Have you heard the news? I cannot believe this is happening. The world is surely getting closer to the end.

A pirated copy of the Wolverine movie has ended up on the Internet. Tragic, huh?

I hadn’t heard of this when I wrote my column a few weeks ago on “spoilers.” I think I need to re-assess my point of view if people are going beyond just talking about things and going directly to releasing them to the public early.

Who cares about the housing crisis or pirates in Africa when movies are available on the Internet before they hit the theater? Especially when they are some comic book movie. People have gone too far this time.

Do you realize that because some people will get a chance to watch the flick without having to pay $10 a ticket and choose between the $12 medium popcorn and soda and $13 large popcorn and soda, the gross for this release might only be in the low $100 million range instead of inching towards $150 million?

Do people have no respect anymore when they deny movie executives that extra $10 or $20 million? Do they really want the difference between a medium and large at the theater to go up to $2?

OK, OK, I hear you and understand that stealing is a bad thing. But I think some of the reaction I have seen goes a little bit too far. The person who did this really deserves the title of “loser” more than “hardcore criminal.”

I may or may not feel differently if he or she had stolen a movie I actually cared about and ruined things for me, but since I really don’t care if I find things out ahead of time, that’s really a moot point.

I do have to say, however, that I would not have enjoyed my viewing of “I Love You, Man” last weekend if I had known some key points ahead of time. The good thing is that a movie like that doesn’t have an obsessive fan base which feels the development of a comic book character into a movie character deserves our utmost attention.

Have I made it clear enough that I’m not a fan of the whole comic book movie trend?

I never got into that genre and really have no problem with people who like X Men and Iron Man and Spiderman and anyone else who adds “man” to the end of their name.

I get that the movie studios make a lot of money off these things because the people who like them can go a little overboard, but I don’t know why that has to turn every aspect of the project into a critical national story. A guy put an unfinished copy of the movie online. That hardly means he should be shot, as one movie executive suggested.

Anyway, I have a funny feeling that the nation will survive people downloading Wolverine or whatever it is called before we get bombarded with commercials telling us how we need to go see this movie. We’ve overcome worse. Like that one time when people found out ahead of time which character died in one of those Harry Potter books.

Yeah, those were dark days. I don’t know how we survived.