Hacker Cinema
The Interview
2014 · Film · 112 min
Directed by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg
Dave Skylark and his producer Aaron Rapaport run the celebrity tabloid show "Skylark Tonight". When they land an interview with a surprise fan, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, they are recruited by the CIA to turn their trip to Pyongyang into an assassination mission.
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80 comments on Hacker News
"Please read me the imdb plot synopsis of the film The Interview."
The film The Interview was released in 2014. Ten years later, Seth Rogen and James Franco are still alive.
> North Korean state media threatened "merciless" retaliation for his depiction in the film. Seth Rogen responded, "People don't usually wanna kill me for one of my movies until after they've paid 12 bucks for it."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Interview
Where is the merciless retaliation? Keep in mind this film has a graphic scene where Kim Jong Un dies…
This is major theme of the movie The Interview: "honeypotting"
This is the one people always cite when talking about big budget film breakdowns. I presume because it's the only one that's out there.
Edit: Apparently there's a leaked budget for The Interview out there. https://www.scribd.com/document/352522776/The-Interview-Budget-Final-10-10-13-pdf
I honestly don't remember any controversy from those films, certainly not a cancellation.
Even doing some google searches for controversy surrounding those films reveals like 1 or 2 op eds talking about "should we really be laughing at this?". Nothing terribly extreme.
The only place I found any sort of mention of controversy was The Interview. But, by and large it looks like it was just a bad film that rogan decided it was reviewed poorly because of controversy (and not that it was unfunny). I've not seen the film though so can't really comment.
Can you point to some online mob around these films? Like a reddit witch hunt or otherwise?
> You MIGHT find some isolated instance where someone objects to this movie. However, they'll be in an extreme minority.
Really? Take a look at the reception of recent comparable movies - The Dictator (Larry Charles, 2012), The Interview, Jojo Rabbit. All of which, to a greater or lesser extent, have been overshadowed by controversy about their portrayal of these topics, often including claims that some movie is either promoting hateful attitudes or "trivializing" and implicitly minimizing past atrocities by the vey act of portraying them via satire and ridicule. The contrast with how The Great Dictator was received historically could hardly be any clearer!
Curated list of favorite underrated movies:
#1 pick for HN Crowd: The Man From Earth // must see, especially if you like philosophical movies (don't recommend the sequel by the way)
Runner's Up:
Being There // absolute classic and must see for every person, at least once
Peaceful Warrior
The Lion In Winter // one of the best dramas ever made, and unbeatable cast with young Anthony Hopkins
Predestination // incredible drama about time travel paradoxes
The Interview // Hugo Weaving
Vitus // amazing story about a piano prodigy who fakes losing his talents to have a normal life
The Perverts Guide to Cinema // documentary, Slavoj Zizek's tour de force psychoanalysis of cinema as an art form; addressing the philosophical and psychological question of whether cinema (and other art forms) fulfil your desires, or rather teach/train you both to desire (and what you should desire), thus the sensationalistic and polemical invocation of it as "perverted"
Le Professionnel (French film, not to be confused with the one with Natalie Portman)
Revolver // Guy Ritchie's quote "It took me three years to write this film whereas Snatch took me three months". It is a masterwork metaphor about the ego, ego death, consciousness, meditation, spirituality, and the nature of reality. Recommend reading an interpretation of the film either before or after viewing to better appreciate what is happening in the story as it is most metaphorical.
Rest of the List: The Big Kahuna, Tao of Steve, Crazy Stupid Love, Megamind, Eyes Wide Shut, Dead Poet's Society, Before Sunset, Gambit, Five Minutes of Heaven, Temple Grandin, Croupier, The Good Guy, 3 Idiots, Limitless, Drive, Whiplash
The Interview, not The Dictator. The Dictator was the Sacha Baron Cohen movie.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Interview
> In June 2014, the North Korean government threatened action against the United States if Sony released the film. As a result, Sony delayed the release from October to December and reportedly re-edited the film to make it more acceptable to North Korea. In November, the computer systems of Sony were hacked by the "Guardians of Peace", a North Korean cybercrime group. The group also threatened terrorist attacks against theaters showing the film. This led to major theater chains opting not to release the film, and Sony instead releasing it for online digital rental and purchase on December 25, 2014, followed by a limited release at selected theaters the next day.
>I can't even think of a major movie since 2010 that had a villain who was socialist besides The Interview, Team America, and Red Dawn 2012 but those aren't even fake examples.
>A wealthy capitalist in a suit is pretty much today's standard cliche villain trope.
This was true during the Cold War, too. In the Bond films, Soviet Russia is the enemy in exactly one film, For Your Eyes Only. Red China is the implied power behind the throne in two, Thunderball and You Only Live Twice. In every other entry in the series, the villains are SPECTRE and a variety of madmen, predominantly the billionaire type.
Another example is the frequently made claim that "Muslims are always the villains in Hollywood". It is far, far, far easier to name films in which "Islamophobia" is the greater evil than the opposite, both before and after the September 11 attacks on the US. The Sum of All Fears is one example in which the book's Islamic villains are explicitly replaced (by "neo-Nazis") for the film.
>> I’d bet the world has seen a >1000:1 ratio of scenes featuring evil capitalists to scenes featuring evil communists
> They'd bet. Ok?
The context was "in the past several decades", if this means 3, that goes to 1992. I'd say that's a very, very safe bet. I'd take it too. If it was to 1982 it would be less so but still safe.
Otherwise it's been a long time since the cold war. The 'Red Scare' even longer.
I can't even think of a major movie since 2010 that had a villain who was socialist besides The Interview, Team America, and Red Dawn 2012 but those aren't even fake examples.
Even in your "Dirty Communists" TVTropes links all the examples were Cold War era, the only two modern films I found were also using historical real references:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheDeathOfStalin
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/BridgeOfSpies
I could list a countless modern films/shows where the enemy was an evil billionaire entrepreneur or faceless corporation. A wealthy capitalist in a suit is pretty much today's standard cliche villain trope.
