by ELMORE TERADONOVICH, Alternate Reality News Service Film and Television Writer
Twenty-seven people were killed and as many as four were injured in a riot at the Whoa Nelly Furtado Gabillaplex in Kenosha, Nova Scotia when people who had been waiting in line since four the previous morning were told that all of the screenings for The Avengers for that day had been sold out.
"It...it was like Anzio!" said cinemary strategist Marcus Orr-Alias. "Except, without the minty aftertaste."
"I should have been one of the ones who died," pouted Wall Street cuticle analyst Patsy Bitsy. "I mean, all of my friends got to see The Avengers on opening day. How am I ever going to be able to live with the shame of not getting in?"
To forestall the possibility of violence, The Avengers was booked on every screen in every movie theatre in North America. Every screen. "Yeah, well, our customers was a bit surprised that we replaced The Sex Scavengers with The Avengers," said adult theatre manager Joe-Bob Philpotts with a suspicious sniff. "But, ahh, other than having more seats to clean after each screening, it didn't really change much for us."
It may not seem like the possibility of violence was forestalled, but representatives of theatre chain Cineplex Odeous claim that things would have been a lot worse if they hadn't put the film on every screen on the continent. Using software developed by DARPA (in conjunction with Disney Studios), they determined that if they had not done so, riots would have broken out in 37 cities, causing most of California to break off from the United States mainland and drift away into the Pacific ocean.
"It may not have been methodologically sound to build the programme on a base of nuclear attack simulations from the 1950s," Disney Imagifear Don "What the Heck is a" Gaffer allowed. "Still, when a computer simulation says that the best strategy for getting a film into theatres is 'all of them,' what are mere human beings supposed to do?"
To accommodate people going to the movie on opening day - which had been announced in August, 1953 - all life in North America ground to a halt. Newspapers didn't publish. Public transit ran on a holiday schedule. Brokerage houses were closed and identity thieves refrained from sending out phishing emails.
Given how hot tickets for the film were, it was inevitable that scalpers would become involved. "It's a myth!" argued Chief Dan Gorge. "Natives did not buy up the best seats for Wounded Knee and sell them for outrageous prices!
"Okay," he allowed, "we may have done a little of that at the Battle of Little Big Horn, but things were different back then. You really have to appreciate Native ticket scalping in its historical context!"
Riots weren't the only unintended consequence of the release of The Avengers. Computer network servers across the continent had heart attacks because so many people blogged and tweeted about the film as they were watching it.
"It didn't make sense!" complained Jeremy Butts. "Black Nick Fury comes from an alternate universe, but the film doesn't contain any of the other alternative universe characters. How was I supposed to enjoy the movie when it had such a blatant disregard for the Marvel cosmology?"
What...does this have to do with the point we were trying to make about the effect of the film's release on computer networks?
"Just this: I tried to blog about the whole Nick Fury fiasco, but I got 'server's down, try again later if you're feeling lucky - are you feeling lucky, punk? are you?' messages throughout the movie," Butts explained. "Not only was my frustration approaching Hulk-like proportions, but anecdotal evidence collected by your reporters suggests that this happened to thousands of people across the continent."
It wasn't all bad news, though. Reports from theatres indicate that at least 27 Avengers babies were born on opening day.
"My baby wasn't due for another three weeks," said Regina de Lancey. "I guess little Tony Bruce Steve Thor really wanted to see Iron Man kick alien ass."
Regina refused medication because she didn't want to miss Loki get comeuppancally defeated. Still, didn't her birth screams diminish the pleasure other people in the theatre got from the film?
"Oh, no. They were cheering for me," de Lancey stated. "It's not every day that you get to experience the miracle of childbirth and Mark Ruffalo's layered, empathetic portrayal of the Hulk!"
"It was really an extraordinary moment in human history," Orr-Alias commented. "I mean, can you imagine how easily we could solve some of humanity's most vexing problems if people gave them as much attention as we gave this movie?"
With files from Frederica von McToast-Hyphen in Washington. And, Francis Grecoromacolluden, also in Washington. Oh, and Indira Charunder-Macharrundeira, who was also - why did so many contributors to this story file from Washington? Was there a seat sale that nobody told us about?