"How Spoilers Are Ruining Everything" Transcript

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The Last of Us TV show on HBO was one of the most anticipated TV shows of recent years. Based on the hit video game of the same name, The Last of Us follows the story of Joel and Ellie, two survivors in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by a deadly fungal infection. The show garnered a lot of attention for its high production values, talented cast, and faithful adaptation of the game's story.

However, one of the most significant aspects of the show is its representation of queer characters. One of the most prominent gay characters in The Last of Us is Bill.

In the game, Bill is a loner and an expert in surviving in this infected world. However, his past is revealed to the player through notes and diary entries scattered throughout the game, where it is revealed that he had a partner named Frank, who was infected. Bill's story is tragic and his portrayal in the game is sympathetic and nuanced, avoiding the common stereotypes the queer characters are often subjected to.

The TV show expands on his character's backstory. In episode 3, we see the full story of Bill and Frank. Their relationship is depicted in a heartfelt and authentic manner. A long-lasting relationship between two men who create a sort of paradise for themselves in the middle of the horrors of the infected world. The show also explores the trauma that Bill experiences as a result of the idea of losing Frank. Because in this apocalyptic world, neither of them could imagine living without the other.

But Bill and Frank are only in one episode, a mostly self-contained episode, that particularly homophobic viewers could skip over without missing out much. But with Ellie they have no such luxury. Ellie is really the main protagonist of the show. She's not only a well-rounded character with complex motivations and storylines, but she's also a representation of queer youth that has been rarely seen in mainstream media. The representation of Ellie as a queer character in the show is important because it may help to normalize queer identities and create a sense of sympathy and understanding for queer people among the straight audience.

But unlike many queer characters in media, Ellie's sexuality is not a defining characteristic of her personality, but rather just one aspect of her identity. It is not used as a plot device or a means to further the story in a negative way. Instead, her tragically short relationship with Riley is portrayed as a natural and beautiful part of her life. And unlike Bill and Frank, whose episode can be skipped over, Ellie's queerness isn't going anywhere and will only become a more prominent aspect of the ongoing story in the second season when she's with Dina. By centering the only real romantic relationships in the show around Bill and Frank and Ellie and Riley, the show is pushing back against the idea that heterosexuality is the only acceptable form of romantic love.

So why was I so annoyed by the online discourse around the show? And I don't mean the "get woke go broke" crowd who were furious that the show's ratings just kept getting better and better every week, even as it got gayer and gayer. I'm talking about the people who complained incessantly every week about spoilers.

As a gay, I've never much cared for spoilers, especially when it comes to Media about gay people, because there's only one of two possible endings: they live happily ever after, or at least one of them dies. not much to spoil there. but the privilege of being able to have more than two ending options sure has seeped into the minds of an awful lot of the mass audience, creating a fungal hive mind chanting "No spoilers! No spoilers! No spoilers! No spoilers!"

So let's talk about some spoilers. But first how about some self-promotion and a word from this video's sponsor:

>Sponsor Spot <

The language of "spoilers" is a relatively new term, though it has roots in Hollywood culture. Famously, The Simpsons once depicted a flashback to 1980, with Homer and Marge leaving a screening of The Empire Strikes Back, while beside a line of people going into the theater, Homer blunderously remarks--

--Oh, spoiler alert, by the way. Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father. And while surely that experience is annoying, the main distinction of this spoiler is that at no given moment were you ever expecting there to be a twist in the plot. This seemingly straightforward narrative about a plucky farm boy becoming a space knight is flipped on its head. Luke Skywalker's innocent moral values are suddenly brought into question when the audience realizes that he is actually derived from the story's symbol of evil.

Specifically when it comes to making Darth Vader Luke's father, George Lucas spent a great deal of time struggling with not just how to pull this off, but also whether or not he should. These movies were not explicitly made for children, but he deliberately wanted them to be accessible to all ages. He worried that if Darth Vader was Luke's father, the children would find that too frightening. But he did want shock factor to be a huge part of the reveal. Make no mistake, shock value is a viable literary tool. This was a period of time where movie trailers in the 1970s would more or less synopsicize the whole damn movie.