I've only heard of it through China In Focus on YouTube. Our free press doesn't really report much on China. From what I've seen though, it would pass as pretty good comedy in the US. It's really over the top, similar to "The Interview" comedy movie about North Korea, except it's meant to be serious, which makes it funnier.
> No, Trump did not stoke racism against Asians.
Ahh, another day, another reminder that people on the internet simply can’t be reasoned with.
More than 2/3rds of my town have Trump related paraphernalia visible on their property. Do you really want to tell me about what all Trump has stoked hate against.
The fact you mention gaslighting is just grand, lol.
Not directly related, but this comment reminds me of one of the last times I went to a movie theater in this area, whenever The Interview (Kim Jong-Un) came out. There was a group of… South Eastern Asians from their general appearance. Elderly owner of the movie theater who often does ticketing at night says, in one of the most fucked up tones of voices I’ve ever heard, “you aren’t all Koreans are you” to them.
It was pretty disgusting. Funnily enough, he has his entire movie theater plastered in Trump praise & signage, something something he’s constitutionally still the president.
You seem like you don’t understand the level of hate Trump has emboldened, or that you’re just one of the haters & want to troll.
This will continue to happen until the US government backs not bending to foreign actors, as it did with the ridiculous "Interview" movie.
The US handled it well: the govt stood behind theaters who might have otherwise stopped screenings, and local police were outside theaters. Was it worth it for the entertainment? No. It was worth it for a political message.
“But North Korea is better than that. They would not steal all the other movies and not grab The Interview. I am convinced that this is an inside job.”
Surely the fact that The Interview was the one movie they did not want to "grab" indicates that there was something about that movie. Perhaps they grabbed the others to spread them freely on pirate sites, but didn't want to spread The Interview because their whole aim was to make sure no one could ever see it.
Meh. Despite what the article bemoans, DoD and CIA is still and will still be heavily involved in crafting "soft propaganda" narratives through Hollywood film.
Recent examples include "The Interview", in which State Department and CIA operatives made the film portray an assassination of Kim Jong Un and coordinate its dispersal in North Korea, and Zero Dark Thirty in which a story about indepedent actors in Libya protesting America's overthrow of its government by attacking its embassies and CIA annex on 9/11 became a "hero and rescue story".
Lots of leaked documents (SONY hacks, Wikileaks) contain modern (after WWII) discussions between US Gov and Hollywood execs about "crafting narratives" to help with US power projection and propaganda efforts. Always communicated as "lucrative partnerships" of course, because that's a mover for Hollywood execs.
North Korea was very likely the culprit behind the SONY hacks.
If you read the leaked emails, you will find that SONY had worked with the US Department of State and the CIA to add American propaganda into "The Interview" with a plan to distribute it across the Korean Peninsula. Seth Rogan also did several interviews about CIA and State Department working on the set.
The group attributed for hacking SONY was "DarkSeoul" within "Bureau 121". This group is known for actively retaliating against companies that use propaganda to attack North Korean national security as a form of deterrence.
Additionally, the group posted, along with the SONY leaks, criticisms of what they called "the movie of terrorism" ("The Interview").
Of course, American media turned it all around and pretended that they said something about blowing up movie theaters, and caused a public panic.
Nobody in the IC attributed Vault7 to Russia. Wikileaks themselves suggested that it was a CIA contractor. US media did domestically propagandize the public via IC partnerships to "infer" and "suggest" that it was Russia, but no public statements that I'm aware of were made.
>What other motive do you have for a Sony hack where the perpetrators demand either that The Interview not be released or that the ending be modified so that Kim's death wasn't "too happy?"
That Lulzsec are engaged in a game of misdirection?
I've never found "Malware X was used in attack Y" or "it came from these IP addresses owned by Z" to ever be a convincing argument for attribution.
Whereas I'm fairly easily convinced that the party responsible for the hack would prefer it if the FBI believes that the real attacker is outside of their jurisdiction so they don't come knocking on their door.
The fact that North Korea is everybody's favourite bogeyman from the CIA down makes them a convenient mark.
North Korea also has a habit of admitting to and bragging about military attacks whereas this time they just said "wasn't us, good job though guys". I'm not entirely sure what motive they'd have for denying the fact that they revealed a bunch of movie star salaries when most people think it was them anyhow.
> Workers remove a poster for “The Interview” from a billboard in Hollywood, California, on December 18, 2014, a day after Sony announced it would cancel the movie’s Christmas release and pull it from theaters.
The only thing that I'm aware of that was pulled(since I was born) because of similar reasons were movies released around 9/11[1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_entertainment_affected_by_the_September_11_attacks
It's the movie "The Interview" on platforms that happen to also do a lot of interviews themselves. False positive.
If you filter trends to just that week and look at related searches, it's very clear.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2788710/
A movie titled "The Interview" which released in 2014.
> Full stop, no it isn't.
It was my understanding that 18 U.S. Code § 871 included depictions enticing or encouraging such acts. I will look this up and come back with more information at a later time.
And to be clear here I mean a depiction of an actual US president. Not a fictitious president.
> Full stop, no it doesn't. Where the heck are you getting such misinformation? It is not just wrong, it is bordering on libel.
The mainstream news media is where I am getting this information. I remember it being reported on during the Pearl Harbor film some years ago (Bush Administration). Though I see it all the time: the SONY Leaks disclosed how the State Department and CIA helped to influence "The Interview" so that it would both depict the assassination of their president and to encourage civil unrest.
I take the libel statement seriously. I will pass it by my attorney. Difficult to discuss here, as neither of us are lawyers.
> There is an audience for those films.
Not a point.
Thanks for that. Any other NK-related films you recommend that go beyond surface shock value (e.g. Vice documentaries) or ignorant comedy (The Interview)?
An email to the Sony Pictures from the GoP said it was about The Interview, which makes sense. It was the only movie that GoP obtained that they didn't release. http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/19/media/insde-sony-hack-interview/index.html
They don't have rights to stream any decent movies
That seems hyperbolic. Just browsing around (I decided to cap this at 5 minutes):
The Interview
Forrest Gump
Major League
Pirates of Carribean
Hot Fuzz
Armageddon
Kingpin
A League of Their Own
Inglorious Basterds
Scarface
Django Unchained
Legally Blonde
E.T.
