Many cinema-goers will intuitively see the wisdom of this argument. Sometimes spoilers become an obstacle rather than a pleasing garnish on top of a movie. Consider new Matrix sequel/reboot, Matrix: Resurrections. More than one review spotlights a “huge” twist towards the end. Actually the “twist” is more mild surprise – and those who sat down to the film expecting to have their minds blown may left underwhelmed.
Anger over spoilers may, in fact, have nothing to do with a particular movie or franchise in the first place. The fury may flow from a desire to maintain absolute control over our environment. If we suspect that this control has been compromised – when someone blabs the ending of Spider-Man: No Way Home at the popcorn stand in Odeon, for instance – we may feel our agency has been taken away. There is even a word for this experience: reactance.
“You feel like your control’s been taken away,” researcher Ben Johnson, assistant professor of advertising at the University of Florida, told Vox in 2019. “It has to do with if I get angry or I get frustrated because you told me I can’t do a certain thing – or in this case, because you spoiled a movie for me that I didn’t want spoiled – then I am feeling a lot of reactance.”
There is also an argument to be made that nothing spoils faster than spoilers. The Sixth Sense’s cultural cachet has diminished across the past 20 years. Take away the twist and what is left? Star Wars creator, George Lucas, by contrast, was completely comfortable with giving away the storylines to his films – to the point where he was happy to outline, in detail, the plot of the original Star Wars in a 1976 New York Times profile (months ahead of Star Wars’s release). And yet today Star Wars is more beloved than ever.
Or consider the impact of Game of Thrones and its two major spoilers, regarding the fate of Ned Stark and the events of the Red Wedding. These are among the two great narrative twists of recent popular culture. And yet they were hiding in plain view all along in the George RR Martin novels published decades previously.
A gimmicky spoiler, in other words, ages like old milk while a great plot twist lives forever and is, if anything, even more enjoyable experienced with your eyes open. It is a lesson Spider-Man fans should bear in mind before spinning into a tizzy over No Way Home and its web of whammys.
