“I can’t breathe. My throat is just a mess. My chest is burning up, and now my lungs are in distress. Should we blame the imbeciles ignoring climate change? Oh, who to blame for making the skies so strange?” From Blame Canada, written by Marc Shaiman – revised 2023 version.
This could turn into a rant about the gutless pearl-clutchers who pseudonymously blather about how the world is going to hell just because their favorite cause-of-the-moment got sidetracked… and it still might. I can’t believe there are still word-spewers out there who want Zack Snyder to finish doing what Doctor Frederic Wertham could not.
But they aren’t the only ones losing their shit about Warner Bros, the company that has owned DC Comics since August 1967, being bought by Netflix. The bidding came down to three companies. The far-right wing Skydance, having just swallowed Paramount, submitted at least three bids for the doomed Warner Bros Discovery enchilada so they could take CNN over and prove to the world that they, too, could out-NewsNation the liars at Fox News. Each of their bids was rejected for being too low; evidently there are financial limits to the Ellison family’s political beliefs. The other two bidders, Comcast and Netflix, only wanted the Warner Bros part of the company.
You know, where the money is.
Netflix won and the non-WB assets will spin off into Versant-like companies (MS NOW, CNBC, etc., soon to be formerly part of Comcast). And hundreds of fools whipped out their mighty keyboards to make Chicken Little sound like Bernard Baruch.
Some of these people express their concern that a stronger and even more profitable Netflix will be the death-knell for movie theaters. You know, those tiny little shoeboxes with the expensive comfy-chairs hidden in the basements of shopping malls that are going out of business faster than the companies that make one-penny parking meters? You know, where a family of four can get in the car, drive for a half-hour to a neighborhood that looks like Gaza City so they can plop down a hundred bucks to eat a quarter’s worth of popcorn while snoozing to the latest indistinguishable rom-com.
Yeah, those ugly cramped viewing boxes are about as popular as the buggy whip stores that remain in the bowels of the virtually abandoned mall. No matter what the provocation, tastes and habits change all the time. There are no longer many “movie theaters near you” unless you happen to live in the mall cop booth. I don’t think all of the movie theaters are going to disappear anytime soon, but when they tear down your friendly neighborhood mall to ironically build senior citizen housing, don’t expect to see any silver screens in the lobby.
There’s no law that says movie theaters will be around forever. Commercial television will be celebrating its 80th anniversary in a few months — teevee was supposed to kill those theaters that survived Amos and Andy, and quite frankly I’m amazed any of these shoeboxes are still around. In fact, there’s no law that says Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman will be around forever. Just ask John Clayton II, Lamont Cranston, or John Reid. No, not the John Reid who looked like Warren Beatty and hung out with Diane Keaton. I’m referring to the masked dude from Texas who favored DEI hiring.
As Pete Townshend wrote, “this is no social crisis; it’s just another tricky day for you. We’ll get through.”
The comics art medium is outliving the movie theater. Take the win, buy a big-ass teevee screen and maybe a good soundbar, and take comfort in fact that if some asshole in the room is talking on a cell phone, that asshole is you.
