Week of 04/25/2022

 

DeFascist Versus DeMouse
– by David Matthews 2

Walt Disney was a storyteller.

That is who he was and that is what made him so successful.  He made his mark turning classic stories into animated legends.  And then he created not one but two amusement parks on each coast of the country for families to show up.  In turn, the company he created evolved into one of the biggest conglomerates in the world, recognized around the world, and encompassing a huge portion of the media.  Disney the company owns Star Wars and Marvel and ESPN and the ABC Network and DreamWorks and 20^th Century Fox and National Geographic, and countless other forms of media and entertainment.

And the two amusement parks that punctuate the world of Disney are not some small ventures with a handful of roller coasters and a water park.  These are massive facilities with their own police, fire, and rescue services.  The Walt Disney World resort has several hotels, a monorail service, a wildlife preserve, campgrounds, spas, golf areas, even a yacht resort.  All of that in one facility.

Ron DeSantis, on the other hand, is a lawyer who became a sleazy politician and currently serves as the governor of the fascist state of Florida.  And it is because of DeSantis that Florida is the fascist state that it is.

Ron DeSantis is not a builder or a businessman or a storyteller.  Aside from his family, the only thing he has ever created in his life was opportunity for himself.  Opportunity as a lawyer, as a congressman, and now as a governor.  And he thinks he can use all that to become President of the United States.

DeSantis, aka DeFascist, is a slimy stereotypical politician.  He looks and acts like a classic Disney villain.  He bullies his way though to get what he wants, and he attacks those that question or oppose him.

His handling of the COVID-19 global pandemic in and of itself should be considered a crime against humanity worthy of trial at the Hague.  He fought against data collection of virus outbreaks, even going so far to have the person who created the original program arrested.  His outright hatred of masks and vaccine mandates went so far as to him openly bullying schoolchildren in front of cameras for wearing masks. 

DeFascist is such a villain that should have an animated vulture behind him mirroring his every move.  The disgust that this commentator has for him as a human being for these acts alone is brobdingnagian.

But now he’s escalated his villainy to try to go after Disney... because they dared to question him.

DeFascist has been imposing his will through his state, including ramming through legislation that outlaw schools from making any reference to LGBTQ+ people.  He calls it “parental rights”, but it is best known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

The current executives at Disney were slow to say anything about it, something the previous CEO had no problem doing in the past to support the various LGBTQ employees there.  And when new CEO Bob Chapek finally spoke up, it was far too little and way too late to stop passage in the legislature.

Now normal politicians would take the obvious win.  It was going to pass.  They knew it was going to pass, and the half-assed late-to-the-party condemnation from the Almighty Mouse really meant nothing.

But… no, not DeSantis.  The petty little Italian snowflake took the criticism of his “Don’t Say Gay” bill personally.  So he retaliated.  He had his spinless lackies in the state legislature attack Disney by ending the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which gave Disney World a form of self-governance.  This allowed Disney to provide for its own fire and police and infrastructure.  All the roads and electricity and services for that area are paid for entirely by Disney and without any kind of oversight from the local counties.

DeFascist DeSantis thinks this will hurt Disney.

DeFascist DeSantis, dictatorial ruler of Fascist Florida, is definitely in de-wrong.

What this does is it gives Disney a multi-million-dollar tax break.  They don’t have to foot the bill for the infrastructure anymore.  The two counties that it affects will now have to pay for the police and fire and ambulance and hospitals and roads and electricity and sewers and the traffic lights and the mass-transportation.  They will also have to cover the bonds placed on all of those projects.

The local taxpayers will have to be on the hook for about $2 billion.  That’s “billion” with a capital “B”.

And you think your taxes are too high!

And all because the widdle Italian thug got his widdle feelings hurt.

Now this could be overturned in the courts.  This political retaliation for a statement made by the CEO of Disney is a direct violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.  This is a government sanction because of speech.

Then again, the widdle Italian thug really doesn’t seem to give a crap about the rights of others anyway.

I haven’t even brought up the other thing that Disney could do in response to this.  Because you know the local counties will not be able to handle the tax burden.  Their neighborhood gangs of Karens and Kens will throw their temper tantrums at paying anything and they will demand that their local corrupt leaders say “no” to anything Disney asks in order to even maintain that massive infrastructure that they no longer have to pay for themselves.

