People That I Can't Hang Out With (Part VIII)

The Sixth Sense

The Usual Suspects

Planet of the Apes

The Empire Strikes Back

Titanic

What do all these movies have in common?

SPOILER ALERT! They all have twist endings.

There's nothing quite like being thrown for an unexpected loop while watching a movie. Especially in today's day and age where audiences are so savvy that it's nearly impossible to sneak anything past them. But, considering it's so fun to be blindsided by a movie's twist, people sure do put a lot of effort into trying to figure out the entire movie before any twists even have a chance to occur. It's like no one wants to be the one that didn't see it coming. I don't really understand why that is either. I mean, for me, there's nothing better than completely losing yourself in a movie, and then having that 'What?!?!' moment when a great twist catches you completely off guard. You know, that type of moment where the filmmakers could basically jump out in front of you and yell 'Gotcha!'

It's hard to describe. It's almost as if the realization washes over you. Like you've been hit with a sudden burst of adrenaline. It's not like your mind was completely numb while watching the movie prior to the twist or anything, but it might not have been terribly overly-stimulated either. So, if you're relaxed, just unsuspectingly watching along with your guard completely down. Enjoying the movie, but safe in the assumption that it's playing out exactly like you expect it will... but then suddenly a big twist happens! Your previously relaxed brain goes from zero to sixty in a fraction of a second. Neurons fire into overdrive. Grey matter frantically tries to piece together clues or recall any prior moments of foreshadowing. Does it all make sense? Is it riddled with loop holes (or worse yet, is it altogether completely illogical)? Did I really not see that coming? Once your brain calms back down from that rush, and if the twist holds true, makes sense, and more importantly caught you completely by surprise, then that 'What?!?!' moment is unlike any other experience that you can have during a movie.

And that's why I don't understand the folks that spoil such moments for other people.

First of all, there's the people that seem to take some sort of sick pleasure in revealing spoilers. The people that purposefully tell the guy that they know has been waiting forever to see a certain movie, exactly how it ends. Or what the big twist was at the end of the last season of the TV show that he's currently in the middle of watching. Or what the score was in Game 7 of the championship game that he has recorded at home on his PVR because he went to his son's hockey game last night instead of watching it live. These people will spoil anything. Even if the person specifically asked them not to. Maybe even especially if the person asked them not to.

To these would be spoilers, no amount of "I haven't seen {blank} yet, don't say anything about it…" in the world can hold them back. Heck, it might only serve to give them greater pleasure. These people don't care about movies. They just like ruining other people's fun. This is the type of person that sees a child holding a balloon and wants to pop it. Sees a couple on their first date, sharing an ice cream cone, and wants to knock it to the ground. They 'accidentally' kick the seat in front of them on airplanes. Or blow cigarette smoke in a person's face on the street. And nothing, absolutely nothing, gives them more pleasure than farting in a elevator. These people are sociopaths. A burden on our fair society. A menace that must be stopped.

Of course not everyone spoils things on purpose. Some things are genuinely spoiled by accident. Some times a person just doesn't even realize they've let an important plot point slip while talking about a movie they've just seen. Maybe they think you already know the ending, and can discuss it with you freely, or maybe they just simply said something without realizing that it gave away the twist. It sucks, for sure. There's nothing worse than having something spoiled for you. But there was no ill-will or malice intended either. Sure, the person probably could have been more cautious or vigilant or aware of what they were saying - I'm certainly not saying that they should be let off the hook completely - but at the end of the day, this one is a little more innocent. Especially if it doesn't become a habit.

Naturally, these are the very extreme ends of the spectrum. Most people fall somewhere in between the semi-innocent slip-of-the-tongue guy and the vindictive monster that can only feel good about himself through the pain and torment of others. But regardless of any of that, the real question we need to be asking ourselves isn't: who is doing this? Or even: to what degree? But rather: why? Why do so many movies or TV shows or sporting events end up getting spoiled? Especially considering that the majority of the time the spoiling is done by a person in our lives that we consider to be a friend.

