Steven Moffat Hates Spoilers

I don't even know what you're talking about, man. Are you calling my cousin a nitwit or are saying the people who want spoilers are nitwits?

Amen brother. When I went to the midnight showing of Thor there was a group of high school/college age guys sitting a couple of seats from me and before the movie one was talking it up about Aliens and how Michael Bay should remake it because it was the best of the franchise and he could really punch up the action and how the first movie Alien was so bad because it looked like it was from the 70s and it didn't have any action at all and the only good parts was when the women came out of sleep in the beginning topless and in panties.

Of course Alien came out in 1979 and it wasn't an action film but a horror film and since I didn't want to get tossed out of the theater before Thor, I didn't beat those facts into him with my meaty fists of justice but God I wanted to oh so badly.

The people who *don't* want spoilers... I'm calling the people who insist that everything must be shiny and new (i.e. spoiler-free) to be enjoyable "ADD-headed buffoons". I can only imagine they flit frantically from new thing to new thing, desperately seeking out the next exciting surprise to use up and then toss aside like some hateful reminder of what it's like to actually enjoy something because it's good rather than because it was unknown, before inevitably running out of new things and dieing in a spectacular flash of boredom.

You better watch out, cuz Santa Claus is comin to town!

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

The Only Certain Way for people to be spoiler free.

There's a lot of middle ground between wanting to see a film with fresh eyes and being so freakishly obsessed with freshness that you can't concentrate on any one thing for longer than the average gnat. It's easy to lampoon the extreme, but it's equally easy to lampoon its opposite. For instance, world-weary cynicism is just as annoying in large doses as the instant-gratification mindset that is widely presumed to have overtaken western society. Examples of both are so widely available these days, particularly on the internet, that it isn't difficult to work yourself up into a froth about a perceived trend towards either.

Personally, I'd just as soon avoid having my perception of a work of fiction skewed before the fact, whether that skewing comes in the form of a plot revelation or in the form of the all-too-pervasive know-it-all deconsructionism that seems to have proliferated in the Facebook/Twitter/Youtube age. I don't think I'm being unreasonable or dimwitted for feeling that way.

None of the above means that I won't occasionally read a review about a movie I haven't seen, or that I won't occasionally take pleasure in wantonly wading through plot spoilers. It doesn't mean that I'm incapable of enjoying a movie the end to which I already know. It does mean that sometimes there is a purity in freshness, a sense of wonder that can only come from inexperience with the material and a blindness to the tropes to which the material might fall victim. We can sometimes enjoy that initial sense of wonder even by recollection, even in subsequent viewings of a given film -- but not if we never felt it in the first place.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Indeed. And thus I couldn't just sit by and let those who are non-chalant about spoilers all get lumped into being 'pseudo-hipster dillweeds' without presenting another extreme side of the coin. Of course, I had a little fun at my own expense as well with the whole 'get off my dry and dusty lawn' crack.