Days of Thunder
The Princess Bride
Crocodile Dundee
Clear and Present Danger
V for Vendetta
Galaxy Quest
Running Man
Big Trouble in Little China
Talladega Nights
Kill Bill (1 and 2)
Star Trek Movies (including The Wrath of Kahn)
Tommy Boy
Team America World Police
Lilo & Stitch
Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back
Wayne's World
Clerks
Bill & Teds Excellent Adventure
Why would they be in better position to disrupt cinema as compared to iTunes, Google Play or YouTube? All of those players have worldwide name recognition and require no immediate upfront membership.
"The Interview" went online directly, and from what I recall the box office results were kinda meh. Of course, we have no access to a parallel Universe where it would've been released through traditional channels, so it could had been a relative success fwiw.
Oh sorry.
The Stratfor leaks had a TON of shady stuff.
> I missed all that–can you point me in the right direction?
Sure!
The CEO of SONY, high level state department officials, RAND specialist on nuclear deproliferation, regime change and North Korea, and Special Envoy to Korea discussed what direction the ending of the movie should go for it to most optimally destabilize the Kim regime. Special Envoy talked about plans (and RAND specialist Bennett) mention plans to seed the film into NK:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/17/exclusive-sony-emails-allege-u-s-govt-official-ok-d-controversial-ending-to-the-interview.html
Covered in the prior link and here (http://www.democracynow.org/2014/12/22/the_interview_pokes_fun_at_north) the State Department was given early screenings of the Interview.
The CIA and Hillary staffers were on set of the Interview (https://wikileaks.org/sony/emails/emailid/109275); Seth Rogan even mentioned getting inside information about Kim Jong Un's disappearance for surgery during the production from officials on set he thought were CIA (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/movies/james-franco-and-seth-rogen-talk-about-the-interview.html?_r=0).
The decision to name the leader of NK in the film came down from executives - in the original script it had entirely fictional names (http://www.scpr.org/programs/the-frame/2014/12/15/40758/how-the-interview-scribe-dan-sterling-became-Sony/). This is also confirmed by the SONY leaks, which have the executives trade emails concerned about the appearance of their having brought up the idea.
This all came out pretty early during the hacks but unfortunately the skepticism over it having been NK behind the hacks overwhelmed the media at the time. (It did turn out to be pretty definitively North Korea, or at least sympathizers, after all).
> 99% v. 1%
I happen to agree with you wholeheartedly. I do like the way that Wikileaks operates, though. They don't want to be the people in charge of curating and censoring information because they feel that this process can become politicized. So they publish everything.
The cost of their publications is extremely high. The returns are also high and IMO the ROI is good so in general I'm for them. But yeah if the ROI wasn't very good I would question it a lot more.
Definitely Wikileaks operates in pretty challenging legal waters.
The SONY hack was almost assuredly NK or at the very least NK sympathizers. There are technical reasons (malware fingerprints, servers, tactical similarity to similar operations against SK media outlets). But the best way to link them is to see that the motivation was specifically anti-The Interview.
The important emails leaked by the Guardians of Peace (their 'Christmas Gift') show that CEO Lynton, a boardmember of the RAND Corporation, had been discussing with the State Department and RAND Corporation specialist on nuclear deterrence, NK and regime change since June the same year how the film should end and what was most likely to cause instability in NK when CSOs introduced them to the NK population.
That is to say The Interview was a 'diplomacy product' of the US government and the NK hacking of SONY was a retaliation for that - and in fact the cyber team retaliating against SONY specifically punishes media outlets for running adversarial messages about the Kim regime.
So the story here isn't that NK probably wasn't behind the attack - they probably were. The reason people are so skeptical is that they don't understand why NK would attack SONY, a movie seeming to be too petty a reason. It's easier to see when you read the leaked emails and ascertain that the US government was involved in crafting the film for its purposes.
There's a lot of toxic stuff in US foreign policy - and not just US but every nation. We believe in myths about our countries because they perform these actions in covert ways, and propel a lofty image of themselves in public interactions and through the media. The US does some very ugly, dirty stuff. But I take exception with some of the things in your list - specifically the characterization that the CIA's torture is or was somehow the 'most' brutal we've seen in modern times. That's some hyperbole and I think you know it. It may seems like picking on details but there is absolutely more heinous forms of torture (dissolving people in acid, using power tools to remove limbs and digits, etc) practiced at large in other nations.
But really the thing I want to leave here is that there is a tragedy at the commons. Torture and rendition, surveillance and propaganda, coups and proxy wars, theft and sabotage - all of these things are alive and well. The US is one of many nations involved in these activities as the planet races to establish water and food security before our planet exhales.
In some sense, this has already happened. The US State Department seems to have been involved, at least to some degree, with the development of The Interview as a propaganda effort (see the leaked Lynton emails) and this has upset North Korea, since it knows the movie would get leaked to its people.
The current narrative is that North Korea (or sympathizers) attacked SONY for absolutely no reason - or that they wanted to silence free speech arbitrarily.
The United States is regularly hacked by foreign states and regularly hacks them. Hopefully the development of international norms and increased investment in computer security cools global tensions and prevents the kind of infrastructure sabotage that would result in human casualties from happening.
I am not sure how many HNers have watched The Interview. But at point Kim John Un points that that America has an higher incarnation rate than North Korea - They brushed it off in the movie But I still think about it.
How can the world's proudest democracy answer the simple question that Kim John Un poised ?
>I'd be pretty surprised if the US employed people to do anything like this on domestic US sites at any scale. What would they post?
Call me a conspiracy nut, but now that social media is how most young people get their news, I wouldn't be surprised if the US gov paid people to post and promote bullshit fluff to keep people distracted from major events in the world. When those major stories do make it to the masses, there are people to comment about how it's a "non-issue" and "we need to focus on more important things" or that the US is doing what's necessary to protect its interests and the world's.
