WARNING! MOVIE SPOILERS BELOW!

You know what a spoiler is, right? That's when somebody spoils the surprise by telling you what it is rather than letting you find out for yourself. When someone is kind enough to tell you in the heading of a message (like this one) that the message contains spoilers, that means that if you haven't seen or read the movies or books being discussed, you might end up finding out about a "surprise" in the story that might lessen (or ruin) the experience for you if you should end up watching/reading the story for yourself at a later date.

For example, in the movie Presumed Innocent, the wife did it. Now that I've told you that, if you go see the movie, you'll realize that you already know the big surprise, and that might diminish your enjoyment of the film.

A year or two ago, I was in a very foul mood, and I decided to post a "Listmania" list on Amazon.com that listed spoilers for a bunch of movies. I was feeling mean, and I wanted to share the pain.

Ironically, after I'd spent a few hours creating this masterpiece of a list, when I went to save it, the connection was broken and my machine crashed. I lost the entire list. Man, was that annoying. I didn't bother recreating the list at the time, I was so pissed off. But, now that I'm in a bad mood again (but not yet pissed off), I've recreated the list to the best of my ability, and you can find it here.

While creating this list, I noticed that as I moved from the simple and obvious cases (like Gosford Park -- the maid did it), there are a lot of fun patterns in movies that supposedly contain surprises.

For example, the big surprise of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan was that Spock was sacrificed in order to save the ship. But then, in the next movie, the even bigger surprise was that the ship was sacrificed to save Spock. (Of course, since then, the folks at Star Trek Incorporated have blown up the ship every chance they get, which kind of reduces the shock value.)

Audiences were stunned to learn in Empire Strikes Back that Darth Vader was really Luke's father. The following movie, Return of the Jedi, featured the revelation that Darth Vader was also Princess Leia's father, and that Luke and Leia were twins. Yowza! But then, in Star Wars Episode I The Phantom Menace (what a long and ugly title), we learn that in his youth, Darth Vader built C3PO. Yup, Darth Vader is C3PO's father, too. Holy cow! My guess is that in the next movie, we'll learn that Darth Vader is also Chewbacca's father.

Speaking of twist endings regarding parentage, you should check out Robert A. Heinlein's short story "All You Zombies...", in which we learn at the very end that the main character is his own father. And mother. How's THAT for a surprise you didn't see coming!? Well, okay, even though I spoiled the ending, you still might get a chuckle out of reading the story to see how it all happened.

I love it when a movie's very title gives away the ending. Like, "Kill Bill". Guess what happens at the end?

And then there's movies that open up by telling you the ending, but the ending still (potentially) surprises you. Like in "American Beauty". The narrator tells you right at the beginning that he's dead, and here's what happened leading up to his death. Then, you get to the end of the movie, and BLAM! He's dead. Pretty cool.

The movie "Schindler's List" is all the more devastating *because* you know the ending.

Then again, any James Bond movie you choose is *relaxing* because you know the ending.

So is it better, going in, to know the ending or to not know the ending of a given story?

This is the premise of a story I've been developing: what if you knew the ending of your own personal story? Would that make your remaining days richer? Or would it take the fun out of life? Or, would it make absolutely no difference to you at all?

If you had a chance to find out how your life was going to play out, would you do it?