First of all, the movie script for Empire Strikes Back did not read that Darth Vader was Luke's father. The only people who knew the truth were Lucas himself and director Irvin Kershner. Almost immediately before shooting the scene, Kershner pulled Mark Hamill aside and told him what the script was actually going to say. Meanwhile, everyone else on set thought that Hamill was just really chewing the scenery when he was reacting to finding out that, per the script, Obi-Wan killed his father.

It seems that this degree of secret keeping is the only real thing Disney learned from Lucas's rule book on building a franchise Empire. The Star Wars franchise, in part due to Episode 5's mass cultural shift in what we could expect out of a blockbuster movie, has become obsessively rooted in withholding information from an audience that now expects to be surprised. Which, even by Episode 7, it was at a point of ridiculousness.

Anthony Daniels, who portrays C-3PO in the series, remarked that he had never been on a movie set with that much secrecy. This is an actor who had been one of the franchise's first fans, who saw illustrations of his character and instantly fell in love, and yet even he could not be trusted with the full script. As per the structure of these trilogies, there was a lot riding on Star Wars Episode 8, where everybody was expecting there to be a twist. Rey is Luke's daughter or Obi-Wan's granddaughter or a clone of Padme or related to one of the other petite brunette women in the franchise. Snoke was a clone of the Emperor or Darth Plagueis himself, Emperor Palpatine's Sith Master.

But the twist here is that there is no twist. Meanwhile, a huge chunk of the fan base gets pissed off because it's not the twist that they were expecting. Do you want to be shocked by a twist or not? Spoiler alert, by the way: Rey doesn't have special parents. Except then it got retconned that she did, because JJ Abrams doesn't know how to write engaging characters in drama so he substitutes for an arbitrary sense of mystery. But we'll get to that in a moment.

Yet this hype around spoilers that followed every new installation of the Star Wars franchise since the Disney acquisition was not present during the prequels. In part, I assume, because they were prequels and everyone, more or less, knew how they would end. Lucas was also doing very little to try and conceal that Chancellor Palpatine was Darth Sidious, who would become the Emperor. Ian McDermott was credited just the same as he was in Episode 6. Lucas wasn't hinging the entire prequel trilogy around making the audience speculate who the Emperor was. He wanted you to know what was going on so you could spot his methods of manipulation on the characters, who were unaware of what his plan was.

Which, nobody really gives the credit to McDermott for carrying the prequels on his back the way he did. In Episode 3, we go from happy helpful politician to--

--in no more than 10 minutes! And somehow it's completely believable! That turning point in the narration wouldn't have been possible if Lucas spent the prior four hours of screen time trying to conceal who the emperor really was from the audience. This is a case study on why dramatic irony is still a very relevant method of building tension. Because you don't spend those first two movies looking for a twist, you get to have a sense of dread whenever Palpatine is on screen. You're watching the movie instead of expecting a shock to happen.

However, the specific phrasing of "spoiler" wasn't present for Darth Vader's infamous confession in Empire Strikes Back. At least not in a broadly applicable sense of cultural awareness, and it would have been much easier to keep away from spoilers in a world before social media. As a matter of fact, the first time that "no spoilers" garnished a strong cultural hold was not for a movie, it was for a book, one of her books...

(Because everything comes back to her these days... This is all her fault.)

Spoiler alert: Snape kills Dumbledore. Now I don't really have anything to say about her anymore, and I don't want to start a discourse on her either, so I'm not even gonna put this in the SEO of the video. But for reasons that can only really be known through a comprehensive historical understanding of our culture in the late 90s and early 2000s, the Harry Potter series permeated so deeply that it was an anomaly in publishing that had never been seen before, even before they were adapted into movies.

By the time the sixth book in the franchise, The Half-Blood Prince, was leading up to release, the hype was at an unprecedented level. And for those who can read a 500-page book in a matter of hours (...like my online boyfriend at the time), fans took to the internet immediately to find other people to discuss the whole plot with others who can read that fast. In the process, they spoiled one of the most important narrative redirections in the entire series, when the primary figure of mentorship is murdered by one of the longest-running personal antagonists to the principal protagonist. And by all means, doing this was a bit of a dick move, and by all means perhaps readers should have been a little more sensitive to those who cannot read so fast, or who cannot for whatever reason purchase a hardcover book when pre-orders exceeded the number of printed copies upon release.

