Should We Be Surprised By Spoilers in a Medium Rich in it's Own Lore?

I want to chime in on the great spoiler debate that has been taking place here on CBM.com. I understand that this might be a polarizing article, but I hope enough people are neutral enough to relate to my position as a reader and contributor.

I would like to offer the opinion that the reason so many people nowadays are becoming annoyed with spoilers is that as a medium, CBM’s are growing. They’re becoming more sophisticated and are reaching a wider audience by acknowledging the deeply rooted themes of the stories that help relate these god-like characters to us. That being said, while other directors decide to strictly abide to their cannon, others decide to relate their stories to the past, and to the characters that have defined these stories for years.

If I were to make a movie about the story of Jesus, would anybody be mad if someone said “Oh by the way he dies at the end of this movie”? These stories have existed for centuries, stories with the respective players, and their motivations and conclusions going forward. So would you get mad if someone spoiled for you that Jesus would be crucified at the end of my movie? You know the stories, and you know how they play out.

That’s where comic book movies were for so many years. For instance, Spider-man and Spider-man 2 are both pretty predictable films (I’m not mentioning the horrible mash-up that’s Spider-man 3). If I told you that Doc OK loses his mind to his arms, or that the Goblin goes crazy in his transformation to the villain. Who cares? You obviously know that any story arc containing those characters is bound to include that storyline. So why make a big deal out of it?

The Dark Knight obviously changed things, while I’d argue Batman Begins did a decent job, The Dark Knight took a character we all knew (The Joker), and twisted his origins, and made him something familiar, and yet in many ways different. I think that’s when spoilers became a big deal for us as fans.
We realized that the industry was going to change – and it is. Obviously Matthew Vaughn has said that Batman Begins influenced X-Men: First Class; and I’d have to think that it’s for good reason. Both he and Singer are going to be tinkering with our story that we’ve known for years; messing things around.

This is where it gets tricky, now everyone is saying that they didn’t want to be spoiled about the character that cameos in First Class. Now I’m sorry, but think of things this way, this character is popular, and cannot be added in on a regular basis canonically due to the original films; but do you not expect them to add the character in, in one capacity of another? While Matthew Vaughn is going the way other filmmakers are going in changing our stories, he’s obviously including this cameo as a way of acknowledging the past of the series, and throwing the fans a bone. As for if this is in the comics, well let’s just say I imagine they may pull from a certain storyline found in Incredible Hulk #180-181.

Matt didn’t need to include this cameo, he could easily do a Chris Nolan and say that the characters don’t work in his universe, but he’s making an effort. Whether that’s been spoiled for you or not, relax. If you come to this site, I’m going to guess that you know the character and the stories enough to know that the character does have a past, and even with those rumors we heard of the cameo almost a year ago, do you really think it makes much sense to complain about a spoiler that we knew about for a year, and had a pre-existing history in the comics.

Relax guys, from what I hear First Class is already going to be pretty sweet.