I should have told you about this sooner, I suppose, but I didn’t want to participate in spoiling “Flight Plan.” Last week, I got into a disagreement with the people who run Libertas over their intentional spoiling of “Flight Plan”. (FAIR WARNING: Clicking on that will take you to the article with spoilers about the movie.)

The source of the disagreement is Deb Schlussel’s article in which she aggressively ruins the movie for all of her readers so that they won’t want to see “Flight Plan.” This is because she doesn’t like the message that the film is sending (either deliberately or as a side-effect of telling the story). Libertas then ran this article with a subject line which gave away the spoilers! I’d been planning to see the movie and had gone out of my way to avoid spoilers, and made my displeasure clear.

It’s not like I even disagree with their politics or their displeasure with the message, though I’d have to see the movie to know whether it’s really a major point or not. I simply don’t believe in spoiling a movie for your own site’s visitors. It’s an abuse of trust.

I just wanted to make clear that you can always count on Monitor Duty to warn of spoilers and hide them. We’ll never engage in these “BLUE BEETLE GETS SHOT IN HEAD! Don’t read Countdown to Infinite Crisis!” kinds of games.

One more thing. Check out comment #8! Cool, eh?

I did post a few comments on that article taking them to task over the intentional blurting of spoilers. A few of the best bits:

Hey, I’m on your side on the politics of all this, but it really is terrible form on your part. Deb Schussel has done this blurt-out-the-spoilers thing before with Million Dollar Baby, another movie she totally ruined for me. It’s just WRONG to assume that all readers agreeing with your politics will not want to see a film. Many reviewers had described "Flight Plan" as a thriller with a twisting, imaginative plot, and now I won’t get to enjoy it.

…I just think this "IT’S A SLED! Spoilers below about Citizen Kane" form of combatting movies with which you have a quibble is terribly unfair to your readers. Ruining a movie for people who would still like to see it is… can I avoid a lengthy explanation and just say ‘wrong’? Certainly, it’s rude…and what’s more, it’s impolite to your own readers, people who agree with you, by using such shock tactics on the readers of your own site.

Maybe I would dislike this movie intensely upon viewing it because of this Muslims thing, sure. Or maybe I would consider it a minor complaint in an otherwise well-made thriller that’s still worth the ticket. That’s why proper, respectful spoiler warnings along with a fair amount of buffer space are called for. (On our blog, MonitorDuty.com which uses Moveable Type, we even have the possibility of using "expanded" text areas that readers can click over to if they want to see spoilers.) But assaulting your visitors with movie-ruining information because you’ve decided they shouldn’t go is not dealing with readers fairly.