However, rather than opening a discussion about "when does a new thing stop being new?" or "where do we create safe spaces to talk about these new things?", the word very quickly became "don't talk about it at all!" Because while the murder of Dumbledore might not be the first spoiler, it seems to be the catalyst for what has become known as "spoiler culture".

Now Snape killing Dumbledore isn't a bad narrative decision. A good story always has something to shake up the status quo. But the legacy around this particular spoiler quickly became a bit of a joke in itself, regardless of the fact that there were any number of other mysteries in the book, namely who was the Half-Blood Prince (spoiler alert: it was Snape). Whether you were at the time a fan of Harry Potter or not, within the fandom, it was as if this detail was the singular quality of the story that mattered. As if learning this information outside of experiencing it for yourself while reading it rendered the entire plot pointless. Does it really invalidate the entire story though?

Since then, spoiler culture has pushed us into this kind of fervent tight-lipped secrecy. How do we enjoy media if the purpose is to just consume it as fast as possible to avoid spoilers? Where audiences refuse to engage in any discussion about media for fear of having it spoiled. Conversely, what if audiences' sole method of engaging with media is to speculate about what may happen? I bet it's Mephisto.

What happens to the rest of the filmmaking process if a project is exclusively constructed around the media's ability to generate hype around secrets and twists? How can we discuss a fandom's desire for early birds wanting to discuss and analyze their media with others who have not yet seen this media? Wanting that same engagement but without wanting spoilers. What about media for which there's nothing really to spoil? But audiences still act like minor details of a story are spoilers that ruin everything.

We've got people complaining about spoilers for Dune and Lord of the Rings, and any other range of movies or books that have been available for public consumption for decades! What's next? Complaining about spoiling that Odysseus reconnects with Penelope? Spoiler alert: in some versions of the myth, he kills her! Does this mean there's no point in reading the Odyssey?

Classical birds and writers used to include a prologue to their work that explicitly stated what happens at the end of the story. And yet they crafted stories so renowned that they outlasted regimes, kingdoms, empires, and entire civilizations.

Having a shift in narrative direction seems to be a staple of media. My issue is with spoilers. Not with twists or turning points. It used to be that a spoiler referred to the act of sharing information in a story that is better left being experienced firsthand. Now it seems that spoilers refer to elements of the story itself. Which, provided a broad enough definition, could be nearly anything about a movie.

Spoiler alert: Turns out that Dr. Hannibal Lecter is actually a serial killing cannibal. Spoiler alert: The Titanic sinks. Spoiler alert: Wednesday has a dance scene.

This is setting a very restrictive culture for people who want to publicly engage with the media they enjoy. And I can't quite tell apart the chicken from the egg here. Are audiences suffering such a weak narrative constitution that there is an anaphylactic reaction to any component of a story that they have not experienced firsthand yet? Or is our climate of corporate-generated media becoming so dependent on formulas of narrative twists that they have nothing to offer audiences if they're not dangling a mystery box over their head on a string?

Narratively in film, there are two different ways to describe the way that a story can suddenly change: a plot twist and a turning point. People these days seem to think that they're the same thing and scream "spoilers!" if you so much as mentioned the slightest plot progression.

A plot twist is an unexpected and dramatic shift in the storyline that alters the viewers understanding of the plot. It can come in many forms, such as a character's sudden betrayal, the revelation of a hidden motive, the introduction of a previously unknown character, or the death of a previously well plot-armored character. Plot twists can be used to create suspense, challenge the audience's expectations, or provide a surprising ending, when they're done well.

In contrast, a turning point is a significant moment in the story that changes the direction of the narrative but doesn't change everything about the movie. Strictly in literary terms, a turning point is when the character makes a decision that alters the direction of the story in a way that cannot be reversed. This is an important element of dramatic tragedy where a character's direct action prevents this story from ending on a happy note. Spoiler alert: Romeo kills Tibult.