Why would seemingly normal, well-adjusted human beings so easily and willingly engage in such a hurtful act? Maybe it's just built into some people, you know, like these people spend so much time being alert and cautious to make sure they never get conned or duped in real life, that it bleeds over and just naturally makes them not want to be conned or duped by a movie either. Maybe these people just don't like to be 'tricked'. Maybe they don't like to feel like the filmmakers outsmarted them. Maybe that's why they end up spoiling movies: they assume everyone else feels the same way that they do, and therefore think they are doing people a favour.

I don't know. That seems a little crazy. But how else can we explain it? I guess in a lot of cases, it almost feels to me like the person basically can't hold it in any longer. That they're so hyped up on the experience that they need to share it with another person. And look, I've come out of movies so excited and eager to talk about the ending with another person that I could barely hold my tongue too. But that's still no excuse for spoiling it to another person.

The only other thing I can think of is that maybe some people are just so obsessed with being the first to know about something that a movie becomes one of the few chances that they get to tangibly prove it. Like, "I saw that movie before you, and here's proof!" I mean, none of this sounds like a very good explanation, but it's hard to believe that every person that spoils a movie is a sociopath that gets off on bringing other people down. I mean, that just can't be true, can it?

I guess there could be some subconscious thing that our brain does, where it equates the thrill of the experience to the twist itself. Like, our brain sort of does this weird math where it thinks that by telling another person about a twist that thrilled us so much, that we'll somehow give them that exact same thrill that we experienced. And that maybe, the feeling of excitement that we equated to the movie, they will somehow equate to us, the story teller, instead.

That's a little far-fetched too, seeing as how logically, we all know that the twist itself has no real emotional impact without the carefully crafted film making and storytelling that lead up to it. You know, those minor little things like plot and character development that made us emotionally invested in the movie in the first place. That investment is pretty hard to obtain, no matter what type of movie it is, and without it, any attempted twist will invariably fall flat. It's the reason why so many attempted twists do fail. It's also the reason why the ones that work, strike an even deeper chord with us.  I mean, if I just said to you: 'Hey, imagine some astronauts landed on a planet, and it was ruled by talking monkeys, but it turned out to be Earth!'. Would you care at all? Or would you just look at me, kind of confused, and say: 'Umm… that's nice' and walk away.

A person needs to be invested in the plot. Invested in the characters. They have to have an emotional interest in what's happening to those characters. Then, and only then, when they're wondering if these people that they've grown to care about will survive, if they'll make it out alive, if they can just somehow manage to find their way back to Earth… that's when it's shocking to discover that they never will. That this planet was Earth all along, and there's no going back.

Err… spoiler alert. Sorry.

And that's the other thing. Sure, I flippantly just spoiled the entire plot of the original Planet of the Apes in favour of making a small, and not very funny little joke just now. And maybe I'll justify it to myself as "Hey, that movie is over 40 years old, the statute of limitations has run out on it's ability to be 'spoiled' any more." But really, that's not true. A lot of people try to argue that after a certain amount of time, spoiling no longer applies. Some people say that it's 10 years. Some people say that it's 10 months. Some people say that if you didn't see the very first screening at your local theatre, then you didn't care enough about it in the first place, and 10 minutes after the credits have rolled, spoiling should be fair game.

Look, I get that we can't tip toe around every plot point ever twisted in the history of movies for the rest of time. Especially ones like Planet of the Apes, Citizen Kane or Empire Strikes Back that are so ingrained in the very fabric of society and pop culture that they're almost unavoidable. I firmly, and somewhat hypocritically believe that not everything needs to have a 'spoiler alert' in front of it either. 'Spoiler alert' gets used way too much, and yet people still clamour for it to be used even more. Sure, it has it's place, but as with most things, it all comes down to the simple logic and common sense inherent to the unspoken social contract that most of us choose to follow. Are you giving them a chance to realize that you're talking about a movie that they haven't seen, but still want to, prior to revealing any major plot points? Good, then it's up to them to realize that the situation is ripe for spoilers, and it becomes their responsibility to separate themselves from it before said spoilers are inevitably revealed. I'd say for anyone with half a brain, a 'spoiler alert' is not necessary

That said, if you don't even give them a chance to screen themselves, or worse yet, force it on them so that they never had a choice to begin with, then you're just being a spoiler dick.

And spoiler dicks are definitely people that I could never hang out with.