Thursday, May 10, 2018

When is a Spoiler no Longer a Spoiler?



With Avengers: Infinity War (2018) out and causing a stir, there’ve been some serious spoilers floating around. People are posting images indicating who died – sometimes with a saying from the film. Collages are being shared of seemingly unrelated pictures and people are claiming they’re spoilers ‘without context.’

Where I’m concerned, spoilers in general just kind of annoy me. It’s why Trust the Dice remains as spoiler-free as possible with big bold lettering when we do have to issue a warning. I love being shocked by a twist in a film. I love being in the moment when that big event happens at the end of a story that sends chills up my spine. So, when I find a spoiler for a film hidden in the middle of some innocuous YouTube video that has nothing to do with the movie in question, I get pissed.

That’s how Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) was spoiled for me, by the way. A friend on Facebook posted a video on kittens or something and the video paused in the middle, on a screen of text, that spoiled the big death scene for me. It was posted about a week after the film came out.

Granted, that douche-nozzle posted the spoiler for the express purposes of spoiling someone, but some of the other examples are a little hazier. Like the images given ‘out of context.’ That person insisted it couldn’t be a spoiler. I disagree. For people who read the source material, it was like screaming the ending of the film from a mountain top.

Just look at the timing of it all. It comes down to the debate: how long does it take for a spoiler to no longer be a spoiler?


Pretty much the majority would agree that there’s nothing you can say that would spoil Die Hard (1988). Too much time has passed since the film came out. Most people would agree that anything said about Avengers: Infinity War right now, however, is a spoiler. But what about Deadpool (2016)? The Shape of Water (2017)? The Revenant (2015)? Is it still bad to talk about the main plot in those films?

My husband and I really wanted to discuss Infinity War when we left the theater, but we didn’t want to be those assholes that blurt out the ending on the line for the bathroom where people are waiting to see the film. So, we spoke in code. Black Panther was referred to as Salem. Captain America was Mary Sue. Thor became Storm. Clearly, if someone was listening very closely to us, they might have gotten the gist of it… but while we were walking and people were only getting snippets, they couldn’t possibly know what we were talking about.

However, I was discussing Deadpool with a friend of mine at Subway, and we were debating what the sequel would be like, only a few weeks ago. No code was used and we didn’t curb our discussion.

After some careful thought, I’ve come to some conclusions about what I believe are spoilers and what aren’t.

While a movie is in theaters, I think just about everything is a spoiler. All those ‘out of context’ pictures, talking about it openly in public… etc. After that, things are a little different.

I’ve seen people talk about a 2-week rule. I can get with that on smaller films. Stuff that minimal people are looking forward to watching. Blockers (2018) for instance. It’s clearly a film with some pull to it, but for the most part people will wind up watching it on a streaming service later on. For something a little bigger, like Deadpool 2 (2018), I think 2-weeks isn’t the right way to go about it.


For bigger films, especially those based on popular source material like Marvel films or movies based on books, I think you have to wait until the movie leaves theaters. If you spoil a film like that, you risk not just ruining a movie that tons of people are waiting to see – but you may also destroy a book for someone. Giving people until the movie leaves theaters allows time for babysitters to be found, books to be read, and other such stuff.

Then you have movies like Infinity War.

Let’s be honest, here. There aren’t any movies like Infinity War. This film was a decade in the making. It took a ridiculous amount of other films and a shit-ton of planning. It is the biggest film in the history of cinema. Almost every single character in it is a main character. There can’t be a single death without bringing at least one of the singular Marvel series to a screeching halt. It’s the first true epic to be made in our time.

Infinity War essentially reinvented the wheel. As a result, I think it goes by different rules. I don’t think waiting until the movie leaves theaters is enough time. I think one needs to wait until it comes out on video to really start posting spoilers.