While both plot twists and turning points can be important elements in storytelling, they serve different functions and have different effects on the audience. Plot twists are often used to create a moment of surprise or shock. They can come out of nowhere and in many cases remove a lot of the rewatchability value of the film. If the whole movie is built on the twist, why bother watching it again. Turning points, on the other hand, are almost always necessary to advance the plot and change the direction of the story when needed.

Another key difference between plot twists and turning points is the timing of their occurrence. Plot twists usually occur towards the end of the story, often at the climax or resolution and are designed to shock the audience and hopefully have them leaving the cinema talking about it. There's an old adage in filmmaking: the quality of the movie doesn't matter, only the quality of the last 15 minutes. Because that's what people will remember. Turning points on the other hand can occur at any time in the story and are used to create momentum and tension. More often than not, they occur within the first half of the movie.

For instance, spoiler alert: the shooting of Vito Corleone is a pivotal moment in Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece The Godfather. The scene takes place pretty early on in the film and sets the stage for the rest of the story. The shooting itself is abrupt and shocking. It's a turning point for the characters because it marks a shift in power dynamics within the Corleone family. Vito is the head of the family and has always been in charge.

However, after he is shot and left critically injured, his eldest son Sunny steps up to take control. This leads to a bit of a power struggle between Sunny and Vito's youngest son, Michael, who is at first reluctant to get involved in the family business. Sunny's aggressive leadership style though leads to a war with rival families that eventually leads to him being killed. Michael's eventual takeover of the family, having all of his enemies assassinated on the day of his baby's christening, sets him on a path of corruption and violence that we follow throughout The Godfather Part 2 and Part 3.

I've seen way too many people online complain about having The Godfather spoiled for them, when the movie's quality has absolutely nothing to do with turning points in the film. There's a reason this film is held up as one of the quintessential masterpieces of cinema. There's far more to watch it for than just surprises.

Contrast that with the 2012 horror movie Cabin in the Woods. The film sets up the classic horror movie tropes of a group of college students heading out to a remote Cabin in the Woods for a weekend of fun, only to encounter a mysterious and terrifying force waiting for them. However, spoiler alert: the entire scenario has been staged by a group of technicians working for a mysterious organization. The horror is not real, but rather a simulated experience designed to appease ancient gods.

While this twist is a clever subversion of horror movie conventions, it's such a 180 that there's not much you get out of it watching it a second time. The first half of the movie is a straightforward horror film with a suspenseful atmosphere, fun dialogue, more character development for the ones who usually get killed off first, and a strong sense of dread. The office workers leave the audience wondering what's going on. But they aren't that distracting from the deliberately paint by numbers plot.

However, once the twist is revealed, the tone of the film becomes a much more comedic meta commentary about horror movies in general. While the shift can be entertaining, it also means that the audience is no longer invested in the horrific elements of the film or the characters it had been setting up. The sense of dread is replaced by a sense of detachment. Knowing the ending when you watch The Godfather does not ruin the experience of watching The Godfather/ but knowing the ending of Cabin in the Woods? Why even bother watching it?

Now plot twists aren't evil. A well-executed plot twist can keep the audience guessing and on the edge of their seats. This is because it creates uncertainty about the outcome of the story, which creates a sense of anticipation and excitement. Certainly, there are many movies with plot twists that are absolutely worth re-watching. We need to keep in mind that it's the twist that becomes spoiled. The twist is not the spoiler. However, the issue is when a spoiled twist spoils the whole movie. It can detract from the overall experience of the story and leave the audience feeling disappointed or cheated. What's the point of an audience getting emotionally invested in a story if they are made aware of the only worthwhile element of that story?

Another problem comes if the twist undermines the logic or consistency of the world. If the twist contradicts established facts or character traits, it feels contrived and leaves the audience feeling unsatisfied. For example, if a character is actually another character who the fans have already guessed is that character, but whom the filmmakers swear up and down is not that character... Spoiler alert:

That's just... lying. Like some creator whose only real creative trick is to establish mysterious contrivances that keep the audience guessing and whose panicked response to audiences figuring it out... is to insist that they're wrong in order to give them a reason to buy a ticket.

