_refugee_ is half right. Robert McKee argued that the difference between a good storyteller and a bad storyteller is the good storyteller can keep you enthralled with tales of their commute while the bad storyteller can bore you with the death of their children. Plot has fuckall to do with it - Polti argued in the 1890s that there are only 36 basic plots. Booker says there's seven. One of the Greeks, can't remember which, put the number at 40-something. Doesn't really matter - there's a consensus that there aren't that many tales to tell, it's all in the telling.

I agree with you though - the narrator needs to be able to present her narrative as she sees fit, free from the external influence of Steve the Twitter Twit and his phonebank of disgruntled story producers. Because really - the ending doesn't fucking matter, it's how the tale is told and I'm sorry, "Steve", whoever he may be, is a shittier storyteller than the author, the producer, the editor, the whoever-it-is that is ultimately responsible for the primary art.

"I am your father" is the linchpin around which Empire pivots. If you don't see it coming, it rocks your world. If you do, you're watching a wheel spin. Rosebud isn't a sled, Rosebud is the lost childhood driving the actions of a reclusive billionaire. If you know Crying Game coming in, it's an awkward art film. If you don't, it's a landmark piece of cinema. The films themselves are invulnerable. They are not damaged in the least by your prior knowledge of their arcs and turning points. Your experience with them, however, is crippled. The only one suffering is you. If spoilers were all that great, why would we care what the score of the game we missed was prior to watching it on Tivo?

People who enjoy spoilers are people who hate art almost as much as they hate artists. Anyone who prefers the half-hearted recap of the disinterested amateur as much as the full-bore artistic presentation is suffering from a serious deficiency of wonder.