People have been waiting so long for this film to come out that their lives have changed drastically since they first started. They’ve had babies, they’ve graduated school, they’ve dealt with loss… one has to take into account that not everyone is going to be able to see it on the big screen. I don’t think that should negate their enjoyment, though. By waiting until it comes out on film, you give people a chance to find a way to see it, get the movie when it comes out, or invite a friend over that got it when it came out. People who are really dying to see it, will have found a way to see it on their terms by then.

So, that’s my take on the issue. I’d love to know yours. When do you think a spoiler stops being a spoiler?

Monday, May 7, 2018

Halo: The Fall of Reach (2015) Through the Eyes of Cat

By Cat


Number Rolled: N/A
Movie Name/Year: Halo: The Fall of Reach (2015)
Tagline: An Unstoppable Threat. An Unthinkable Sacrifice.
Genre: Action, Animation, Sci-Fi
Length: 64 minutes
Rating: TV-14
Production Companies: Microsoft, The Sequence Group
Producers: Corrinne Robinson, Ian Kirby, Frank O'Connor, Dan Sioui, Tina Summerford, Kiki Wolfkill
Director: Ian Kirby
Writers: Heath Corson, Eric Nylund
Actors: Jen Taylor, Steve Downes, Michelle Lukes, Travis Willingham, Britt Baron, Todd Haberkorn, Cole Jensen, Matthew Waterson
Stunts:  None

Blurb from NetflixWitness the origins of Master Chief and the Spartan program as a group of children transform into enhanced soldiers and fight a powerful alien threat.

I feel I must start my review with a bit of a bone to pick with Netflix. This feature was packaged as a single film, when that really wasn’t the case. Halo: The Fall of Reach was originally released as a 3-part miniseries on The Halo Channel for people that purchased the Collectors or Legendary edition of the Halo 5 game. I didn’t find out about the discrepancy in formatting, however, until I’d already watched it and had moved into my detail-research phase in IMDb. Tsk tsk, Netflix.

Regardless of that oversight, it was a fairly seamless film. I imagine that the ‘episode’ transitions were masked by cut-aways that announced passages of time or setting shift. In that way, it was easily disguised as a single visual unit.

On to the story!


I’m going to admit up-front that I’ve never played a Halo game before. I’ve found all the hype around the game series interesting, and I’ve definitely enjoyed the Game Fuel drinks that often get released timed with new iterations. (The cherry citrus tastes like liquid skittles!) I digress. I see the commercials, and whatnot and I understand that this game series has a lot of background behind it. I imagine that it would be a pretty cool thing to learn the origins of such an integral character as Master Chief, and perhaps some of his core teammates.

Before my post-video poking around, I actually hadn’t realized that the games were adapted from books. I’m fascinated and might just add them to my reading list – albeit it might take forever and a year to get to them. My list is long.

All that being said, I can’t tell you whether or not this mini-movie lived up to the concept of Master Chief in the rest of the series – games or otherwise. I can, however, give my opinion of this story as a stand-alone from the perspective of the uninitiated.


I can sum it up by saying – it was ok. I can’t say that I haven’t seen this sort of plotline in other growing-up-military and officer-training type stories. It reminded me quite a bit of Ender’s Game (2013).

The animation wasn’t what I expected. I suppose I was looking for something shiny and precise like you usually see with some of the other video game adaptations such as Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (2005) or Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV (2016). This film felt more like an animated painting that was leaning towards impressionistic in some places – and hyper-realism in others. There were moments of the sleek computer generated style I had expected, but it was not the overall theme.

I actually think that it set this apart a little from others in the genre. It definitely made it interesting. This film, at the very least, satisfied some of my curiosity as to the origins of the infamous game character.

All told, I wasn’t blown away or even entirely won over by this game-companion story, but I’m sure that it will be rewarding to watch for some. 


Languages

Speech Available: English (Audio Description), French, German, Italian, Spanish
Subtitles Available: English [CC] , French, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – None
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – 36%
Metascore – None
Metacritic User Score – None
IMDB Score – 5.6/10

Trust the Dice: Cat’s Rating – 2.5/5

Movie Trailer: