By BILL CHAISSON
In the Stream
There are many great scenes in the monumental spaghetti Western “Once Upon a Time in the West,” but one with symbolic historical resonance comes near the end. Jason Robards, who plays an outlaw called Cheyenne, is greviously wounded but being stoic about it. As Charles Bronson begins to lead his horse into the desert, Cheyenne falls from it and dies. The camera pans up from his dead body to a wide scene of construction; the railroad is coming. It is the end of the wild West and the beginning of the settled West. Where once the men made the rules, now there will be orderly commerce and rule of law.
The news of the demise of the Marvel-Netflix deal and the cancelling of most of the Marvel superhero shows on that streaming service reminded me of the steadily increasing corporatization of the internet.
The advent of streaming services has nearly killed off the CD rental business as a brick and mortar thing; we are left mostly with red boxes outside grocery stores.
Netflix ruled the streaming roost for a few years, nosing out Hulu (they both began streaming 2007). But now Disney+ is on the way. Disney owns an enormous amount of content, including Pixar and Marvel. Soon streaming services will compete just like television networks used to do.
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