Just a couple examples:
All throughout the build up to the Manning trial, I distinctly remember most commenters on tech news sites supporting Manning. Upon conviction, I checked the comments on Ars Technica and the comments were overwhelmingly along the lines of "Let this be a sign to all future traitors.", "Lock HIM up and throw away the key!!" There was a comment about how suspicious the shift was, and the next three pages of comments were along the lines of, "How do we know YOU aren't working for someone?", "We never supported TRAITORS like YOU.", etc. It was bizarre.
The overwhelming coverage of The Interview days after the CIA torture report came out. People were outraged, but then every corner of the internet was plastered with patriotism and how we need to release some awful comedy to stick it to some dirt poor totalitarian state. Now people have forgotten about that movie, as well as the CIA's issues.
I also recall a huge amount of support for an invasion and increased funding of rebels in Syria back when the US government claimed Assad was using chemical weapons against his people. What shocked me was that the people most calling for war was liberal/feminist discussion circles. That all seems to be forgotten now that a group of rebels called ISIS is our enemy of the week.
Regardless of whether FBI is lying (I believe they are telling the truth in broad strokes) here are reasons to implicate NK (when both Russian and Iranian signatures were present the malware):
- Instability in NK means instability in China
- NK is a nuclear power and rapidly rising as a country on the world stage (according to CIA director Panetta)
- Russia's sharing of hypersonic missile technology with North Korea heightens already mounting global nuclear tensions
- Temporary division of Korea was set up by US and allies as a result of WWII - it was slotted for reintegration within a few years but Cold War tensions blocked cooperation between the nations required to achieve this; meaning:
a.) North Korea has never been recognized by the US as a 'legitimate' state to begin with
b.) The Korean War was fought for and activity in the area continues to be of proxy interest to greater geopolitical goals
- Cooperation between SONY, RAND corporation and the State Department on the development of "The Interview" (and the gutting of the Smith-Mundt Act at the time this cooperation began) lends favor to the narrative that the film is a "Diplomacy Product" of the US State Department and that North Korea was the target to begin with
- The United States is engaging in a mammoth amount of effort to establish international norms for cyberattacks and needs to show proactivity in this area
Example: If you rented "The Interview" on Google's video service (in HD) and played it back on a software/hardware stack that didn't have the latest DRM(1), you were limited to SD.
You paid for HD. You got SD.
Of course, you could go pirate a full HD copy of the movie and play it back anywhere. The effectiveness of these inconveniences is overwhelming.
(1) I'm not positive it was even possible to redeem an HD rental in HD. I don't know anyone that didn't get forced to play in SD.
Not hard to find proof NK was threatening American company and citizens.
http://variety.com/2014/film/news/sony-hackers-threaten-911-attack-on-movie-theaters-that-screen-the-interview-1201380712/
> A person identifying himself as a Lizard Squad administrator said the group provided a number of Sony employee logins to Guardians of Peace, the organization that allegedly broke into Sony's network and prompted the film studio to initially withdraw "The Interview" from theaters.
This article is saying the Lizard Squad helped the GoP, so no, the DDoS against North Korea, if it was a US retaliation, wasn't a "bad guess", at least not based on any information from this article.
I'm not disputing that, really. I'm disputing this:
>It's worth noting that the original demand of the hackers was for money from Sony in exchange for not releasing embarrassing information. There was no mention of the movie "The Interview"
It very well could be an extortionist, but I think they clearly intended to give the impression that it was allegedly about The Interview, first subtly then explicitly. No public message, or leaked private message, was ever released that showed the hackers asking for money. It is possible they sent a private demand for money to Sony which has yet to be released, but that would just be speculation.
Their group name, constant requests to "preserve world peace", releasing all sorts of movies and scripts except anything relating to The Interview, and then explicitly calling The Interview a "movie of terrorism" seems to show that they intended to use the movie as a bargaining chip from day 1.
This isn't really true.
http://regmedia.co.uk/2014/12/08/sony_hack.jpg
http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/sonypictureshack-640x1136.jpg
These are the two original defaces on Sony's computer systems. Neither mention money, just vague "obey our demands or we will expose all your data". The first one explicitly mentions a "great effort to peace of the world", in line with the name "Guardians of Peace".
Why would a disgruntled insider make something up about world peace if they just wanted money?
Not saying that means it's necessarily North Korea, but I'm pretty sure the actors either had The Interview as a real motive, or used the movie as a pretext, from day 1.
> It's worth noting that the original demand of the hackers was for money from Sony in exchange for not releasing embarrassing information. There was no mention of the movie "The Interview"
That alone really pokes a hole in the official narrative.
>The most damning argument is, as mentioned in the article, that the NK+The Interview conclusion was not mentioned by the attackers until the media started speculating.
This is technically true but the full situation is more complicated.
First, it is difficult to know which of the Pastebins were really made by the hackers and which were made by copycats/trolls.
Second, the media began speculating about the connection to The Interview one day after the hack, Nov. 25. Some probably the day of. The hackers only explicitly mentioned The Interview ("Stop immediately showing the movie of terrorism which can break the regional peace and cause the War!") on Dec. 8.
However, between Nov. 25 and Dec. 8 they released a number of dumps and messages addressing Sony, the public, and the media, while not mentioning The Interview at all. So if they wanted to jump on the sensationalism bandwagon, in my opinion it would have made more sense to start hinting at the movie specifically before Dec. 8. Of course, they may have randomly decided to wait that long for any number of reasons.
Third, I think "Guardians of Peace" is a pretty clear allusion to "protecting the peace [by preventing the release of this terroristic movie]", which they made quite clear in later statements, including in statements before the Dec. 8 mention of the movie. And they used the name Guardians of Peace from day one. "Guardians of Peace" simply doesn't line up with the disgruntled insider or hacktivist hypotheses at all. This does not at all mean it was North Korea, but in my opinion it means the perpetrators either used The Interview as a motive, or as a pretext, from day 1.
There are many possible explanations as to why this could have really been North Korea and why they did not explicitly mention the movie until Dec. 8. There are certainly many explanations as to why it could mean it isn't North Korea, but it's not damning evidence at all.
