The dragon in this case would be Blockbuster, that pandering monster who for many years practiced uninformed censorship of movies it rented. This means that you could rent a movie and never know that Blockbuster had removed any scenes it had determined might be detrimental to your mental purity–or something.

I remember sitting through a very difficult but ultimately rewarding movie starring Harvey Keitel in The Bad Lieutenant. The plot is about a very bad person who at the end tries to achieve a sort of redemption. Blockbuster helpfully culled the worst of his deeds, thus robbing the ending of its full potency. But hey, they were just protecting me from bad thoughts. They also protected me from knowing that I had purchased the viewing rights to a version of the movie that had been edited for content. When I found out about the deleted scene, I was furious. Yes, I regard movies as art and I take art seriously.

So it was with delight that I finally watched Netflix slay the dread dragon Blockbuster. Now it appears the company has more dragons to slay. Yet judging from its stock price, it seems wounded. I hope not mortally so.