I WANT TO EAT A NUT OF LAERMA!

SPOILER WARNINGS: EBERT IS GETTING THE RIGHT IDEA

In response to a question regarding Roger Ebert's review of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King wherein Ebert wrote "Of all the heroes and villains in the trilogy, and all the thousands or hundreds of thousands of deaths, I felt such emotion only twice, with the ends of Faramir and Gollum" when, in fact, Faramir isn't dead, they only make it appear like he's dead where the writer asks whether Ebert confused "Boromir", whom dies, and "Faramir", whom doesn't.

"No, I meant to write that. The AM [Answer Man] got a lot of messages saying that Faramir does not die, and indeed he does not, but the movie gets a great deal mileage out of making us think he does/has/will. Notice that I mention he is "not quite dead" on his funeral pyre, and later I refer to his "end", not his death, because his end- including his near-death, his salvation, and his eventual destiny- were quite moving. Maybe this whole business with spoilers is getting out of hand. I wrote carefully to avoid giving away his survival, only to be told I should have revealed what happened."

You're damn right about that, Ebert! I've been thinking that spoiler warnings have been getting out of hand for the longest time, spoiler warnings being mainly for the people with no sense of discernment to avoid reading articles and reviews about films which they want to see "pure", in the Frank Costanza sense. You don't want to be "spoiled" for Star Wars: Episode III (well, aside from knowing that Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader, probably the most famous spoiler in the world)? Simple, don't read articles or click on threads about the film and leave those of us that want to know everything we can about the film in peace... it really is that simple. And I hate that even critics like Ebert are now writing their newspaper reviews with the people that whine about insufficient spoiler warnings in mind, leaving out crucial details that those of us whom want to know a lot about the plot of the film prior to seeing it want to read. If you simply want to know whether or not a critic liked a film without seeing any details, most newspapers and websites have some sort of star or icon system that give you simply that information, as well as whether or not there is any violence and sexual content. Anime reviews especially have been dumbed down out of fear of getting nasty e-mail from the "spoiler warning whiners", to the point where a couple of prominent anime review sites' reviews are completely worthless for those of us whom like our reviews with a lot of "meat" content about the plot. It's time to put lots of spoilers back in reviews without warnings to teach the people whom prefer to see movies untainted to get a better sense of discernment.

(My favourite recent spoiler warning whine: some guy complaining that they showed Gandalf in the trailer for Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers even though his fate is uncertain at the end of LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring... that's fairly common knowledge, and I had never even really read the books, and, even if you didn't know that, it had been widely reported that Ian McKellen was in all three of the fricking hilms, so I think it's pretty obvious that he does survive somehow.)

posted by Steve Brandon @ 3:30 AM