Disney could, at that point, just shut everything down and leave Orlando.  

The Magic Kingdom, Epcot, the Star Wars exhibitions, the resorts, the Animal Kingdom, the spas, all of it.  Gone.  Shut down and relocated.  The governor of Colorado just offered Disney a place to call home.  The Disney cruise ship can go dock in Savanah, Georgia.  They still have Walt Disney Land in California.  Georgia can pick up the film studios.  Think of the thousands of people who work there.  They’ll be out of work or moving elsewhere.   Think of all the local businesses that made their money because of Disney World.  Gone.  Bankrupt.  Shut down.  The massive Orlando airport hub, which brings people in and out from around the world, would most likely be a ghost town because nobody will want to be there without Disney.

Oh yeah, there’s also the Universal Theme Park.  But do you really think that owner Comcast will want to pick up the bill when Disney is absolved of it?  Or do you think they’ll also cut their losses and bail?

Let’s get brutally honest here… snowflake Governor Ron DeFasicst DeSantis really screwed up when he decided to pick a fight with the Almighty Mouse over his bruised ego.  His payback will end up costing his own citizens billions in taxes and lost business.

Does he really think he can somehow topple Disney?  Make them bend their knee?  Better groups have tried  and failed miserably.  Normally I complain about any entity being “too big”, but in this case that bigness is an asset to Disney.  It protects them from the abuses of a dictatorial thug with a fragile ego and an army of sycophants in Tallahassee.

I probably should also point out that this payback is supposed to take effect in 2023, just one year away from the 2024 elections.  If the widdle snowflake has any plans on running for the White House then, that’s when all of the consequences of this action will be highlighted, and it will all have his little sensitive name on it.  Yeah, he may want to hold off on those White House aspirations.

The thing about villains is that Disney has pretty much wrote the book on bad guys.  From Fantasia’s rising demon horde to Cruella De Ville, Maleficent, Scar, Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, Thanos, Baron Zemo, Hades, Ultron, the Red Skull, and even Secretary Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross.  Compared to all of them, fragile widdle Ron DeFascist DeSantis doesn’t even compare to Gaston from “Beauty and the Beast” or Prince Hans from “Frozen”.  His villainy is just pathetic, and it doesn’t take a suit of armor or a super-soldier or a Jedi knight to stop him.  It just takes prosecutors willing to prosecute and judges willing to smack him down.

Week of 04/18/2022

 

An Open Letter To Warner Brothers Discovery
– by David Matthews 2

This is an open letter to the executives of the new Warner Brothers Discovery company from a longtime fan of one of your products.

First, congratulations on your new merger.  I won’t say it is an “acquisition” because I know the majority of the new company is still owned by the one-time cellphone service that gobbled up everything it can like Pac-Man over the decades until it became just another one of a handful of huge mega-conglomerates.  In fact, I question even the rationale of buying the mess that is Time-Warner only to turn around and spin it off like they did DirecTV.

But, nonetheless, the deal is done and you’re the new bosses of this huge venture, and so I have a few things to say that you really should hear.

First, if you do somehow come across this open letter and you do some looking into this online column that’s been around since the early years of the World Wide Web, you’ll notice that I do talk a lot about politics, but I’m also a longtime fan of one of your products, namely DC Comics.  You probably know it as DC Entertainment.

I grew up with Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman and all the other legends of the DC Universe.  I used to watch the animated stories of Superman and Batman.  I was thrilled with the campy Batman live-action TV series.  I enjoyed seeing Wonder Woman on TV.  I was blown away when Superman, and later Batman, went to the big screen.  I read as the vast multiverse was destroyed in “Crisis on Infinite Earths” only for it to come back again and again in various incarnations.  I watched as my legends died only to come back different and even sometimes better.  I’ve seen villains become heroes and back to being villains again.  I saw heroes get married and become parents and pass their titles to the next generation.

Not only that, but it is because of my love of heroes and superheroes that I became not only a writer, but a self-published comic book creator, with original characters inspired by those very legends that I grew up with.