So when does a spoiler not spoil a movie? I used the example from The Empire Strikes Back, where the famous twist has reached the point where most children have heard the line referenced before they've ever seen the movie. I can't think of many ways that someone could go into watching Episode 5 completely blind in this day and age. And yet this film is frequently held up as a science fiction masterpiece. It should be a demonstration that knowing what happens in a movie doesn't mean that the movie itself is spoiled. How does this spoiler continue to function as a successful twist?

First of all, nobody was expecting there to be a twist in the first place. There's so little of the movie's content that hinges on the relationship between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. Even up until the point where Darth Vader spoils Luke's parentage, we're under the impression that he wants to capture Luke to bring him to the Emperor. The prior hour and a half is spent embroiled in a discussion about military operations against an overwhelming force, poignant and subversive philosophical debate, and acute political discourse. It's difficult to spoil a movie when the highlights of the story are contained in debate and conversation. Darth Vader's revelation is a fantastic five minutes out of another fantastic two hours.

What specifically makes this twist so good is that the twist is more significant for the characters. The characters affected by the plot are entirely invested with why this revelation is so significant, either directly or by proxy. Not only does the audience know what emotional effect this has upon Luke, but we also see Darth Vader now as a human figure, rather than the "more machine than man" perspective of him.

Take a look at some of the other most infamous twists in Hollywood history, such as Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. Spoiler alert: Norman Bates dresses up like his dead mother and murders people and then blames it on his mom. Nearly everybody knows this. The movie had a shot for shot remake in 1998 in a prequel TV series. The movie still remains one of the masterworks of cinematic horror. And it's not because you're so shocked when you learn what happens. It's a combination of tension performance and some of the most iconic melding of visuals and orchestra ever put to film!

While Norman Bates being the killer is certainly a shock, it is not the only twist in the movie. Audiences of the day would have even said that it was a far cry from the primary twist. The character of Marion Crane is portrayed by Janet Lee. A close approximation would be like comparing her to Margot Robbie today: a Hollywood actress at the peak of the industry. And although she is in all the marketing, she's killed 40 minutes into the movie.

Another reason why the twist doesn't spoil the movie is that it adds to the overall atmosphere. From the beginning, Psycho is a movie that is designed to make audiences feel uneasy: the black and white cinematography, the eerie score, the unconventional structure, all work together to create a sense of foreboding. The revelation that Norman Bates is the killer only adds to this atmosphere of dread. By the time the twist comes, audiences are already on the edge of their seats and they're ready to be shocked.

The fact that mild-mannered Baits is capable of such violence is all the more horrifying because of the mood that has been established throughout the whole film. The film spends its duration earning that unsettling payoff. It's a natural conclusion to the story that is supported by the events of the film. Hitchcock carefully plants clues and red herrings throughout the movie, leading audiences down one path before revealing the truth. It's not a mystery for mystery's sake, there are no lingering questions dangling over the audience's head in a false belief that this is the only way to engage the audience. Hitchcock's soft touch invites the audience into the mystery. When the mystery is solved, it means as much to the audience as it does to the characters.

The twist for the sake of a twist came about in recent years, thanks to, in most, part two filmmakers: M. Night Shyamalan and JJ Abrams. Shyamalan became famous for his last minute twist in The Sixth Sense, when the audience discovers that Bruce Willis was dead the entire time. Spoiler alert. What's unfortunate is that M. Night Shyamalan got so big off of this movie that he spent his entire career trying to recreate that famous twist that put him on the map.

Though none are as renowned for twists as JJ Abrams and his goddamn Mystery Box. The Mystery Box is a literal box that Abrams purchased from a magic shop when he was a child, allegedly. It contained various magic tricks and props but he never opened it. The Box became a symbol for him of the power of mystery and the unknown. Honestly this story sounds just about as contrived as most of his movies. It's got that kind of feel-good sensibility that you'd expect to find in '80s Spielberg movies and their copycats.

