Saturday, April 13, 2019

Anti-spoiler technology has progressed by leaps and bounds

The lengths to which TV and movie producers go to these days to protect their products from leaks and spoilers is truly amazing.
HBO's Game of Thrones, perhaps the hottest property among many hot TV series, and the one with the most rabidly fanatical viewing base, outdoes all the others with it's almost paranoid anti-leak precautions (major plot twists from the last two or three seasons were leaked by over-zealous fans). These precautions include scripts for the eighth and final season in the form of password-controlled cellphone apps (as opposed to traditional paper, which can all too easily find its way into the wrong hands) and which basically self-destruct, Mission Impossible-style, once a scene has been filmed; "drone-killers" that can take out airborne drones (yes, would-be leakers do go to such lengths); and the filming and false leaking of spurious plot arcs and scenes, and possibly even a whole series of alternative endings (one particularly effective false spoiler was contrived by Maisie Williams on The Tonight Show, when she appeared to leak the "fact" that her character died in episode two of the new series, and her clever performance had the Twitterverse lighting up like a Christmas tree before people realized it was an April Fools joke).
But Game of Thrones is not the only show going the extra mile to protect itself from spoiler leaks. The feverishly-awaited Marvel movie Avengers: Endgame has also been involved in writing fake scenes and endings, and actors were only given script pages for their own scenes so that they were largely ignorant of the overriding story arc (notoriously spoiler-prone Tom Holland in particular had his knowledge of his character's contribution to the film limited as far as possible to avoid possible leaks, accidental or otherwise).
The final Star Wars movie in the main canon, due out this December, is another example of leak paranoia: scripts were printed on red paper to prevent photocopying, and had to be read under supervision (actors were not allowed to take them home overnight).
Of course, there are those cynics who argue that leaks and spoilers are all managed by the savvy production companies, and are all part of a sophisticated marketing campaign which makes rubes of us all. Many people also say that spoilers and leaks do not actually spoil anyone's enjoyment of the series and films anyway. And who's to say they're not both right. This desperate need for advance leaks on the more slavishly-followed TV and movie series is certainly a rather strange thing, though, and a relatively recent phenomenon at that - the final seasons of Breaking Bad and Mad Men had similar levels of hype, although attempts at obtaining leaks were positively amateurish and tame by today's standards.

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