell what was even going on with those blue screen sets. Plus, they were shooting out of order.
I worked at Waldenbooks back in 2005 when ROTS released. We got all of the street dated ROTS merchandise about a month before the film, so I read the novel and the graphic novels during my breaks.
I was still at a fever pitch when I saw the film in theaters and when I bought it on DVD.
ROTS was an interesting build-up because we all knew what was going to happen in the end; so from that perspective, there were no “spoilers.” Lucasfilm had been very forthcoming with footage of the final duel in trailers and promos. It was really about wanting to see how they get to that point.
Yeah. And it turned out to be a bad dream and an easily testable snake oil sales pitch. So glad we waited 20 years for that one. Hell, we almost saw those Clone Wars we were so excited to see too, but apparently they were shorter than High School and we just skipped over them.
If you were on theforce.net forums before the release of ROTS then you could definitely have been spoiled. Obviously not in the way like nowadays but with their promotional features Lucas film definitely dropped a few clues/hints for us and then there were always these vague sources that has some kind of info.
It was so much fun though.
Do you remember Supershadow?
I watched a Episode 1 Bootleg multiple times at the before it was released in Europe.
For Episode 2 and Episode 3, 99% of the plot was known before it hit the big screen. There were so many spoiler reports available and it was my passion to read everything and get a glimpse of all the leaked information.
These were great Internet years I will never forget.
The best twists make a series better after you see the twists.
The Good Place, The Sixth Sense, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and even ESB are not harmed by knowing the twist. Sure, it cuts the impact back a bit, but then you can see the foreshadowing and thought.
Heck, Columbo spent decades where the twist was how he'd catch the killer. All are eminitly rewatchable.
If exposing the twist "ruins" the show, maybe the writer's room is terrible.
Just a thought.
The book came out before the movie did.
I knew everything that was going to happen as I had already read the book. It was a different time.
(Honestly the book is so good)
I don’t think it was “before spoiler culture” as much as it was that you were a kid. People generally cared just as much about spoilers long before ROTS, there was just no social media so you wouldn’t get spoiled 5 seconds after a movie came out but even in Star Wars itself spoilers were frowned upon (all things considered on npr had to run an apology for spoiling the jabba’s palace rescue in an interview for instance)
There have *always* been people who care about being spoiled, and there have *always* been people who only get more excited by spoilers.
i promise you there wasn't some major shift in trends.
So you didn't have the internet in 2005? At least a full decade past when the internet started becoming an everyday thing?
I distinctly remember Star Wars forums that talked endlessly about the PT as each movie rolled out. Including before The Phantom Menace with talk of "OB1" actually being a clone of Ben Kenobi.
I remember getting the Attack of the Clones novel before the movie was released and couldn't resist temptation. Read it before seeing the movie. Didn't like watching the movie as much because I knew what was coming next. Or was mad when scenes in the book were cut out or short in the movie.
Told myself I wouldn't make the same mistake with RotS. But there were a ton of posters claiming they had the script or had viewed early cuts. Of course almost all were BS'ers trying to score internet bonus points by posting their fanfic and passing it off as them having \*connections\*.
But I know one must have been legit because despite not knowing it was legit, during my first RotS viewing, the scenes were playing out near verbatim. I distinctly remember the early posting describing the Palps v. Yoda battle in the Senate.
The only thing that has really changed since then is there are more BSers online now.
There has been research showing that spoilers actually do enhance the experience because you’re not wasting brainpower worrying about what’s to come.
My tin foil hat conspiracy is that spoiler culture is manufactured by the streaming industry to push people to watch everything ASAP.
This story has nothing to do with "spoiler culture." You were a kid and didn't care about spoilers. Maybe you still don't, but that still doesn't say anything about spoiler culture.
I can understand wanting to experience the New Thing unspoiled, seeing it the first time with fresh eyes unclouded by knowing the end from the beginning. At the same time, all my favorite movies I have seen at least twenty times apiece. I practically have them memorized, story beat by story beat, and I enjoy them more every time I see them, even though I know every single thing that happens. If a story only works the first time it is seen, and cannot hold up to repeat viewing, it just doesn't hold my interest. In the end, I guess I am just ambivalent about "spoilers". If a Thing is spoiled, so be it. If not, so be it.
I was like 13 all I cared about was seeing light saber fights. But I do remember watching episode 1 & 2 and not understanding what all the hype was about
I wasn’t raised in a Starwars home so I watched 4-6 a few years later and loved them
The only thing I'll give that scene credit for is Anakin's emotion at the end. That's the only time I felt he was actually angry, which is why Luke's two battles with Vader are better even though it's not nearly as elaborate. Luke is scared but trying in the first, and then briefly giving in to the dark side when he keeps smashing Vader and cutting his hand off in the second. There's more going on than cool lights and sounds, it's more human.
