I think that kinda of adversarial attitude, the one where you can say what you want and everyone else needs to shut up and take it, is toxic. It's what social media algorithms promote, argument = engagement, but it's always why people log off and don't come back.

You can be that person if you want, but at some point you're all that will be left.

> If a person hasn't seen the film by the time it leaves theatres all together, they don't care.

That's really easy to say, but here in the UK a films release can be delayed by months, in other countries it can be much worse, especially if it's got to be translated. I've had stuff spoiled for me this way and I watch 100's of films a year, I actually don't generally care about spoilers either, but it still sometimes leaks through.

When I talk about film I tend not to talk about the details of the plot, mainly because when I start reading a review that's just a detailed summery, I stop, because it's not interesting. Outside of that I think pop culture references are kinda dying, the contexts you can use them in are increasingly limited and there's just less and less stuff that 'everyone' has seen. Right now there isn't a Game of Thrones level thing to spoil, so the conversation seems a little redundant. But just referencing things that need a spoiler kinda still seems childish.

If you can't talk about film/media/art without pop culture references, you might not really have anything to say.

More generally, I think the internet has spaces where you can say and do whatever you want and they are the worse places online. You need some level of self moderation, It is good to think of the person on the other side of the keyboard.

I think you should just be careful and only 'spoil' when you've got something to say. So many times I've started reading a review and it's just a summery of the plot of the film, there's nothing in that, it's pointless.

More generally I think it's about context, you should be able to express your opinion about something without a dozen pop culture references, you should be able to say 'this is like what happens in X movie,' without having to spoil either piece of media. Also, while right now everything knows of something like the Thanos Snap, in 10 or 20 years there will be an entire audience of young people who don't.

Just be courteous, you don't know someone's situation or how important spoilers are to them.

The really notable one I can think of is the Hannibal TV series, the two main characters are infatuated with each other and as one of them begins to lose track of who he is, they will cross the line so they're both facing the same direction. It's a handful of shots spread over the entire series, but it's really quite brilliant.

Satoshi Kon crosses the line to explain it in Paprika, it's part of an extended dream sequence. There are a bunch of filming jokes and intentional 'mistakes' in Day for Knight, a Truffaut film about filmmaking, my favourite is the director having terrible problems filming with a cat and when you see the final edit of the scene, it's just a different cat.

It's rare to do it on purpose, breaking fundamental film grammar usually just looks like a mistake. You've got to be very good.

MIG's were sold to many communist nations and in the movie are actually repainted F5's, they don't say it's Iran in the new movie either, but everyone knows it's Operation Opera.

Relative to the Hays Code, or even the MPAA, we're in an era where organised concentrated media censorship is declining. If a film wouldn't be made a major studio it can happen elsewhere, if a film can't get a certificate, there's a chance you'll still get to see it somewhere. Also you can get films that have been banned or released with extensive edits, illegally or otherwise. As we've had more technology to copy and distribute media it's simply become harder and harder to restrict it, which is all that censorship is.

A few years ago I went to a festival where a film depicted the fictionalised murder of 3 real life police officers, it showed their crimes, then them getting off without consequence and then dramatisations of them being killed. That film was never going to show at Cannes, it was fantastic, but the subject matter was incompatible with their brand and the brands that pay for the festival. You can't play film with such a direct call to action at SXSW, they want to exist next year.

The sponsors associated with large film festivals will pull out if programmers get too controversial. It really sucks, but this is always what film festivals have been like. The answer is to go to more interesting smaller festivals, as when it comes down to it, none of this stuff is going on Netflix.

There's like a larger conversation to be had about how scared brands are of being abused or called out on twitter, but the reality of it is that while we have social media, people will continue to post stupid takes on it. And sometimes when someone posts 'TIL: Coke-a-cola supported this film where a dog is killed' you never get the context and coke never supports that festival again.

They never say it's the USSR in Top Gun.

I think the problem we're facing is actually pretty simple, unlike TV or film or books, the internet isn't divided by age or isn't categorised by it. This means at any point you're at risk of reading the opinion of a 15 year old, or an 11 year old, or anywhere in between and younger. A lot of the terrible posts you see are from these people, children who don't have a lot of life experience and speak with the same apparent authority as you or I.

All of these twitter pile on's start this way, children have a lot of free time and they get hoovered up into discord groups and teach each other the most extreme opinions. Then they post about this stuff in those groups and come up with an insane puritanical ideology around it. Recently I saw someone on twitter say the first major news event they remembered was Trump getting elected, they had 10's of thousands of followers and they can't have been older than 12 or 13, they even framed it as 'their dad telling them'. This is a problem.

Regardless who said

>Why does your Latino lead have to bond with a white woman?

It was deeply influenced by that, film festivals are reading this stuff online and taking it to heart, but it's complete bullshit. You can have a transphobic subject in your documentary, I say that as a trans person. In The Lady and the Dale they have footage of jurors admitting they found the subject of the documentary guilty in part because she was trans, or it at least was a factor. Surely we have to want that out there? Not locked away because it's 'offensive'.

Everyone needs to stop listening to twitter and Facebook and social media in general. Have fun on it sure, but you have a bias, you assume that the person who wrote the post you're reading is about your age and about the same as you. That is rarely true.

The enemies in the original Top Gun are generic and non-specific.

I've always preferred the bull, I think there's a lot of stuff in Alien 3 where Fincher was being an edgy young director, there's an extended Newt autopsy they shot which is just revolting, it's already too much in the Theatrical cut. I don't need to see a dog suffering, it's more upsetting than just being horror.

Critical and commercial success are different things, achieving both with one film is impressive.

The worst part is filmmakers are beginning to respond to them, films increasingly have complicated and pointless explanations for things that just don't matter.

There aren't actually famous independent detectives in the real world, I found this hard to get over.

This isn't a problem with the film, it's a cinema sin.