So you might say that I’ve got a stake in that product that you’ve just acquired, as one of countless consumers over the decades.  We’ve bought and read those comics.  We eagerly awaited the next live-action TV episode and animated shows.  We bought those direct-to-video DC animated movies.  We waited in line for the box-office premieres.  We played the characters online and subscribed to the streaming services.  We have paid the way for your product to be where it is today.

That said, I was glad to hear your new CEO, David Zaslav, say that DC Entertainment is in need of an overhaul.  That, while there are gems in certain movies and TV shows, many of their mainstay characters – specifically Superman, the first iconic figure for DC – are being underused and are languishing in obscurity.  This is absolutely true and has been going on for decades.

DC Entertainment productions have stumbled and fumbled while Disney-owned Marvel has been soaring with their movies and streaming specials.  They’ve been making billions while DC and WB have struggled to break even.

So if you, the folks at WBD, happened to come across this article, I hope you will take these suggestions from a longtime fan and valued customer into consideration.

First, forget trying to be like Marvel.  Marvel and DC are opposites in how they approach heroes.  Marvel takes gods and make them mortal.  Captain America is just a grown-up kid from Brooklyn.  Iron Man is a narcissistic drunk with money.  Thor, the “God of Thunder”, is really just an alien from another planet.  Spider-Man is a teen slumming in Queens.  DC takes ordinary people and turns them into legends.  A farmboy from Kansas becomes Superman, Earth’s mightiest defender.  An orphan becomes Batman, the world’s greatest detective and master strategist and fighter.  A burned-out fighter pilot becomes Green Lantern, interplanetary cop.  Don’t think that you can simply copy Marvel’s formula and make billions at the box office.  You saw what happened with “Justice League”.

Speaking of “Justice League”, I strongly suggest that the first thing you do with DC Entertainment is that you fire all of the clock-watchers and penny-pinchers in your executive talent pool.  Or, at the very least, you send them back to whatever Six Flags operation they came from.  One of the main villains of the abomination that was the 2017 movie was the WB executive who demanded the movie be no longer than two hours, which made it the hack-job it was.  WB wanted it to be like Marvel’s “Avengers”, right down to bringing in that film’s original director and bringing in a ton of needless camp.  When the original director, Zach Snyder, was given the money and time to properly finish his original work and released it in 2021, it was just over four hours long, but it told the story and did all the characters right.  It got Oscar recognition, while the 2017 film got the “Golden Schmoes” award for biggest disappointment.

Executive entertainment hacks think that you should sacrifice story for maximum theatre exposure.  This applies not only to the movies, but also to the straight-to-video animated releases.  “Superman: Doomsday” was an abomination because they wanted to keep the time limited.  But when the story was retold as two movies – “The Death of Superman” and “Reign of the Supermen” – everything was fleshed out perfectly.  Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame” and New Line Cinema’s “The Lord of the Ring: The Return of the King” were both over three hours long, but they not only told their stories well, they also scored huge box office money, despite having that “limited theater exposure”.

The message is this: if it takes three or four hours to tell a story right, then take the time and do it right.

One of the reasons why characters like Superman have been underutilized is because of some asinine belief by entertainment execs that you can’t have the same character in both live-action movies and TV shows at the same time.  As long as Superman was appearing in “Man of Steel” and “Batman v Superman” and “Justice League”, you can’t have him on the CW.  But once Henry Cavil was benched as Superman, that was supposedly okay for Tyler Hoechin to be Superman in “Superman & Lois” on the CW.  And yet during the five-part CW crossover event “Crisis on Infinite Earths”, you had Tyler representing CW’s Superman working along with Brandon Routh, who played Superman in “Superman Returns” and represented the cinematic version of Superman.  A live-action appearance of Bruce Wayne played by the actor who voiced him in the animated series.  The appearances of the 1966 Robin and the stars of “Smallville” and brief appearances of “Titans” and “Doom Patrol” and “Swamp Thing” on HBO Max.  There was even a meeting between CW’s Flash and the “Justice League” Flash and a comic-book tie-in.  The media multiverse endured and viewers did not lose their minds over the mingling of genres.