I'm going to push back and reject this premise. In my much longer life, there's never been a time where people didn't care about having media spoiled for them. If you had come out of a movie theater in 1999 and told everyone about the ending of the Sixth Sense, you'd be just as much of a dick as someone doing the same thing now. The only difference in spoiler culture is that it's much harder now to inadvertently avoid spoilers
There’s a pretty big difference between telling someone about Neo dodging bullets and explaining how he swallowed the Matrix because in the end scene he could manipulate the code of a humanity enslaving AI. OP is talking about describing the best light saber choreography on screen at that point, involving a character that was in the trailers. His teacher wasn’t spoiling twists and explaining who Kaiser Soze was, he was hyping them up for the best scene of the movie. It’s a big difference. For example, seeing all of the talk about Tom Cruise driving a motorcycle off a cliff doesn’t ruin the movie. It just makes me more interested in seeing that scene in context.
True, talking about certain vague parts out of context like the MI7 motorcycle jump is fine, but I still think things like that that aren’t specifically relevant to the plot can spoil the experience if you see it before you actually see the movie. I feel that they spoiled that moment by plastering it all over the marketing even though it didn’t reveal anything about the plot surrounding the jump. That’s why the scene with the falling train cars was a cooler scene for me while watching even though on paper it’s a less impressive scene.
Yo. WTF? I was just about to watch The Matrix for the first time tomorrow.
The best time to watch The Matrix was 30 years ago. The next best time to watch the Matrix is today.
Woah spoilers. 😧
Spoiler culture is not new. Over 40 years ago, [NPR found itself in hot water](https://www.npr.org/2023/05/26/1178361638/star-wars-return-of-the-jedi-spoilers-npr-apology) for revealing major spoilers in an interview about RotJ. I have an RotJ-era Kenner toy catalog where all the pictures of [Jabba](https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/rnb0kh/top_secret_new_jabba_the_hutt_figure_vintage/) and the [Ewoks](https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/rpoza5/what_do_you_think_these_new_ewoks_will_look_like/) are blacked out to prevent leaks before the toys were released. The difference is that it was easier to avoid them. Some loud-mouthed kid might reveal something on the playground before you had a chance to see the movie, and there was a chance something would slip in a TV interview. It wasn't like today where you open up the internet and there are dozens of articles and posts in your social feeds with shotgun spoilers in the titles.
For sure pre-Disney Lucasfilm generally just didn't worry about spoilers the way modern Lucasfilm does. The novelization of The Phantom Menace (complete with full plot spoilers) came out a couple of WEEKS before the movie. They would NEVER do that today.
I'm also much older and the Sixth Sense would be an outlier. Sure people didn't like having the ending of a film spoiled, but people go a little overboard where even talking about a film trailer is considered to be a spoiler. Like if you don't want to know ANYTHING about the film, it's on you to avoid places where fans will talk about it
> For sure pre-Disney Lucasfilm generally just didn't worry about spoilers the way modern Lucasfilm does. Sure didn't. Hell, they had a live webcam on the set of ROTS for *Hyperspace* fan club members back in the day.
wtf, that’s nuts. I guess it didn’t matter too much since at that point anyone could know the general plot of the movie and not a ton is getting spoiled visually since I’m sure it would be hard to tell what was even going on with those blue screen sets. Plus, they were shooting out of order.
I worked at Waldenbooks back in 2005 when ROTS released. We got all of the street dated ROTS merchandise about a month before the film, so I read the novel and the graphic novels during my breaks. I was still at a fever pitch when I saw the film in theaters and when I bought it on DVD.
What are you talking about? There were spoiler boards and sites like https://www.aintitcool.com/
ROTS was an interesting build-up because we all knew what was going to happen in the end; so from that perspective, there were no “spoilers.” Lucasfilm had been very forthcoming with footage of the final duel in trailers and promos. It was really about wanting to see how they get to that point.
Yeah. And it turned out to be a bad dream and an easily testable snake oil sales pitch. So glad we waited 20 years for that one. Hell, we almost saw those Clone Wars we were so excited to see too, but apparently they were shorter than High School and we just skipped over them.
Nah it ruled actually
If you were on theforce.net forums before the release of ROTS then you could definitely have been spoiled. Obviously not in the way like nowadays but with their promotional features Lucas film definitely dropped a few clues/hints for us and then there were always these vague sources that has some kind of info. It was so much fun though.