In filmmaking, the mystery box concept refers to the use of mystery and ambiguity to create interest and suspense in a story. Even if the writer doesn't know what the end result will be. Abrams has stated that he believes in the power of mystery and that withholding information can create a sense of anticipation and excitement for the audience. That he's more interested in questions than answers.

Most notoriously he used this bullshit box -- I mean mystery box -- when he took over the Star Wars series after Disney bought the rights for my very depressed George Lucas. In JJ's sequel trilogy, the use of the mystery box was criticized for being overused and poorly executed. For example, in The Force Awakens, he introduced new characters like Rey and Kylo Ren, and deliberately left as many questions unanswered about them as possible. While this initially created excitement and speculation among fans, it also left many feeling unsatisfied and frustrated when those questions were either left unanswered, or answered unsatisfactorily by the end of the mess known as The Rise of Skywalker. By that point many critics who lauded Episode 7 argued that the use of the mystery box was used as a crutch to cover up the plot holes or weak writing rather than being an integral part of the storytelling.

The lack of coherent planning and consistent vision for the sequel trilogy also contributed to the perception that the mystery box was being overused as a gimmick, rather than as a legitimate storytelling device. And they did absolutely everything they could to protect their precious twists and spoilers. Han dying wasn't really a twist for anyone who knows anything about Harrison Ford's career and his opinion of Star Wars, but it shocked plenty of people nonetheless. The Emperor still being alive was a nonsensical spoiler that they even used in the advertising for Episode 9, but the fact that Rey was his granddaughter was kept very close to the chest. It screams that a filmmaker has little faith in their work, that they hinge your enjoyment of the movie entirely on a twist leaving you shocked.

But what's left after the shock? It didn't take audiences many repeat visits to the theater to come to the conclusion that Episode 7 kinda... lacked anything other than nostalgia? On your first viewing, you get the rush of feelings... but rushing emotions give diminishing returns. This is the same reason why many people who may have, at one point, named their pets after characters from the MCU are now avoiding anything with that logo on it like the plague. You get to a point where you think "Am I actually excited for this movie or do I just do this out of habit?" which leads some people to then question "If I divest from this media, am I actually missing anything?"

That's one thing for Marvel movies, but provided how staggeringly successful they are... were -- almost all of Hollywood is doing everything it can to cash in on that success by doing the same thing. What happens to the quality of our media when the largest media producers are only gauging the quality of media on whether there's something they can conceal from their paying audience?

Some people are just naturally good at picking up on hints and cues in either a movie itself or indications within the ads. If our entire cinematic creative process is constructed around creating surprises for the audience, then there isn't going to be a whole lot of ways for them to connect with, say, a Marvel movie. I've seen a relatively recent shift where many people have simply stopped engaging with movies and may avoid movies with straightforward plots because they feel that there's no point in watching them if there's no twist. Never mind when it comes to say movies like Everything Everywhere All at Once, or The Menu or even Dungeons and Dragons. There's nothing really to spoil. Even take a look at mega successful smashes like Avatar 2 and The Super Mario Brothers Movie. There's no grand revelations here. One is a showcase of CGI spectacle and the other is a love letter to a beloved video game franchise that was done dirty in the early 90s.

As far as spoilers go, any surprises about these movies or either things you cannot really describe -- spoiler alert: hot dog fingers? -- or our turning points that occur within the first third of the movie. With each of these examples, the reason you're meant to watch it is to watch it. In fact, one of the most surprising things to me about The Menu, and maybe this is because of my obsession with Hannibal, is that the movie isn't about fine dining cannibalism. Spoiler alert: it's... not about... fine dining cannibalism.

The real spoilers for that movie are about the themes and concepts that drive the plot, because the way that film expresses those ideas are so detailed and nuanced that they cannot be expressed in any singular instance without context. And in fact, even if I read you a synopsis of the movie, I'd still tell you to go see it because there's just so much about it that can't be put into words. Like they say, the living is in the journey not the destination.

Which... I would really like to see a return to that sensibility. Because I'm starting to see this process of generating hype around secrecy as a contributing factor to an overall dip in quality in media in general. Namely in Disney, but Disney owns half Hollywood by now, so even just a decline in that corporation's output is a substantial chunk. And the corner cutting is tempting. why do you need to put your best foot forward when you can get butts into theater seats by promising a grand twist that "you must see this movie to experience"? Especially if you need to see this twist in order to have any hope of understanding what's going to happen in future projects. It's the Interconnected Universe Declining Quality Pipeline.