I'm guessing "Stars Episode III" is Star Wars Episode III? As far as I can see they give Star Wars III 80% and The Shining 92% which is more like a 12% difference by my calculation. The tomatometer is just an indication of whether the critics liked the movie really. The Shining gets 4/5 from audience while SW III gets 3.1/5 which I'd translate as pretty good and mediocre respectively. Probably not to far off.
The Interview is looking pretty mediocre from the reviews but I look forward to seeing it anyway.
There's an old saying in PR: don't let your main distribution channel refuse to carry your product. Also, don't let anyone threaten your potential customers with death or terrorist attack!
There's a possibility that showing The Interview on YouTube and other sites will result in online streaming becoming a huge runaway revenue success. But that's a huge gamble to make, especially when the movie is scoring just a 54% on Rotten Tomatoes.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_interview_2014/
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_interview_2014/
Some of the selected quotes there:
"It's just stupid enough that some things are funny. Sadly, it isn't smart enough to realize that other things aren't terribly funny and that an opportunity was lost here."
"The remarkably dismal quality is emblematic of the mind-set that brought the movie, and its attendant crises, into being."
I hope Stripe developers didn't write this code. I got the movie for free, jesus ... http://imgur.com/a/hf8FZ - and I didn't get a job after my interview with Stripe earlier this year.
The "new" section is literally full of "Go check out the Interview here!" links.
Links which contain nothing more than "Here's where you can watch the Interview". A film nobody cared about, seemingly, until the alleged NK hack. And the look at how fast some of the upvotes have happened on those stories.
At the very least, we should be treating and flagging these things the same way we do any other stupid "Buy our product" submissions that creep onto the new section.
EDIT:
And so many downvotes today for questioning the obvious. Thanks folks!
>the explicit North Korean connection -- threats about the movie The Interview -- were only made by the hackers after the media picked up on the possible links between the film release and the cyberattack
I personally think this is a misinterpretation of what happened. Media began heavily speculating it was tied to The Interview about 1-2 days after the hack was initially reported, but the hackers waited until Dec. 15 before explicitly mentioning it. If they wanted to take advantage of the sensationalism, why continue releasing messages and threats that clearly acknowledge Sony and the media between Nov. 24 and Dec. 15 while not mentioning The Interview until the most likely motive essentially became obvious?
Second, I think the group name "Guardians of Peace" is a fairly obvious allusion to "guarding international peace by preventing Sony from releasing The Interview", and is in line with just about everything they've been saying. And of course they were using that group name on day 1.
I'm not saying North Korea necessarily did it, but I think the actors either intended to stop the movie from the beginning, or intentionally framed North Korea by using a pretext of trying to stop the movie. I don't think they're a group of hacktivists who only appropriated The Interview as a motive after media speculation.
It looks like it's available on Google Play now:
https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/The_Interview?id=Ed2kSuKqfz0
and YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed2kSuKqfz0
> North Korea may not have even been aware of the movie until the hack.
North Korea was well aware of The Interview ahead of the hack. See this article from June: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jul/10/north-korea-un-the-interview-seth-rogen-james-franco
Why does https://www.seetheinterview.com keep redirecting to https://www.kernel.com which doesn't even contain The Interview film?
The whole "Interview" thing was Sony using this for free advertisement imo.
The movie will be release at the original date, how convenient.
Surely if the movie is bad this (http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30589472) is still an incredibly good launch by world class pr people. If the movie is good then it's still a good launch and will make money afterwards. The thing about bad movies is you can only make money on the opening weekend - this marketing was free (+the original marketing costs already spent and ignoring the lasting costs of being hacked) so the ROI will be incredibly good. Any film that caused the president to give a speech about it pre-release is going to do well on the opening weekend - I still don't think it matters if it turns out its a bad film or not, but I can't wait for the data. I guess it will be here? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Interview_(2014_film) And total costs around <$100m (again discounting hack).
This also isn't taking into account the ROI from turning Sony into the victim in this scenario - not a massive company with a tiny, unsophisticated infosec team who messed up big time by not investing more in security.
I'm just tired of the Western view of North Korea as a joke. Yes, the Kims are ludicrous. They're also monsters, some of the worst in human history, who have crushed one of the world's most beautiful and functional cultures under their brutality and insanity.
Nobody considered Hitler or Stalin to be laughing matters during their purges. But somehow we can all ignore the horrific crimes of these bastards because the father was ridiculous and the son is fat. Nobody gives a damn if the Kims rape women, torture civilians, or murder innocent families so long as their victims are Korean. No, the first time we see even vaguely appropriate anger toward these dictators is when they might have hacked a goddamn MOVIE STUDIO.
MacArthur was right. Truman was horribly, horribly wrong. And innocent Koreans have paid for Truman's cowardice and vanity with half a century of utter brutality. The only thing wrong with The Interview movie was that it was a comedy rather than a true story.
> China is publicly backing away from North Korea
It seems to be quite the opposite actually:
> Any civilized world will oppose hacker attacks or terror threats. But a movie like ‘The Interview,’ which makes fun of the leader of an enemy of the U.S., is nothing to be proud of for Hollywood and U.S. society,” an editorial in the newspaper said. “No matter how the U.S. society looks at North Korea and Kim Jong-un, Kim is still the leader of the country. The vicious mocking of Kim is only a result of senseless cultural arrogance.[1]
[1] http://www.ibtimes.com/sony-hack-triggers-diplomatic-tightwalk-china-condemns-cyberattacks-without-1764432
Okay, seriously - who else is making the weird, kinda unsettling connection between the recent seizure of the Pirate Bay and this whole 'The Interview' business with North Korea?
If the Pirate Bay was still online, would 'The Interview' have leaked already?
Is the seizure of The Pirate Bay linked to the intentional suppression of the release of this film?
Why would the government raiding TPB concede to do this for terrorists?
I mean, I hate to be one of those conspiracy nuts, but - it really seems like this is all a big distraction for the start of some new strange form of cyberterrorism.
