Is Twist and Shocker dead? (spoilers inside)

[Azernak0]

In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock made one of the greatest thrillers of all time when he adapted the 1958 novel about a quiet man and his mother at their secluded motel. The movie is, of course, Psycho. If you were to create a list of the biggest twists in movie history, two of them could come from Psycho easily. The first is the most obvious; the fact that Norman is the killer rather than his mother, who has been dead for years. This was not the first twist in the movie. At the start, it focuses heavily on Marion Crane played by Janet Leigh. Janet Leigh was the face of the movie. She was built up as the protagonist for the better part of an hour. There are several quiet moments where she is alone so the idea that she wasn't the central character was completely ridiculous. Of course, she is killed off in probably the most famous death scene of all time. Everyone knows this scene: it is classic and imprinted throughout popular culture.

In 1996, a horror movie was coming out. Drew Barrymore was attached to it in the role of Casey Becker, the star of the movie. Wes Craven was directing it. Certainly going to be a powerhouse of a movie with Barrymore attached. She did all the press releases, went to all the late night shows, and is the face of the movie. Of course, Barrymore dies in the first 15 minutes of Scream in the most brutal and horrible way possible. No one saw this coming.

That doesn't really work anymore, does it? Family Guy had the episode where Brian died. I hadn't watched the show in years and yet knew that Brian was dead. I log my computer on, go to Yahoo! and see "this important and loved character died!" with a picture of Brian on the front page, utterly unavoidable. But don't worry, they said "SPOILERS" on the hyperlink to see which character died.

A couple months back when Brian died, there was a "these loved characters have also died." Many were from shows that happened just a couple months before so if you wanted to watch the shows now, well you certainly know who is dead. Social media sites like Imgur, Reddit, 4chan, Facebook, and Twitter exploded over the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones, meaning that if didn't see the episode that night it was going to be spoiled immediately. It is the only reason why I jumped at the opportunity to watch shows that I like but aren't incredibly attached to, just so someone on the internet doesn't spoil it. 16 hours after the end of Breaking Bad, everyone and their brother was officially in the mood of talking about how "Heisenberg is dead!"

Hashtag SnapekillsDumbledore was everywhere. The News even covered how everyone was mentioning Snape kills Dumbledore even three days after the book's release. Stupidly, the News didn't get the irony of talking about how people are spoiling something for other people. It is a different world than before. Hitchcock could never have gotten away with a twist that big without anyone knowing. 12 hours after being released, Reddit would be blowing up how they were shocked that Janet Leigh died. Hell, immediately after the Family Guy character died, Twitter was bursting with "BRING BACK BRIAN!"

How many people that have never watched Game of Thrones or cared about it at all now know "everyone dies at the wedding" and "No one likes Joffrey but he's dead now"?

Hearing my mother talk about, even the "Who shot J.R?" thing was spoiled as it played in another country first and spread to the radio before the show even came on. That was 34 years ago. Imagine what the internet could do now. When information is so wildly available and information is the exact thing that ruins a twist or shocking moment in a movie, television show, or book, can a real twist exist in today's world?

 

[Redd the Sock]

I think a lot of that today is by design. They want big immediate rating numbers or ticket sales, and the best way to do that is to make sure anyone concerned with spoilers is there ASAP, not putting it off until later. The twists still exists, but they are very short term, and the aftermath hype serves to tell anyone else that they should have been there at the time.

And of course, sometimes the damage is self inflicted. The recent "Time of the Doctor" farewell to Matt Smith as Doctor Who, felt like it was written to come off as a series swansong with a sudden "gotcha, we're not done yet" ending, but did anyone watching it not follow the "who is the new doctor" casting news before it came out? I'm probably not the only one that followed the TV show for game of Thrones into reading the actual Song of Ice and Fire, so for a lot of us, the red and purple weddings were expected. Hell, half the time we come online for spoilerish stuff like that.

 

[Total LOLige]

Twists and shocks are kind of lazy, everything has a twist of some sort now, I've kind of come to expect it. When you expect that it might happen you think of the possibilities and one of your predictions will probably turn out to be right. I'm not really bothered about shit getting spoiled for me on twitter, reddit etc because I expect something "big and OMG totally didn't expect that" moments to happen. The twist and shock is just used to get people talking and it succeeds. People should use spoiler warnings but they don't because most people don't care or they're just trying to be a troll knowing that it'll piss fans off.

