There were two defining moments in my movie-watching life.
The first was the very first film I ever saw in a theatre, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.
The second was when I watched Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace on the big screen for the first time.
I was extremely young, so I vaguely remember the experience of The Empire Strikes Back.
There was the small musty auditorium that reeked of jalapeño peppers and nacho cheese.
And there was the magic that happened when the lights dimmed and the movie began.
I was only a baby when A New Hope was released, but I do recall seeing it on a very small television set in my parents’ living room a short time after on the very first “cable” incarnation, which was called ON TV.
For you aficionados, this airing was preceded by the very first fan-made parody film, Hardware Wars, with toast that launched from a toaster in the shape of a Tie Fighter that fired laser bolts at an egg beater spacecraft.
In the movie theater at that age, however, The Empire Strikes Back was larger than life.
My parents often recount a point in the film where the audience was dead quiet, only for me to shout out for all to hear, “Go Luke!”
Luke Skywalker and Han Solo were my heroes.
Darth Vader scared me.
They all were alive. They all were real.
Like many others, Star Wars has had a profound impact on my life, has reminded me of the importance of feeding my creativity daily, and embracing my imagination.
When The Phantom Menace was released in 1997, I was a film major at USC, had been interning on television sets, and had developed more of an intellectual understanding of the business and the behind the scenes of movies.
One of the first ever movie trailers you could actually download from the internet was Episode I. I must have watched that trailer 10,000 times. I knew every frame. I was so excited at the thought of new Star Wars adventures that I was desperate for information. I salivated over anything I could get my hands on. Interviews, articles, concept art, television footage, anything I could find.
Sitting in that theatre surrounded by friends in 1997, I was so fired up, so giddy, I felt like a kid again.
The lights dimmed, “STAR WARS” appeared on the screen with a BLAST as the infamous John Williams score kicked in, and then something very interesting happened.
I realized I knew everything that was going to happen in the film before it happened.
My intellectual mind started crossing off the checklist of events as they occurred: Underwater planet? Check. Now we’re on Tatooine. Check. That racing sequence should start any minute now. Heading to the city planet will probably be next, followed by a return to the forest planet for the final battle scene with clear blue skies. Check, check, check.
Even more disconcerting for me was the fact that I knew all of the big surprises before they happened. Everyone loves a good lightsaber battle. But up until that point, amidst the flurry of expanded universe of novels, comics, and cartoons, no one knew a double-edged lightsaber could have existed.
But there it was, wielded by that pretty decent baddie, Darth Maul…
…revealed to us in the trailer.
It was one of the few major surprises in the film, spoiled to me by the trailer.
Scratch that.
It was one of the few major surprises in the film I spoiled for myself by watching the trailer.
I left the theatre that evening, not upset over Jar Jar Binks and his “icky icky goo” but over the fact that I waited 14 years for a new Star Wars adventure and ruined it for myself by unwrapping the present before Christmas Day.
I wondered how I would have felt when Darth Maul ignited that second blade had I not seen it in advance in the trailer. Truthfully, being the fanboy that I am, I probably would have lost my shit.
I am so appreciative for having had this experience, which has changed my entire perspective on movie watching to this day.
I realized the feeling I had as a kid when going into a Star Wars movie, where I had no idea what was going to happen next, when there were so many surprises around every turn, and the sheer exhilaration of it all, was more important to me to try to recapture, than having advanced knowledge of the movie I was about to watch.
Since that day, I have not deviated from my self-regulated mandate that I go “spoiler-free” on those very special movies I am truly excited for.
This means literally getting up and walking out of a theatre when a trailer starts for a film I want to see, and hitting “mute” and looking away when a TV spot comes on.
This means going on a self-imposed “media block” when the flurry of headlines and articles about the movie bombard us online.
I don’t do this with all films. Just the ones I want to experience as a “kid” again.
Living spoiler-free becomes increasingly difficult, the controversy becoming all the more apparent currently as we crawl closer to a Star Wars Episode VII release date.
There is no hotter topic to report on by the entertainment media than Star Wars. The problem doesn’t lie with the mainstream media, like Entertainment Weekly, which will publish an official, approved, Lucasfilm-sanctioned exposé when the time comes.
Rather, it’s all the unofficial entertainment bloggers out there. Your clicks are everything to these sites, and they will do anything they can to drive attention to themselves, including being the first to land spoiler images and unofficial plot leaks of your favorite film franchises, even if it means ruining the moviegoing experience for you.
It raises an important question: Just what is a spoiler?
The problem is that this is subject to interpretation. If Lucasfilm releases an official plot synopsis and a movie poster, are these considered spoilers?
Some may argue that since the studio is giving you specific information, in an era when they are cognizant of spoilers, this is appropriate information that can be shared.
There is an official charity organization called “Star Wars: A Force for Change” that has released a few “harmless” photos taken on set of Episode VII, authorized by director, J.J. Abrams and Lucasfilm. The photos have shown off a specific planet, a ship, an alien creature, none of which will be relevant to our overall impression of the film. Is something like this a spoiler? Absolutely.
