Post-credit scenes + mainstream media = SPOILERS!

No Spoilers please!

Over Memorial Day weekend, I, along with many geeks alike, was very excited to see X-Men: Days of Future Past.  Being Memorial Day weekend, I was busy, and unable to see the movie until Monday.  On Sunday, I went to pull up movie times, and found something very disturbing.  The front page of Yahoo movies (don’t judge me for going to Yahoo, old habits die hard!) was plastered with a giant photo of a certain mutant with a headline that read along the lines of “Who is this mysterious character doing (redacted to avoid spoilers) in the post-credits scene of X-Men: Days of Future Past?”

Without even clicking on the link (which I wouldn’t have), the surprise of the content of this scene was completely ruined for me.  The movie had barely been out for two full days, and Yahoo, along with a number of other mainstream media outlets all had articles about this scene, explaining it to non-comic fans who had no idea what was going on in it.  What makes it worse is that the Yahoo article I’m referring to was published on Saturday, when the movie had been out for a single day.

Post-credits scenes have become very standard in movies thanks to Marvel.  Unfortunately, the mainstream media has caught onto this pattern, and it seems that now it has become a race for these outlets to be the first to publish an explanation of the scene for casual viewers so they can get the most clicks on their articles.  I noticed the same thing happened with Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  I was able to see that the day it came out, so nothing was spoiled, but there seemed to be COUNTLESS articles (with photos) wanting to tell people who the characters in the post-credits sequence were.

Media outlets do not seem to care about spoiling movies for people anymore, and I find this very disturbing.  When The Avengers came out in 2012, I honestly did not know who (SPOILER FOR A 2 YEAR OLD MOVIE) Thanos was, and I looked it up online when I got home.  I sought out the information myself.  Now, publications can’t wait to tell you who these characters are and what the scenes mean, and the fact that not everyone sees a movie the day it comes out does not seem to concern them in the least.

I wish there was a productive way to let these media outlets know that what they’re doing is extremely rude, and downright unacceptable.  The only thing I could really think of is writing this blog post, though I feel like I’m preaching to the choir with our target audience.  If anyone has any ideas on how to solve this problem (which seems like it’s only going to get worse with how popular Marvel has become), let me know in the comments!