People will not be confused between what’s on TV and what’s in the theatres, any more than they would be confused between what’s in the comics and what’s airing on HBO Max or the CW.

That brings me to the CW network.

Some idiot, or a bunch of idiots, think that it would be best of the CW was sold off.  Since the WBD is now a co-owner of this network, and many of their best DC Entertainment talent is on the CW, this jeopardizes the company.

The idea that a network is “profitable” is about as muddied as those “Terms of Service” letters you get in the mail from your credit card lender.  I get that Viacom and WBD have their own streaming platforms now, but it’s asinine to expect to sell the network to some other company and yet still keep the content that made it the draw it is.  This is also one of the reasons why the CW’s hero-themed shows are either getting cancelled or are on the verge of being cancelled.  They don’t know if they even have a network to call home now.

This, in my not-so-humble opinion, is a mistake.  A huge, phenomenal mistake.  Viacom has its own major broadcast network called CBS.  Disney has ABC.  Comcast has NBC.  WBD only has a handful of cable channels which are becoming cookie-cutter copies of each other.  You’re the ones that will be left without a broadcast presence if you let this sale go through.

If, however, you decide to do the stupid and make the phenomenal mistake of selling off the network, I strongly suggest you move all the hero shows to HBO Max or possibly come up with a free ad-paid streaming service, like what Amazon did with IMDB TV (soon to be “Freevee”).  Many of your network fans… aka your consumers… can’t afford the monthly subscription of HBO Max, or perhaps they just don’t want to make the leap to a subscription service.  Their biggest fear as expressed in the various social media posts I come across is they don’t want to see the shows they love suddenly go behind a subscription wall.  Airing them on an ad-paid streaming service would keep them connected to those programs.  You’re doing this already with the CW app.  At least fight to keep that part of the CW network for yourself.

That brings us to the CW hero shows themselves.  I know the COVID global pandemic has put a serious hindrance on crossovers, but the CW spent all that time in 2019 and 2020 to bring the various shows together and unite them either on one planet or part of a renewed connected multiverse.  Even if they can’t be physically in the other shows, there should be at the very least an acknowledgement that these other characters still exist, even if made in passing.  “Supergirl” had John Diggle from “Arrow” show up and quote something from “Black Lightning”.  “The Flash” brought in several characters from other shows together for a five-part special.  But “Superman & Lois” are in their second season and still act like there is nothing else in the universe aside from a one-time Diggle appearance.  Again, you don’t have to have the actors show up physically, but you can at least mention them.  Acknowledge they exist.

Here's the last piece of advice… you do not need to keep re-inventing the hero in order to “revitalize” him or her.  Build from the talent you already have.  You have a great cinematic Superman in Henry Cavil.  He has the look and feel of the late Christopher Reeve.  You don’t need to recast Superman or re-tell Superman’s origins.  Michael Keaton is coming back as Batman, but you do not need to keep rehashing Batman’s origin story.  Keep Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman and Jason Momoa as Aquaman.  Build from their past movies, don’t hit the reboot button.

Let’s get brutally honest here… Warner Brothers Discovery has to make some serious investing if they want to see DC Entertainment get back to the top of the entertainment world.  They need to invest money, of course, but they also need to invest attention.  Don’t let CW shows languish in their own little programming worlds.  Give them the connectivity they need.  Spend the money on bringing those big-screen hero movies to life and forget about counting the minutes it takes to tell the story.  If the movie shows the characters in the proper light and tells the story that needs to be told, it will bring the audience back over and over again and the movie theatres will have to keep running that movie over and over.  That is how you generate maximum box office revenue.  It does not come through cutting story to conform to some artificial deadline.

Warner Brothers has been around long enough to remember back when going to the movies were a huge ordeal, with runtimes so long that there were forced intermissions.  Today we may look at those classics as overblown and maybe even overdramatic, but, back in the day, they brought in the masses and they made the money that made WB exist as it does today.  It would be folly to think that any media executive could magically make the business of entertaining and telling stories happen by making mergers and cutting corners and runtimes.

But, really, who am I to say this?  Other than a storyteller myself as well as one of your many consumers and fans.  The very kind of people that you need to make it all happen.