The most controversial movie of the 21st Century, “The Interview,” took the meaning of satire to new heights with its mockery of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and pop-culture journalism.
The idea of the movie was so offensive that it resulted in the hacking of Sony Pictures, the U.S. receiving threats from North Korea and Sony Pictures canceling the movie’s theater showings.
Naturally I judged the movie quickly and thought it would be another one of Rogen and Franco’s goofball movies, filled with sexual innuendos and weed references. I was right, but it was impressively entertaining, nonetheless.
Franco’s character, Dave Skylark, finds newsworthiness in stories such as Rob Lowe’s hair loss and the hidden meaning in Eminem’s lyrics. The spontaneous character and his talk show, “Skylark Tonight,” resembled popular television programs like “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” therefore teasing the ideas of what society finds
most important.
Third Supreme Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-Un, is portrayed as soft-spoken with a hidden agenda, but when his buttons are pushed he becomes overly emotional and
reacts irrationally.
When I first saw a preview of the movie, I knew that it was going to be successful because of the leading actors, but I had no idea that it would turn into this big of a cash cow. However, it probably wouldn’t have been as successful if it hadn’t been pulled
from theaters.
The FBI has blamed the North Korean government for the hacking of Sony Pictures. Previously undisclosed information helped the FBI trace the origin of threats against Sony back to
North Korean Internet addresses because the hackers “got sloppy,” said FBI Director James Comey in a press release.
North Korea denied hacking Sony and has gone as far as accusing the U.S. government of being behind the making of “The Interview,” CNN reported.
“We were asked to provide our technical expertise,” said Michael Rogers, the National Security Agency director at the FBI’s International Conference on cyber security at Fordham University. “We were asked to take a look at the malware, we were asked to take a look at not just the data that was being generated from Sony but also what data could we bring to the table—here’s other activity and patterns leading up to it, what is this act really about?”
This isn’t the first time Sony was hacked. In 2011 the Playstation Network, owned by Sony, was hacked. Although user information such as credit card information was encrypted, other personal information, such as usernames, personal names and passwords, were released. Regardless of whether Sony’s most recent hacking was the result of the production of “The Interview,” Sony’s security has been an issue long before the movie.