North Korea said in June that The Interview was a "wanton act of terror" and promised "merciless" retaliation if it was released. Said it was an "act of war" and "is absolutely intolerable"
http://time.com/2921071/kim-jong-un-seth-rogen-the-interview-james-franco/
Edit: In July they made a complaint to the UN about the film, saying: "To allow the production and distribution of such a film on the assassination of an incumbent head of a sovereign state should be regarded as the most undisguised sponsoring of terrorism as well as an act of war," http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jul/10/north-korea-un-the-interview-seth-rogen-james-franco
<sarcasm>I'm sure they had nothing to do with what happened to Sony</s>
I think denials of state actor hacking is bewildering. Its seem more credulous that a previously unknown hacker group (the GOP? Really?) suddenly take down Sony in such an elaborate fashion, especially when a movie literally protraying the murder of NKorea's leader is about to be released (In June N Korea vowed to "mercilessly destroy" anyone involved with The Interview.) Groups like the Lizard Squad who perform Sony attacks tend to have a history and reputation. This group has no history. That itself should be a huge mark against those who go against the FBI's claim.
Not to mention we have a massive history of NK and Chinese cyberwars against the west. Often both countries working hand in hand, with the NK hacker team reported to be headquartered in a hotel in a Chinese city under the auspices of the Chinese government. Shenzhen I believe.
I think a lot of this "debate" is centered on how people feel about the USG and specifically its foreign policy. I think a lot of black-hat and grey-hats tend to idealize autocratic regimes like Russia, China, N Korea, Syria, Iran, etc because they are "counters" to US foreign policy, so they often will take an anti-US spin on things. This isn't technology or informed commentary. Its just the same lazy outrage politics that has taken over any other type of discourse on the internet. From a rational perspective, this attack obviously points to the NK regime. Its fits their MO, their history, and, if we take the FBI's claims as true, their technology and capabilities.
The same way many anti-US/anti-Western commentators were telling us that those weren't Putin's troops in Crimea or in Eastern Ukraine. They kept saying "more proof" when it was obvious no amount of proof would convince them. They just had an anti-US bone to pick and liked the attention of being contrarian.
I also think its emotionally comforting to pretend there isn't a massive multi-party cyberwar going on, all the time. I think people want to believe its just some bad apples, not nation states and their leadership ordering attacks left and right, with impunity. Its a little scary to think what is possible from a determined attacker and how little of our industry and practices are focused on security.
Apparently the movie personally pissed off Kim Jong Un. Back in June they officially condemned the movie and threatened retaliation if it was released.
http://time.com/2921071/kim-jong-un-seth-rogen-the-interview-james-franco/
> The theory that North Korea was upset about a crappy movie and hacked Sony is such a naive nonsense, it cannot be considered seriously.
I'd be inclined to agree with you if the North Korean government didn't officially condemn the film last June and threaten retaliation if it was released.
http://time.com/2921071/kim-jong-un-seth-rogen-the-interview-james-franco/
> There's also the added bonus of timing, as the torture report seemed to only be gaining steam up until this.
I doubt it was that, if only because North Korea has been complaining about this movie since long before the CIA torture report was released (so it's not like "The Interview" just popped up into the media after that).
Moreover the report itself is more a catalyst for discussing something everyone knows about than an announcement of something novel. The world has known the U.S. was torturing people during Bush for more than a decade by now. That's the whole reason terms like "waterboarding" are in our lexicon. Likewise Obama publicly eliminated the use of torture on his second full day in office, after running on a public campaign of banning torture during his Presidential run.
Choosing to exchange a report that is only a 'source of heat and light' for a serious cyberhacking incident that demonstrates the weakness of U.S. options vs. North Korea isn't really an upside for the U.S. government as far as I can tell.
Extortion and blackmail from state actors is precisely the thing the U.S. government is supposed to protect U.S. persons and corporations from, so a U.S. admission that North Korea has managed to "reach out and touch Sony Pictures" is bad news for the U.S. government, not good news.
I think this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the basic meaning of artistic expression, freedom of speech, and censorship. I find that I am diametrically opposed to everything that you have stated.
This also really has nothing to do with a silly little movie called "The Interview". The movie is a footnote in a brutal attack on Sony which left their entire network destroyed, their PCs wiped, their entire data set stolen and published, their employees and partners and customers terribly exposed, and all this used to extort them...
As for peaceful co-existence and all that, such a thing can only be possible not by retaliating when we are offended, but by understanding we have a right to be offended, and a right to express our outrage peacefully and constructively.
Edit: Imagine a world where Kim Jong-un posts a video statement on kim.nk decrying the movie and asking for support in a world wide boycott. This is how mature adults respond to such a situation. Oh wait, I almost forgot, he's a brutal dictator bent on world destruction. Seriously, your comment blows my mind.
Sony CEO Michael Lynton says Sony still wants The Interview to be seen and is considering their options. Those include DVD and Blu-ray home video, YouTube, VOD, and other digital platforms but “there has not been one major VOD distributor, one major e-commerce site that has stepped forward and said they are willing to distribute this movie for us.” [1]
Hackers to Sony: We'll stand down if you never release the movie.... "Now we want you never let the movie released, distributed or leaked in any form of, for instance, DVD or piracy. And we want everything related to the movie, including its trailers, as well as its full version down from any website hosting them immediately." [They] warn the studio executives that, "we still have your private and sensitive data" and claims that they will "ensure the security of your data unless you make additional trouble." [2]
Imagine Sony putting it on BitTorrent with a pre-roll asking viewers to donate money to a charity of their choice through a micro-site they setup to track how much has been given. Or something.... This is actually a moment in history where Sony could truly shine.
But back in reality, whatever is in those held-back stolen docs, they probably need time to prepare for the fallout. If they can stall the remaining doc release by stalling the movie release, they can buy themselves some time. In the meantime, the audience for the film is growing daily, but I think will peak and fall if they wait too long.
[1] - http://deadline.com/2014/12/sony-president-obama-the-interview-response-1201330799/
[2] - http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/19/media/insde-sony-hack-interview/index.html
Are you asking about Sony's decision not to distribute the movie The Interview announced earlier this week? No, I don't think Sony made the right decision. Sony should let willing people watch the movie and see how the world reacts to that.
