25 Films That Intentionally Spoil Other Films

Dominic Sena’s action thriller Swordfish packs a loaded cast in John Travolta, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, and Don Cheadle, and while it is undeniably a mishmash of action and tropes, it is a lot of fun. It follows Stanley Jobson (Jackman), a computer hacker who is recruited by Gabriel Shear (Travolta) into the middle of a bank robbery conspiracy.

But Gabriel's opening monologue spoils Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon (1975) straight off the bat, revealing not only that Al Pacino's character doesn't kill the hostages, but that he doesn't get away with it either. 

It is, seemingly, all to make the point that Hollywood screenwriters lack balls, and yet Swordfish writer Skip Woods' filmography is a catalogue of either safe or dumb decision-making. He is, after all, the man who sewed up Deadpool's mouth for X-Men: Origins, who killed the Die Hard franchise with A Good Day to Die Hard, and penned both of the Hitman movie flops.

To make matters worse, the critique Gabriel makes, decrying a lack of realism, centres on precisely the wrong movie; Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon is a rather realistic and less sensationalist crime thriller based on real events. Meanwhile, Gabriel’s character is a scenery-chewing villain whose antics tip Swordfish far beyond realism into egregious action movie territory.