This isn't even something connected exclusively to superhero movies, or other specific genre blockbusters. The Batman was a murder mystery built around the question of who is the Riddler. Spoiler alert: it was Paul Dano. He was on the press tour. The surprising parts of the movie were the performances from Pattinson and Kravitz. If this were a Disney project, or anything directed by JJ Abrams, I can definitely see it not being out of the question for them to keep Dano hidden inside of a locked trunk between the last day of filming and the premiere. And based on some of his interviews, he might even be into that.

If the executives on a project believe that there is nothing more to this media beyond how it can shock and surprise an audience, why do they need to spend a buck on anything else? Quantumania certainly took a critical hit for just not paying attention to visuals. In recent memory, most of Disney's new projects are shot on special projection screens to make sure no spoilers get leaked. However, actors can't interact with the set, and there's so much light being projected that it's a nightmare for cinematographers, and it just looks bad.

And while we may accept that there is an entire collection of films whose executive oversight does not believe that they have anything to offer but 200 million dollar surprises, unfortunately, this bleeds out into other movies. Some, as I mentioned, do not really have anything to spoil in the first place, but people still may act like they do. But others, as I mentioned, are based on existing media that has been publicly available for some time. I'm sorry, but Dune has been out since the 60s. If you care enough about the property, it shouldn't be a surprise to you that Paul ends up starting a holy war and is kind of depicted as a massive jerk. No, not spoiler alert! If it matters that much to you, read the damn book! Because people who have read it are going to want to talk about it!

The whole universe isn't going to set classic movies and books on the shelf and wait for you to have time to get around to it because other people have. There are three ways to avoid spoilers. You can keep away from online spaces until you've consumed the media you want, or you can selectively choose to engage with media which is not constructed around spoilers, or you can accept spoilers and continue to engage with media anyway.

Unfortunately, there is no real way to avoid spoilers while existing in online spaces. There's always going to be some jerk who somehow found a leaked script for a new episode of a Star Wars streaming series and blabbers about it on Twitter. While there is some responsibility for people to not leak any plot twists in a movie, other people really can't be held accountable for your emotional reaction to spoiled content. And on the flip side, there needs to be a greater effort on the creative side to generate content for which spoilers are irrelevant. And no, you don't need to make a simple straightforward movie to really do that. In recent memory, Knives Out and its sequel Glass Onion demonstrate that you can make an engaging murder mystery where it's abundantly clear who the killer is from the very beginning. But even if you call the shots, the "who's the murderer" part of it isn't the reason why you're meant to be watching. These movies are about rich people being horrible people. The mystery is just a vessel for that.

Even "The Mystery Box", the idea of deliberately holding a mystery over the audience's head, isn't an inherently tainted narrative trick. If you know how to make a good movie, you can pull it off. One of the quintessentially great movies of all time has a mystery box. The whole point of Citizen Kane is "What is Rosebud?", the final word of the titular Charles Foster Kane. It takes the entire movie to figure out what it is, and in fact these days most people know what Rosebud is before they even see the movie. Spoiler alert: it's his childhood sled. And if you think for a second that that spoils the movie, and therefore there's no point in watching it, then quite frankly it's your loss.

But knowing this doesn't speak to the reasons why this film is held up as an exemplar of excellence in cinema. Knowing the name of the sled doesn't answer the question "Why should I watch this movie?" It's a movie about innocence, a fall from grace, and the corruptive power of success. The sled has nothing to do with it and everything to do with it! And you don't know how that's possible unless you watch the whole movie.

There is an onus on audiences to not put twists and plot beats on a pedestal of importance to such a degree that they let these things spoil a movie. If these things spoil a movie, then watching the movie itself spoils the movie! You know what happens, doesn't that spoil it for the second time you watch it? Why not use the power of your dollar to support media that can't be spoiled by a leaked script?