The reality is that any information about a movie delivered in any capacity is technically a spoiler.
We can blame irresponsible journalism by entertainment bloggers for revealing unofficial leaked information and ruining the experience for us, but it is our choice to go to these sites and click on these articles. Just as I can’t blame Lucasfilm for releasing a trailer for The Phantom Menace, I similarly can’t blame an entertainment site for publishing information about the movie, authorized or not.
Unfortunately, in this day, it is literally impossible to go entirely spoiler-free through no fault of our own. If I click on one of those blog sites, and the first headline I see is “Episode VII Set Visit to Planet Hoth” there’s not much I can do to prevent this other than by boycotting the site in its entirety.
For the record, I made that headline up. Don’t worry, it’s not a spoiler.
In actuality, I do, indeed, boycott a site when its headlines start to become irresponsible and spoiler-filled. I will give them a chance or two, but if I start to see continuous headlines that key me in on information about the film, at a certain point, I will just choose to eliminate that site from my favorites.
We cannot ask the studio to not release information about the movie, nor can we ask bloggers to not leak unofficial information.
The key is for ourselves to have the mental discipline and the fortitude to resist the temptation to read the information out there. Just as when we were kids and we would see those presents under the tree and would still wait to open them until Christmas Day, the power to go spoiler-free is within us.
This is where I think J.J. Abrams got it a bit wrong during his Star Trek era.
Abrams has been notorious for his ability to keep things a secret, and to his credit, he has done a very good job feeding only the information to the public that he wants gotten out.
But this mentality, while noble, backfired on him with the marketing of Star Trek Into Darkness. He was so hellbent on making sure there was so little information about the film publicized prior to the release that he didn’t give the fans enough reason to get excited. Calling the film Into Darkness wrongly gave the impression that this was going to be a darker, grittier experience, when in actuality, the movie was tonally in line with the first outing.
They couldn’t market Benedict Cumberbatch properly, because they wanted to save his true identity as a big reveal during the movie. But they also couldn’t tip their hands about who the real antagonist of the movie was either. So what was delivered was a very convoluted marketing strategy released to the public, with no tangible bad guy, a confusing tone, and a random montage of dialogue and scenes spliced together erratically for a trailer, but with no semblance of cohesion.
In truth, what they should have done was forget about the John Harrison fake-out and market Cumberbatch as Khan, the adversary Kirk and company were going to have to go toe to toe with. Khan, as we found out, was really a secondary character, a Hannibal Lecter of sorts, with the most resonating surprise of the movie occurring elsewhere. By marketing Cumberbatch as Khan, this would have given the fanboys seeking official spoilers some real meat to sink their teeth into.
Star Trek Into Darkness performed fine at the box office. It did well enough to earn a go at another sequel, but it wasn’t the phenomenon it could have been.
In this case, Abrams over-thought the notion of spoilers. He didn’t trust in our ability to look away if we didn’t want to be spoiled, and so he tried to force-hide things from us. The fans became annoyed, and this backlash I feel was a contributor to the film underperforming.
I have always felt movie trailers aren’t intended for the fans. As a Star Wars fanatic, I will see Episode VII regardless of how it may or may not look in a trailer. A trailer, really, is for the people who have never seen Star Wars, or who aren’t interested in Star Wars. If something in the trailer can pique the interest of a non-fan, enough to venture to the theater, it has succeeded.
But since I’m going to see the movie no matter what, to me, watching the trailer is actually pointless. It really does not serve any purpose other than spoiling the movie. It could be as major as a character arc or plot point revealed, or as simple as seeing a beloved spaceship flying through an asteroid belt. Either way, that’s one more piece of information I have now been made aware of, and one less surprise for me on the day of release. That little nugget in itself may not make a difference, but put enough of those together, as I did with The Phantom Menace, and suddenly you find yourself knowing way more than you want to.
Living spoiler-free in a spoiler-filled world can be a lonely business. While everyone else out there in the world is talking about the movie before its release, dissecting what they’ve seen and read, analyzing leaked footage, discussing rumors, I don’t have much to contribute. I’m the buzzkill at the party, asking people not to discuss Star Wars in front of me, or I’ll walk away in the middle of a conversation.
All the while I’m waiting patiently for the day of release.
And believe you me, it is torturous!
I cling to two concepts that give me the strength to get through it.
1) That I will experience an event with the same wide-eyed wonderment, excitement, and purity that I once felt specifically as a kid.
2) I know for certain that after seeing the film on opening day, that’s when I’ll be joining the party with my friends, and we will be analyzing and dissecting the movie until we are blue in the face.
If you have never tried going spoiler-free, I’d suggest giving it a shot, and I’d love to know how your attempts go. I think you’ll find it very personally fulfilling, as I do.
As Steve Jobs said, “The journey is the reward.”
This is what it means to be spoiler-free.