Hal 9000 said:
I'd be interested if anyone wanted to share their personal approach to spoilers, either for Ep7 or their experience with the prequels.
What are you all planning to do about spoilers?
For TPM, I remember the biggest spoiler being the comic book tpb sitting on the shelf in April or early May of '99. I picked it up and flipped to the last several pages, seeing a panel of Obi-Wan doing a flip over Darth Maul and cutting him in half with Qui-Gon's green saber. For some reason, I remember the comic book showing it as Obi-Wan cutting Maul in half as he did the backflip and not waiting until he landed on his feet like in the actual film. I could be misremembering, though. Of course, there was also the panel immediately following of a close-up of Qui-Gon's dying words to Obi-Wan, "promise me you'll train the boy." So, I was pretty much asking to be spoiled and have no one to blame but myself there.
I remember getting the novelization less than a week before the film's release and reading through some of it. By opening day, I'd gotten up to the scene of Qui-Gon asking Obi-Wan for Anakin's midi-chlorian count (another big spoiler if only because we'd never seen that word before). It was interesting to hear all those lines from the book spoken aloud. In retrospect, it kinda gives new meaning to Harrison Ford's line "You can write this stuff, George, but you can't say it." I must admit, the dialogue didn't seem nearly as awkward in book form as it sounded in the actual movie.
The second trailer in March gave me the impression that the Naboo space battle happened early in the film, kinda like the Hoth battle in Empire. This was something I didn't have a clear picture of until only shortly before opening day.
There were other things, like the Time magazine article mentioning the cloaked dude who was clearly Palpatine was named Darth Sidious, which I immediately thought was dumb and still do.
For both AotC and RotS I'd been following spoilers the entire time on sites like tfn, so I went in knowing pretty much exactly what would happen. Looking back, man were some of the rumors total bs. Some of them were better than what we actually got, like the rumor of Anakin "collecting" the different parts of the Vader suit throughout Episode III.
I agree there haven't been too many spoilers for Ep7 at this point. For example, we still don't know who Max von Sydow, Lupita Nyong'o, Domnhall Gleeson, Andy Serkis and Adam Driver are playing, and I like that. November 8th seems like way too close of a cut-off point to me. I'm already regretting all the potential spoilers I've already read/seen. For example, based on the leaked concept paintings I think we already have a rough idea of who Andy Serkis is playing (but that's just like my opinion man).
For both The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises (especially the latter), I really had to restrain myself from reading spoiler articles. The movies were all the more rewarding because I didn't know how things would play out and had no clue how they'd end. We've got less than a year now until The Force Awakens is released and I think I'm just going to enter spoiler black-out mode right now. I guess that means I can't even look at this thread until December, but oh well, there are and will be plenty of other threads to keep me occupied.
I'll watch the trailers and tv spots, but that's it.