A film is usually completed many months before release; photography generally wraps more than a year in advance of release. The script can float about for years before release. Scripts aren't secret, with rare exceptions (eg a big franchise film like the new Star Wars) - they're shred around freely, because any script worth its salt is registered with the Writer's Guild for copyright establishment purposes, so there's no big advantage to keeping it secret. Only film buffs enjoy reading film scripts, the general public does not.
Details about who's attached to a project as a star/director, or senior technician are easily available through trade newspapers and industry newsletters. The 'packaging' of a film ('Seth Rogen to star in The Interview') is the first stage of the marketing, taking place as long as 2-3 years before release, sometimes longer. Basically the way you get a film made is this: Write the script; find some famous actors who like it; get them to sign (largely) non-binding 'letters of intent' to act in it if it manages to attract financing; call up investors (including studios) and say 'do you want to put up the money for this? It's a great script, and I've got letters of intent from Seth and James!'; proceed to the stage of writing more binding contracts once you have money in the bank.
Long story short, there has been plenty of time for NK to become aware of the film and get offended about it. By some accounts the idea was in development since the last decade but got shelved when Kim Jong-Il died.
Interesting, but there don't appear to have been any movies in that group wherein the entire plot was dedicated to the assassination of a sitting leader, who is unabashedly named as such.
Most seemed to be a random, satirical event within the film or non-current leaders. The Chaplin flick seems the closest, but even that's subject to debate (per the article).
Not to say that any of these were especially wise either, just that the entire premise of "The Interview" seems especially stupid.
This has been making my bullshit detector ping loudly, ever since the first mention of North Korea.
Every article that I have seen recently in the mainstream news boldly implicates North Korea as the culprit, with absolutely zero evidence to back it up. When I don my foil hat and wear my fnord-detecting goggles, this is what I find.
- The US federal government has been attempting to assemble a military "cyber command" with both offensive and defensive capabilities since 2005, if not sooner. 2005 was when I first heard about it, but it wasn't actually called "cyber command" until late 2006.
- China has a military-sponsored unit of network security professionals, which would be proven very capable, if any of the attacks attributed to them could actually be traced back to them.
- North Korea is simultaneously ally and irritant to China. Blaming China for past network security breaches has not produced the expected political support. Using North Korea as a more reviled and less diplomatically capable proxy, who also happens to have both a well-funded corps of network security professionals and a rapid and tenacious propaganda response to any possible slight to the country or its leadership, may be a safer means to achieving the desired result.
- Truly damaging security breaches rarely achieve news media saturation. Front-page stories in every outlet are rarer still.
- Nations occasionally conduct false flag operations for propaganda or political gain.
So my current working hypothesis is as follows. A US intelligence organization, with the support of federal network security contractors, worked with Sony insiders to "hack" Sony network security. As we already knew from previous breaches, Sony network security is weak, and they don't even implement the same standards they demand of their partners, contractors, and vendors. Key influencers in the media and entertainment industry are quietly encouraged to support the frame-up. The Congress will soon introduce a national cyber-security bill. Sony's movie, The Interview, is probably an otherwise unremarkable comedy that will enjoy a slight box-office boost from the unconventional publicity.
When I take off the foil hat and fnord goggles, this is all just Sony acting like an ass, then getting checked hard by a small group of trolls doing it for the lulz. The news media should be thoroughly embarrassed by its decreasing commitment to fact-checking, but instead it will simply pretend it never happened.
There is no MO regarding an attack from a country like North Korea. That country says bombastic things with regularity, and has seemingly little concern for blowback. How a country like Israel or the United States might do an attack like this has no relevance to what North Korea might do, whether directly or through a hired proxy.
The Interview was never mentioned by the hackers until after the media starting running with the story
North Korea threatened war over this movie - http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-28014069
Now again, North Korea's words are kind of cheap, but they were talking about as big as you can get before this hack, and then specifically warned Sony to "obey" them. We have absolutely no idea what communications happened between the group and Sony and then law enforcement, so the whole what the media reported angle seems rather spurious. Sony/Law Enforcement, people who know more than us, seem to believe it was related to the movie.
It doesn't matter if it's a good film. That's why you see marketing campaigns saying 'just try it' - even if the product is crap they still make 1 sale.
The film is getting such incredible hype a huge amount the profits will be in the opening night. Check out the Rotten Tomatoes score: critics are divided on whether it's a good film, but 96% of people want to see it.
If Sony don't release the film eventually internationally, they'll lose money - but withholding it makes it a scarce commodity, drives hype etc.
What you are now reading about The Interview isn't politics, it's PR crisis management.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_interview_2014/?search=the%20interview
They re-made Red Dawn, didn't they?
The film and television industry is in the business of suspending disbelief. And they are no more immune to believing their own BS than any other industry.
I have no trouble believing that studios and theater chains think themselves to be so important that nations would go to war over them. As a whole, they are the least closely connected to reality of any business sector that I know about.
If Best Korea didn't retaliate over Team America: World Police, I think The Interview is probably safe.
Bruce Schneier: "Someone killed 12 people and shot another 70 people at the opening night of Batman: The Dark Knight [Rises]. They kept that movie in the theaters."
But that Batman movie was a good movie. (OK, not the best of the franchise, but still OK). The plot of The Interview is "a celebrity journalist and his producer land an interview with Kim Jong-un and are instructed by the CIA to assassinate him." That sounds like a good action-adventure movie. But it was made as a comedy. Dumb. Then the plan was to release it on Christmas Day, usually a day for take-the-kids movies. Dumber.
Sony may be using this as an excuse to escape from a turkey of a movie. Of course, now we all have to see it. Probably on Netflix; it's not worth a trip to a theater.
This whole affair is in the realm of stupid, on all sides.
I wonder if in refusing to show the movie, are the theaters really concerned about the physical threat, or the cyber threat? The physical threat is certainly the headline, and provides an easy out for theaters who might actually be more concerned about their networks.
The cyber threat is certainly the more credible of the two. Hackers who owned Sony so completely could now turn their focus to AMC, Regal, Cinemark, and Carmike. Aside from looting data stores, they could potentially shutdown ticketing systems, hack customer databases, steal credit cards...
