Aspiring film critics are coaxed towards many things, financial difficulty and the perils of social media being just two of them. Yet it is also a position of privilege. Privilege in that, once you reach a certain point in your career, invitations to preview screenings and screener links sent via email become rather commonplace.
It gives you quite a rush when these invitations, often personally addressed to you, arrive in your inbox. It’s as if the wider world is reaching out to you, holding open the door as you walk through into a new realm of cinematic possibility. Except this also comes with serious expectations and responsibilities. It is on these counts that some have fallen short in recent times. During a period where cinema is desperately trying to recover, too many supposed professionals are taking to the internet to divulge plot secrets and spoilers well before a film has even been widely released. These are the people who deserve to have—at least temporarily—the door slammed shut (and fair warning, these spoilers are alluded to below for the sake of explanation).
Two high-profile cases from recent months have cast new light on the issue. In mid-September, the Twitter account for Venom: Let There Be Carnage posted promotional photos to coincide with the film’s premiere in London. Even on that thread, at least one user gives away the massive plot point revealed in the film’s post-credits sequence, a traditionally high-excitement feature that has become a staple of superhero movies since Iron Man in 2008. Following the premiere, to which critics and a select number of fans were invited, spoilers for the film cropped up on Reddit and across social media, including a now deleted Tweet. There is no way to know for sure who spilled the beans first, but whoever is responsible abused their opportunity of being invited to an official premiere.
The latest film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), Eternals, suffered a similar fate barely a month later, and this time critics identifiable by name are responsible. Everything from apparent LGBT+ representation to a scintillating piece of casting only revealed in the post-credits sequence have become blown up on social media, so much so that they became difficult to avoid. Even IGN had to Tweet warning people to beware of spoilers cropping up on their timeline, bringing those film writers who ordinarily do such outstanding jobs in their field into justified disrepute.
At least one of the critics behind the spoiler reveals has received death threats following their actions. Needless to say, this is grossly unacceptable—nobody should be threatened by those lingering at the bottom of the cesspit of social media, no matter what movie details they divulge. But coming out of a world premiere and almost immediately posting significant details on social media is a gross abuse of privilege and fortune. Anybody lucky enough to be invited to a premiere, be they a professional film writer or otherwise, needs to abide not only by the official rules regarding embargo dates (which apply to social media just as much as they apply to written or recorded website content) but by basic decency. The Venom spoilers started circulating two weeks before the film came out in the US and a whole month before its UK release. Eternals had its premiere on 18 October and isn’t out until next week. A large element of going to see movies, and superhero movies, in particular, is being thrown back in your seat by the unexpected, with your jaw hanging open and shocked gasps reverberating around the cinema. It only takes one thoughtless, 280 character statement from a stranger to rob you of that experience.
Read More: ‘Venom: Let There Be Carnage’ Is A Monstrous Mess
Why has this happened? You can only speculate about the reasons. Perhaps it was simply for the sake of publicity or to gleefully stoke an internet debate. Perhaps those who post spoilers ahead of a film’s release feel high and mighty by ruining the experience for others. And specifically in the case of critics, maybe the value of spoilers is tied into the perceived value of the film itself. Venom: Let There Be Carnage is undoubtedly an improvement on its predecessor but hasn’t exactly got most critics in a frenzy. Eternals, meanwhile, has received far more mixed reviews following its premiere, especially compared to other high-profile MCU releases such as Shang-Chi and Black Widow. Perhaps some premiere invitees feel that, if a film is of less observable artistic quality, somehow the leaking of plot details into the public domain matters less? If so, this is a horrifically elitist stance, failing to recognise the enjoyment and thrill that mass audiences feel even from those films deemed not worthy of the highest levels of praise.
Spoilers, after a set length of time, of course, can be discussed more openly. There can’t be a movie fan alive that doesn’t know by now that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father, or what crimes Norman Bates and his ‘mother’ perpetrated in the Bates Motel. Where is the cut-off? It is hard to say. Generally, it feels like everything from the incredible twist in Fight Club is fair game (but let’s not talk about that). Anything more recent than that should reasonably be discussed with trepidation. This is, however, just one view, and this discussion could rumble on forever. What is certainly not okay is ruining details of films that aren’t even available to the general public yet. It is an unnecessary exercise in point-scoring that turns audiences against film critics, at a time when cinema desperately needs unity to recover from the pandemic, while critics and audiences are arguably more divided than ever.
Anybody who freely posts important plot details on social media when a film is not even out in cinemas yet needs to have a hard look at themselves in the mirror. Should repeat offenders be blacklisted from premieres, at least temporarily? There is no simple solution, but it would be a strong deterrent. Aspiring critics in particular are skating on thin ice if they try to get away with stunts like this. Journalism is a hard enough industry to break into without disrespecting the wishes of PR agencies, studios, and distributors. At the other end of every professional invitation email or embargo notification, there is a very real human being whose livelihood is tied to the health of the movie industry. Livelihoods that, along with film criticism more generally and the health of the cinema industry, are under too much threat from itchy typing fingers.
Words by James Hanton
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