Just a question for those that read the A Song of Ice and Fire books and have seen the show(I haven't read or seen either). How does the sort of build up to the "big events" differ? Is there any foreshadowing at all or is it just a "boom this happens" thing?

 

[TaboriHK]

The value in Hitchcock's era is that people couldn't conceive of it. I don't think it has a place now because it comes from the perspective of marketing and not artistry. It's a sell point, even when it isn't, because we are inundated with the concept. Everyone has a piece of their mind devoted to trying to predict them, and the internet utterly destroys their shelf-life to nanoseconds.

 

[Sight Unseen]

I'm going to dispute your argument using one of the same sources you use to prove it: Game of Thrones.

You realize that the Red Wedding was published in the year 2000, right? That's 14 years ago. So was the Purple Wedding. Eddard Stark died in 1996. NONE of these were highly and heavily spoiled to show watchers. MILLIONS of people (including myself) were absolutely devastated that the show killed Ned Stark. All of my friends who only watched the show were completely devastated by the Red Wedding last year, and they're all jumping for joy today over the Purple Wedding. And the books are hardly unpopular. They may not get the mainstream attention of the show but they were still best sellers and their sales have likely gone up exponentially since then.

Those were some damn well kept secrets by the book readers.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Spoilers for GOT have been around for YEARS. I avoided them. I had no idea about Ned's death before seeing it and I had no idea about the Red Wedding before reading about it. Heck, I find it extremely easy to avoid spoilers unless some random troll spews it out but that's never happened to me. Maybe I'm just lucky but I think I just avoid parts of the internet that would likely contain spoilers. I also have self-restraint in that I don't look things up that might lead to more answers than I bargained for.

 

[Azernak0]

I'm going to dispute your argument using one of the same sources you use to prove it: Game of Thrones.

You realize that the Red Wedding was published in the year 2000, right? That's 14 years ago. So was the Purple Wedding. Eddard Stark died in 1996. NONE of these were highly and heavily spoiled to show watchers. MILLIONS of people (including myself) were absolutely devastated that the show killed Ned Stark. All of my friends who only watched the show were completely devastated by the Red Wedding last year, and they're all jumping for joy today over the Purple Wedding. And the books are hardly unpopular. They may not get the mainstream attention of the show but they were still best sellers and their sales have likely gone up exponentially since then.

Those were some damn well kept secrets by the book readers.

This is true but I am going to do a very gauche thing and state: People that read are smarter or more mature than people who merely watch the television show or movie of the book. I am going to use "The Da Vinci Code" as an example. Book came out it 2003. No one cared about the conspiracy that the book followed with, namely Jesus had children. 2006 and suddenly you have people condemning the movie as being Anti-Catholic, Anti-Religious, or Anti-Space Aliens. I will state it is the same thing when it comes to Game of Thrones. Ned had been dead for 15 years before the show, yes, but AFTER the show everyone and their brother knows that he becomes sans head.

It will be the same damn thing with the Hunger Games (it already kind of is). The books are popular but the movies will be the things that Twitter, Imgur, Facebook, and any forum will spout on and on about when any twist comes off about, say, one of the Districts that doesn't exist anymore. I am going to call it now: no one will give a shit about The Giver or the fact that Jonah's father's job (SPOILER!!!! SPOILER!!!! SPOILER!!!! is to kill the lowest weight twin SPOILER!!!!)

(SPOILER END)
But, assuming the movie is decent, I bet people will be talking about the scene and how they didn't realize what it entailed despite the book being old enough to imbibe alcoholic beverages in the United States. If the movie becomes a hit I bet people will have that scene spoiled for them just because of their casual understanding of the internet and people leaving messages on Facebook like "Jonah's dad is Hitler!" Happened with Ender's Game.

The amount of television shows and movies I can talk about with ever watched them or researching into them is kind of staggering. It is just food for thought really; information and people talking about the game/show/movie kills the twist or spoils different parts of it that were going to be very powerful. Information and people talking about X/Y/Z is ubiquitous on the internet.

As stated before: #snapekillsdumbledore