We know a well-funded persistent targeted attack is guaranteed to succeed against these kinds of targets. I'm not really sure what's even holding back the tides of cyber-warfare beyond perhaps governments' inefficiency at organizing the necessary task forces. Fear of enforcement or retaliation certainly isn't the gating factor on the teams who are perpetrating these hacks.
The whole thing seems beyond absurd from one angle, and at the same time portends an escalating cyberwar which will not be nearly as fun to watch as The Interview.
It continues to baffle me that so many people are assigning substantial blame to Sony.
Yes, their executives were uncouth in their private e-mails. However, these e-mails were literally stolen from them and made available publicly in a campaign designed to embarrass them after they refused to cave to initial blackmail demands. There is no Pentagon Papers conspiracy here that the press needed to expose for the public good -- they're just airing dirty laundry and furthering the ends of criminals.
Yes, Sony had lax computer security and they made it a lot easier than it should have been to abscond with internal data. However, it is so much harder to protect against a targeted attack and (I don't believe) the method of the attack has been disclosed, if it is even completely understood yet. They should be ashamed and apologetic about their security practices, but that doesn't mean they as much as published this information themselves.
Yes, The Interview doesn't look particularly great, and I didn't plan to see it. Yet it should absolutely be allowed to exist and to be publicly released. It is a comedy. It is not "an act of war" as Sony's attackers claim. The existence of this film did not harm real people, that is entirely a result of the extreme overreaction by the people behind these attacks.
I absolutely think that Sony is being blamed for their victimization, and I don't agree with it. It would be terrible to be in their position, and I don't think any company who operates within the laws of their country should be subject to any of:
1. A loss of over $40 million 2. A smear campaign using their own stolen, private correspondence 3. Release or misuse of all manner of employee personal information, SSNs, etc. 4. And all of the other things they're dealing with right now
If you place value in free speech, privacy rights and the arts I don't see how you can side against Sony here. I don't care if it's "terrorism" or not, the people involved in these attacks are certainly criminals.
Relevant: Sony cancels the movie's release - http://deadline.com/2014/12/sony-scraps-the-interview-1201328639/
According to Variety [1], the budget was $42 million, and they have "tens of millions" more into advertising and promotion. But I think they want this whole incident to go away, and they know that even without a theatrical release, they can make money on DVD/blu-ray and PPV.
[1] https://variety.com/2014/film/news/sony-weighing-premium-vod-release-for-the-interview-exclusive-1201381920/
The early reviews are that the movie isn't awesome [1]. Even a Sony exec said it's just not that good of a movie. They probably will do a PPV release though.
[1] http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_interview_2014/
> But what happens when fundamentalist, a la ISIS, decide to do physical harm for any film or song that humours their twisted ideology - will the film studios stop releases then?
I agree with you, they shouldn't be caving to threats. But they can't possibly believe that this is a credible threat. We don't have a whole lot of North Koreans emigrating here. TMZ has a slightly more likely theory [1]. Rather than genuine fear of attacks from North Korea, they contend that Sony simply wanted to bury the movie without looking weak.
"We're told the execs are actually viewing the latest threat as having a silver lining ... the threat of a 9/11-type attack will make so many theaters pull the flick themselves -- and Sony won't have to do it....Sony execs want the bleeding to stop"
[1] http://www.tmz.com/2014/12/17/theaters-cancelling-the-interview-sony-hack/
>In light of the decision by the majority of our exhibitors not to show the film The Interview, we have decided not to move forward with the planned December 25 theatrical release. We respect and understand our partners’ decision and, of course, completely share their paramount interest in the safety of employees and theater-goers.
Source: http://deadline.com/2014/12/sony-scraps-the-interview-1201328639/
Reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/2pmasy/its_official_sony_scraps_the_interview/
It's #1 on /r/all, comments are not that insightful.
It's liability, which you might call the corporate version of fear.
Even though the chance that North Koreans would stage a terrorist attack in an American movie theater is slim to none, if something did happen, there would be no end to the lawsuits. As the article mentions, even in the case of the Aurora shooting there was plenty of blame being thrown around in the courtroom. The shooter dressed like the Joker, is the Batman movie to blame? Is the theater to blame? Even in a case like that, where there's clearly one violently insane person to blame, lawsuits happened.
In this case, where there was a clear threat issued, if something happened the theaters would be instantly culpable. It wouldn't even have to be North Koreans, maybe just some sick DPRK sympathizer going nuts and shooting someone.
And like they say, on top of that there might be reduced attendance for other movies as well. If someone's going berzerk in the theater that's playing The Interview, do you really want to be next door watching the Hobbit? Do you even want to go to the mall?
I don't think anyone is seriously worried about an attack. They're worried about the potential legal fallout / lowered profits that could occur in a variety of ways. Controversy isn't great for business, especially during the holidays.
That being said, I think it's spineless. The US Government doesn't respond to threats and blackmail, but corporate America is more than happy to sacrifice anything in order to preserve the bottom line.
I had no intention of going to see The Interview at a theater, but if I can find an independent place playing it on opening night (assuming they'll even try to have it open that night), I'll be tempted to go and support them for standing up to idiocy.
Sony just announced they are cancelling the entire Christmas day premier of the movie.
http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/17/media/the-interview-sony-theater-owners/index.html
Part of me secretly wishes that Sony would just put out a press release saying "You know what? Fuck it. The Interview will be on Netflix on Christmas Day for 24 hours. No extra charge. So stop downloading our Excel sheets and enjoy a movie. Merry Christmas."
People seem to have been talking about that Seth Rogen movie coming out (The Interview), produced by Sony, which is pretty mocking about North Korea, at least if you just watch the trailer.
This seems pretty flimsy, but it kind of fits with the cartoon dictator-esque image we have of North Korea's leadership.
I'm surprised that Sony didn't increase their defenses when North Korea first warned them months ago as they were promoting the new movie "The Interview". Given that North Korea can be a credible threat, it would have made a lot of sense to beef up security or at minimum increase monitoring.