Why it’s time to get over spoilerphobia

Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Anyone who saw The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 will appreciate the legend of that one mean person who shouted down the cinema queue “Darth Vader’s Luke’s dad!” My own spoiler horror story was when someone told me, while queuing to see Fight Club, that Edward Norton’s character, Tyler Durden, had a split personality. In 2006 Jonathan Rosenbaum expressed concern about what spoilers meant for film criticism, arguing that spoiler culture privileges plot and narrative at the expense of other forms of style: Why is it supposedly a spoiler to say that Touch of Evil begins with a time bomb exploding but supposedly not a spoiler to say that the movie begins with a lengthy crane shot? Even the BFI’s Screenonline website has a “beware spoilers” disclaimer on synopses of films which were released up to 70 years ago. It’s hard to know if long-time fans of The Hunger Games or the Harry Potter books experienced the film adaptations differently from those who had never read them.