The True History Of Movie Spoilers
The Dark Side Of Spoiler Control
After all, the biggest spoiler of all just might be that a movie sucks.
Plot details leaking ahead of time is just one problem studios face when pre-screening movies, because as we all know, negative early reviews have the potential to decimate a film's box office prospects overnight.
Consider last year's disastrous The Predator, which misguidedly premiered at TIFF over a week before it hit cinemas, and mere hours after it screened, every minute detail of its terrible plot was available online, likely contributing hugely to its box office failure.
As such, studios will often screen or embargo risky and problematic projects close to release day in order to keep a lid on reviews for as long as possible until the mainstream gets a chance to see it.
Case in point, 2015's Fantastic Four reboot, which didn't screen for American press until two days before release in the hope of minimising the spread of news that it was rubbish.
Given that the film had already been screened for the public in parts of Europe days earlier, though, it didn't much matter - the word was out, and the film tanked both critically and commercially.
It's becoming increasingly common for studios to defend this stance under the guise of protecting audiences from spoilers, when in actuality it may simply be that they (understandably) don't want an unfavourable Rotten Tomatoes score out in the wild a week or two before release.
At the end of the day, studios are free to do as they like, and there are occasional examples of amazing movies that didn't lift their review embargo until shortly before release - Mad Max: Fury Road reviews came out just three days before the film did - but more often than not, a late embargo signifies a movie that's in trouble.
Yet in an age where more viewers than ever are desperate to view a film as a hallowed experience free of even the slightest hint of how it might end, studios have a convenient out to deny critics access until late in the day.
Feeding off spoiler culture also serves the secondary function of allowing studios to drum up stronger opening weekend business, imploring fans to see their film before the memes are plastered all over Twitter by the Sunday afternoon.
And so, studios have a vested interest to keep the spoiler fear alive. But at the same time, there are countless instances where they've used comprehensive plot details to actually market their movie to a mainstream that, believe it or not, doesn't like to be surprised...
Continued on next page...