Are questions that just ask for a description of a plot-point on-topic?

Question

So, here’s a question that basically asks “What happens in this recently-released movie that I haven’t seen?”

• https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/57136/who-dies-in-captain-america-2

Is that on-topic? It seems like for any mainstream movie Wikipedia will have a plot summary that would answer questions like these, and this site even has a feature (spoiler tags) for avoiding telling people plot points.

It also seems like this category of questions could be never-ending. (What happens at the end of Captain America: The Winter Soldier? Does anyone die in Thor: The Dark World? Why is Tony Stark wearing a backpack in this screenshot from Iron Man 3?) I’m not sure where the on-topic line would be drawn.

Answer 1

Yes. It is On-topic. It doesn't violate ANY offtopic rules.

We burninated General Reference VTC, for good reasons.

Having said that, if the question is indeed easily researched (obvious query on Google returns a Wikipedia page), it can and should be downvoted into the basement, because "does not show any research effort" is one of the main reasons for a question downvote.

Answer 2

No.

There are plenty of sites such as Wikipedia, IMDB, etc that handle plot synopses. This site should stick to questions that require some actual thought.

Edit - After reading the "related question" comment posted by phantom42, it seems to me that the answers to that question make good arguments about not closing questions for being "too trivial" make a good deal of sense. However, unlike the general case where "too trivial" is a subjective judgement, the case of questions that are asking for nothing more than a description of a plot-point (as opposed to analysis of a plot-point) is narrow enough in scope to be able to be able to objectively identify and close those questions.

Keeping in mind that closed questions can be reopened if the user edits and improves them.