Hopefully this will put pressure on Hollywood to begin putting some oomph back into their narrative impact... and other aspects of the creative process. Dungeons and Dragons shows us that not having a spoilable twist doesn't spell the end of the blockbuster. You can make fun engaging movies without the diminishing returns of a surprise twist. Even if you all didn't go see it. Yes, I'm judging you.

As much as the primary responsibility should be put on the corporate production side of Hollywood to provide us with the kind of quality that you'd think would be in demand for the cost of a movie ticket these days, this is a slow moving beast. And we are the ones who have to mobilize and begin to ask for more. And sometimes I think we forget that we do have that power.

It's amazing that people alive today get to say that we're living through a golden age. For us, it seems we're living in the Golden Age of Television. Commonly credited to have begun with Breaking Bad, television, and streaming services especially, experienced an unprecedented creative expansion of the kinds of content that could be put on the small screen. And in many ways the big screen was given a run for its money through not only content but also the use of newly available high definition and 4K cameras to introduce cinematic lighting and dynamic range to TV. From Breaking Bad, we got Hannibal. From Hannibal, we've now got Interview with a Vampire. Who needs Oscar bait?!

Nothing exemplified this quite like Game of Thrones, the HBO series adapted from George RR Martin's game-changing Song of Ice and Fire book series, and nothing else has ever exemplified just how far a once in a lifetime television phenomenon can go out of its way to almost completely tarnish its reputation forever, and it's because of spoiler culture.

When the showrunners ran out of the source material, because Martin takes so long to write, some fans noticed a marked decrease in writing quality. The pacing picked up too fast. The methodical development was replaced with fan service payoffs. Granted, many also thought that at this point they'd earned some of that... but I don't.

The problem for everyone else came when it seemed like fans were beginning to predict how the series was going to end. Up until then, the showrunners had enjoyed a strong reputation for presenting the unexpected. The book series was famous for killing off characters who seemingly should have had plot armor. And for shocking political plots that completely upset what seemed to be a plot projection. Spoiler alert: lots of people die; don't get attached. But sometimes they do get resurrected.

So when fans of the series began to connect the dots between certain characters who did end up having a kind of plot armor, it's like the showrunners didn't know how to generate tension anymore. Their solution? Just flip the script whenever someone figured it out! I don't know why they thought this was a solid plan, because fan theories about the books were going to inevitably bleed over into the discourse of the series.

So certain things were rushed. Perhaps these events were meant to happen? But didn't happen the way they should have. And it ended up being that the only real twist was twisting the plot's arm to guarantee that expectations would be subverted. Rather than being ambivalent to an expectation and just making good art.

As I said, for years fans had predicted the end of Martin's books, and he knew it. Some of them, he claims, are a dead match for his outlines. But his response to that was that he wasn't going to change his plans because some people had figured them out.

Game of Thrones should be a case study in how something so culturally lauded can go awry if the sole purpose is to surprise people. And in the end it certainly was surprisingly bad. Because I feel they thought so little of their audience that they expected everyone would be satisfied and overjoyed! As long as there were twists. A quantity of twists, turning points, revelations, exposition dumps, sudden entrances, twins separated at birth, waking up and it was all a dream, and anything in a plot that can be concealed from an audience does not a good story make. It's just drama.

But this is also just one aspect of the filmmaking process. And to hold a work of media's quality up to these twists is to overlook nearly every other aspect of creation in film. For which people have dedicated their entire lives to making these artistic and often unrecognized contributions to a good movie. Costumes, sets, special effects are just some examples. Performances from actors and the way that specific line readings can add layers to a character that just isn't there in the script. But also cinematography, direction, choreography when needed, sound editing and engineering, and camera work.

If learning a plot beat spoils a whole movie for you, it's spitting in the face of everyone involved in this! And a producer who builds a whole movie around a single plot beat is spitting in the face of these people too. You don't have to reinvent the wheel to make a good movie or series. The best thing to surprise your audience with is love and care for the content you produce. Even if they know exactly how it's going to end, because they read the book or they played the game. An amazing storytelling journey isn't about what shocks you, but what makes you care. And... that is what happened with The Last of Us.