A hobbit tale

[Lurking Sockpuppet]

My daughter Sam meets up with her best friend at mermaid hot beverage a couple times a week to get their drink fix and to study for school. They both are in the International Baccalaureate program. Earlier this week while there, they started discussing the Hobbit and certain tragedies at the end of the book. A female teenager sitting at a nearby table butted into their conversation complaining about them revealing spoilers and then snottily exclaimed that the last movie hasn't even been released and how could they possible know what was going to happen. Sam turned to her and said “The book has been out for over seventy years pick up a copy and read it.” That is when a nearby employee started laughing and walked over and high fived Sam.

I hope the employee did not get in trouble.

[MoonCat]

*snerk* I bet I can guess why that girl was so huffy about spoilers, too.

"Oh, Kili!! Daaaarliiiing!!!"

[AnaKhouri]

My 5-year-old just finished reading The Hobbit with his daddy! He loved it, especially Smaug. I think he isn't really understanding how significant the ring is yet.

When the first season of A Game of Thrones was on, I posted on Facebook, "Episode 10 OMG DRAGONS!" or something similar. Someone complained about me revealing spoilers. I figured the show at that point had been over for 6 weeks (a friend taped it for us, we have no cable) and the book had been out for more than 15 years.

Unlike my friend who posted about Thanos less than 12 hours after The Avengers was released. THAT was a dick move. Still annoyed.

[wolfie]

One of the worst must have been one I heard of: someone complained about another person revealing a spoiler about Titanic, namely that the ship sank. How can that be a spoiler, when it was a well-known fact even in Archduke Ferdinand's lifetime?

Note: Archduke Ferdinand was the guy whose assassination snowballed into World War 1.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Note: Archduke Ferdinand was the guy whose assassination snowballed into World War 1.

Awe, you spoiled the book on the causes of WW1 for me. I haven't read it yet.

[Racket_Man]

That is almost as bad as 12 years ago when the 2d Lord of the Rings movie was being trailered and promoted.

Someone got their panties in a bunch that the movie and HORROR upon horror the BOOK was named The Two Towers. This obviously just a year or two after the WTC attack in 2001.

They started an online petition to actually change both the movie and the book titles to "something more appropreiate in rememberance of the WTC"

[wolfie]

What next? Try to get any movie (Escape from New York - Snake Pliskin landed his plane on the roof of one of the towers) or video game (Red Alert 2 - in one Soviet mission, you need to capture a lab located at the base of the towers) where the WTC features prominently banned?

[bhskittykatt]

I'm super excited to see Into the Woods next month, and Hubs says he'll only take me if I don't read any spoilers (I'm a total spoiler-review reader and it annoys the hell out of him). I pointed out that we've both seen the musical already (it's probably my second or at least third favorite). He's insisting I still can't read any "spoiler" reviews about it.

[fireheart]

What next? Try to get any movie (Escape from New York - Snake Pliskin landed his plane on the roof of one of the towers) or video game (Red Alert 2 - in one Soviet mission, you need to capture a lab located at the base of the towers) where the WTC features prominently banned?

I can go one better: there were two episodes from the Pokemon series that were banned due to 9/11 (they've since been put back into rotation):

Tentacool and Tentacruel (because the tentacruel go nuts and start wrecking buildings, ironically a clip from that episode appears in the opening sequence...said clip IS a tentacruel destroying a building!)
Tower of Terror (was banned for literally NO other reason than the name)

The Simpsons also pulled out a couple of episodes from rotation for similar reasons: the first one was due to the WTC featuring prominently (New York vs Homer Simpson) and the second was due to a warship firing at something that resembled the towers (New Kids On The Blecch)

[flybye023]

My brother has a friend who just started watching the Star Wars movies (the first three) last year and was upset that random Star Wars comments were spoiling it for him

[Dreamstalker]

When Sony was rereleasing Ghostbusters, rumor has it that they wanted to digitally remove the towers from the background--they couldn't delete the scene(s) in question entirely as that would majorly screw up continuity. Didn't happen thankfully. Almost as insane as the Two Towers book rage (I was working at a bookstore at the time and was fielding 'complaints to the author' for some months afterward--at one point someone set up a small Ouija board near the book display with "Please direct complaints here").

[MoonCat]

When Sony was rereleasing Ghostbusters, rumor has it that they wanted to digitally remove the towers from the background--they couldn't delete the scene(s) in question entirely as that would majorly screw up continuity. Didn't happen thankfully. Almost as insane as the Two Towers book rage (I was working at a bookstore at the time and was fielding 'complaints to the author' for some months afterward--at one point someone set up a small Ouija board near the book display with "Please direct complaints here").

I weep for humanity, honestly. There are people who apparently think the books were written AFTER the movies came out.

[Racket_Man]

I weep for humanity, honestly. There are people who apparently think the books were written AFTER the movies came out.

The problem is is that in some cases (not that many) they actually are written after the movie.

[Jay 2K Winger]

The problem is is that in some cases (not that many) they actually are written after the movie.

Or they assume the books are "novelizations" of the movie, which does happen.

(I'll admit to reading some of those novelizations. Sometimes the author is given leeway to expand on scenes or showcase some internal monologues.)

[depechemodefan]

I remember when Francis Ford Coppola's movie, Bram Stoker's Dracula came out, there was a novelization of the movie. Not, "let's get the original book and just stick a still of the movie on it," but someone writing the novelization. I imagine there might have been a bunch of confused people at one point, esp. kids who had to read the book for school.

Funny thing, when I first saw Fellowship of the Ring, and saw Gandalf fall after the balrog pulled him in, I said to my self, "I bet that char. lives". Never read the book and really knew no one who did.