Do you remember Supershadow? I watched a Episode 1 Bootleg multiple times at the before it was released in Europe. For Episode 2 and Episode 3, 99% of the plot was known before it hit the big screen. There were so many spoiler reports available and it was my passion to read everything and get a glimpse of all the leaked information. These were great Internet years I will never forget.
Also, the novelizations always came out before the movies. And then there was the Ep1 soundtrack album spoiling that Qui-Gon died.
Imagine pretty much seeing the movie before it came out.The game came out a week before the movie for some strange reason.
Ironically, op's teacher was teaching defense against the dark arts.
The best twists make a series better after you see the twists. The Good Place, The Sixth Sense, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and even ESB are not harmed by knowing the twist. Sure, it cuts the impact back a bit, but then you can see the foreshadowing and thought. Heck, Columbo spent decades where the twist was how he'd catch the killer. All are eminitly rewatchable. If exposing the twist "ruins" the show, maybe the writer's room is terrible. Just a thought.
I would have been fucking pissed. And I saw ROTS at the time of original release
The book came out before the movie did. I knew everything that was going to happen as I had already read the book. It was a different time. (Honestly the book is so good)
I don’t think it was “before spoiler culture” as much as it was that you were a kid. People generally cared just as much about spoilers long before ROTS, there was just no social media so you wouldn’t get spoiled 5 seconds after a movie came out but even in Star Wars itself spoilers were frowned upon (all things considered on npr had to run an apology for spoiling the jabba’s palace rescue in an interview for instance)
I think it is just personal preference. I have always hated spoilers but I know people who don’t care.
There have *always* been people who care about being spoiled, and there have *always* been people who only get more excited by spoilers. i promise you there wasn't some major shift in trends.
So you didn't have the internet in 2005? At least a full decade past when the internet started becoming an everyday thing? I distinctly remember Star Wars forums that talked endlessly about the PT as each movie rolled out. Including before The Phantom Menace with talk of "OB1" actually being a clone of Ben Kenobi. I remember getting the Attack of the Clones novel before the movie was released and couldn't resist temptation. Read it before seeing the movie. Didn't like watching the movie as much because I knew what was coming next. Or was mad when scenes in the book were cut out or short in the movie. Told myself I wouldn't make the same mistake with RotS. But there were a ton of posters claiming they had the script or had viewed early cuts. Of course almost all were BS'ers trying to score internet bonus points by posting their fanfic and passing it off as them having \*connections\*. But I know one must have been legit because despite not knowing it was legit, during my first RotS viewing, the scenes were playing out near verbatim. I distinctly remember the early posting describing the Palps v. Yoda battle in the Senate. The only thing that has really changed since then is there are more BSers online now.
The whole ROTS trailer is a spoiler for the entire movie
There has been research showing that spoilers actually do enhance the experience because you’re not wasting brainpower worrying about what’s to come. My tin foil hat conspiracy is that spoiler culture is manufactured by the streaming industry to push people to watch everything ASAP.
This story has nothing to do with "spoiler culture." You were a kid and didn't care about spoilers. Maybe you still don't, but that still doesn't say anything about spoiler culture.
I can understand wanting to experience the New Thing unspoiled, seeing it the first time with fresh eyes unclouded by knowing the end from the beginning. At the same time, all my favorite movies I have seen at least twenty times apiece. I practically have them memorized, story beat by story beat, and I enjoy them more every time I see them, even though I know every single thing that happens. If a story only works the first time it is seen, and cannot hold up to repeat viewing, it just doesn't hold my interest. In the end, I guess I am just ambivalent about "spoilers". If a Thing is spoiled, so be it. If not, so be it.
Watching something for the second time is absolutely not the same as watching it for the first time with spoilers.
Yes, true.
This is why I hate prequels. You already know how it ultimately works out. 😞
I was a teenager that hadn’t seen 4-6 so all I knew is Anakin became Vader I just thought he wore the suit because it looked cool or armour
So he described how it was way too long and kind of silly therefore diluting the impact of the ending?
I was like 13 all I cared about was seeing light saber fights. But I do remember watching episode 1 & 2 and not understanding what all the hype was about I wasn’t raised in a Starwars home so I watched 4-6 a few years later and loved them
The only thing I'll give that scene credit for is Anakin's emotion at the end. That's the only time I felt he was actually angry, which is why Luke's two battles with Vader are better even though it's not nearly as elaborate. Luke is scared but trying in the first, and then briefly giving in to the dark side when he keeps smashing Vader and cutting his hand off in the second. There's more going on than cool lights and sounds, it's more human.