News this week broke that Johnny Depp would be joining the Harry Potter universe as has been cast in the sequel to the forthcoming Fantastic Beasts…and where to find them.
Being a family film franchise this caused all sorts of uproar on Social Media with J.K. Rowling being signalled out the most as believed to be one who had agreed to it.
Depp, who has always been a great person to watch on screen, has of course been seriously tarnished by events in his personal life, concerning his partner Amber Heard.
Now we do agree that maybe he isn’t an ideal choice, but we can not argue that if he put in a performance the likes of his outstanding captain Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, it would be an interesting addition to the world of Hogwarts!
Yet, ignoring all this, our biggest issue was the new ****** SPOILER AHEAD ****** that he had already filmed a cameo to be in the forthcoming first Fantastic Beasts film.
We really dislike these sort of spoilers, imagine if it had not been announced, how much of a surprise would it have been to see Depp in the film
We touched on this before, why did we have to see about 8 different trailers to show Tom Holland’s Spider-Man would be in Captain America: Civil War, prior to his forthcoming stand-alone Spider-Man Homecoming film.
It’s not just news that can give spoilers, trailers can do that and even in the case of Terminator: Genisys, a big clue about John Connor was given away on an advertising poster!
A great campaign endorsed by actors such as Nathan Fillion for Star Wars: The Force Awakens which kindly asked all on Social Media not to put spoilers out and ruin the film for others, we were on holiday at the time of the film’s initial release, but when we saw the film about a week later, we went in without knowing any spoilers. so it kind of worked I guess.
We imagine that major plot points from films such as The Usual Suspects; The Sixth Sense; Soylent Green; Saw and Primal Fear to name a few, would have all been ruined by Social Media, had they been released today.
Many films used to surprise fans for watching the end credits by having extra scenes, but now due to the popularity of the Marvel films, if one does appear, you can find out online what it is and decide if you want to wait till the end to see it.
Some films are tainted by studios arrogance which also announces we will have no real surprises, because its cast have already signed up for a sequel or the film is the first in a planned trilogy! An example being John Wick will remain alive and well in John Wick 2 as talk is already in place for a John Wick 3 !!! (of course, that was likely so maybe not the best example)
Still Social Media today at least would have let Brad Pitt know what was in the box in Se7en we suppose!
It’s bad enough modern day trailers give away too much of the film now, but do we need to know everything that is going to happen?
We love Social Media, we can interact with other fans, we can get coming soon news, see a trailer or a poster, watch live streams of film premieres, it’s just a shame we can get an odd spoiler within it.
What do you think of film news today? Do you think we get too much and wish we got more surprises? Have you ever been put off seeing a film because you heard a spoiler? We would love to hear from you here at Barking Mad About Films

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