The Interview

***The Interview*** is a 2014 political satire comedy film which similar to *Sausage Party,* was an idea conceived of by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. The film's synopsis was that an idiotic man-child talk show host (Dave Skylark) and his responsible, more morally mature producer (Aaron Rappoport) are invited to North Korea to present an interview with Kim Jong-un that is to be broadcast nationwide. The CIA instruct Skylark to kill Kim using a ricin strip as they hypothesize Kim's death will make the United States safer since Kim has been threatening to nuke America. The assassination doesn't go smoothly as planned, resulting in unnoticed mayhem.

## Plot Synopsis

The movie opens in Pyongyang with a brainwashed North Korean young girl singing a propaganda song crying for death to the United States just when Kim fires up yet another nuclear missile test. The United States becomes highly concerned and media press claims that now North Korea can definitely nuke the U.S. Then the film introduces Dave Skylark, a man-child talk show host who runs the program *Skylark Tonight* and his most recent interviewee is Eminem, who comes out as gay. Dave's broadcast producer Aaron Rappoport is forced to fend off Eminem's angry publicist who sabotages the interview between Dave and Eminem. Aaron himself grows distasteful of *Skylark Tonight* because Dave refuses to do any serious interviews, then Dave tells him that Kim Jong-un turns out to be a fan of Skylark Tonight and would like to interview Dave at North Korea since Kim Jong-un despite being hateful of the United States is an active consumer of American entertainment shows and movies.

Aaron meets up with North Korean general Sook yin-Park somewhere in the Chinese mountains and Sook claims that Kim wants the entire interview to be controlled and censored to protect any defamation of Kim. Aaron decides against it, while finding Sook attractive. CIA officer Agent Lacey arrives at Skylark's house asking that they kill Kim Jong-un using a transdermal strip containing ricin. Skylark and Rappoport doubt this can affect North Korea's substantial threat of nuclear weapons, as then Kim will only be replaced. Lacey defends the plan is a good idea since she believes North Korea's starving villagers will overthrow the dictatorship if Kim were to die.

As Aaron and Dave board upon a plane to North Korea, Dave switches his CIA designated bag with a Gucci bag thinking it will better hide the ricin strip. They arrive at Pyongyang and meet Sook again, who shows them a tour in a town where children are happily fat and playing and that North Korea has a grocery store that supplies food. Sook drives the two to Kim's palace. Inspecting officers Ko and Yu grow suspicious of Dave's Gucci bag and discover the ricin strip, and when Dave lies to Ko that it's just gum, Ko chews up the ricin. Lacey is forced to deliver another pack of ricin strips to Aaron through a UAV Drone from South Korea, and it turns out that South Korea supplied the ricin strips intended to kill Kim. Aaron is forced to crawl his way into a grass field to retrieve the metal package where he confronts a tiger whom he successfully kills by luring into getting stabbed by the drone's package. He is forcibly brought back by North Korean guards and stripped naked for a strip search.

At this point, Kim Jong-un comes in and meets up with Dave giving Dave a luxurious treatment of treating him like a close friend by playing basketball with him, admitting he loves Katy Perry music, and inviting him to party with his stripper girls. Aaron on the other hand gets no such treatment and only verbal abuse from the North Korean guards who are blatantly abrasive towards him. As Dave cheerfully praises Kim for letting him have so much fun, Aaron claims that Kim is not as kind and fun as he appears and that Kim is just a compulsive though bad liar. Ko and Yu later on die from the ricin poisoning intended for Kim, and this incident causes Dave to sabotage Aaron's attempts to poison Kim with the drone-delivered ricin.

Later on, as Dave attends another state dinner with Kim which is being attended by all his generals, Aaron then meets up with Sook and she starts having sex with him. Dave overhears Kim screaming in English that he will not tolerate any efforts by defectors or his enemies to kill him, and that he's willing to burn a billion people across the earth to ensure he never be assassinated. Aaron enjoys it and before he can go to the point of stripping Sook naked, he finds her miserably sad and no longer happy. Aaron asks her why, and Sook reveals that it's because Kim Jong-un is a ruthless dictator who is willing to starve his entire country to death all because he wants the money to use on nuclear weapons to attack America and South Korea. Dave meanwhile goes inside the grocery store for himself and sees that all the food inside is fake. Therefore, the famine is real and the North Koreans truly are starving.

The next morning, it's time for the interview and Aaron and Sook enter the broadcast room as while Dave and Kim begin the interview being televised worldwide. Dave at first tricks Kim into thinking the interview is going to in the latter's favor by criticizing the United States is guilty of mistreating North Koreans, but then questions why doesn't Kim feed his own hungry people. Kim lies that there's plenty of food in North Korea, but Dave calls him out for lying and soon Sook and Aaron are forced to fend off the broadcasters and a Korean People's Army garrison trying to cut off the interview. In the process, Aaron loses 2 of his fingers and Sook has no choice but to use her weapons to shoot off the soldiers and broadcasters. Dave then gets Kim to cry on live TV by singing Katy Perry's Firework to him, and Kim's reputation is soiled. The North Koreans no longer see him as a god and his lies exposed.

Angry about the interview attacking him constantly, Kim pulls out a gun and shoots Dave then leaves the room. Dave survives as it turns out he was wearing a bulletproof vest, and joins up with Sook and Aaron to escape Kim's palace and out to safety. Kim Jong-un then orders his nukes be fired upon the United States realizing that America is responsible for the interview. Dave commandeers a Soviet tank and uses it to run over patrolling North Korean guards that attempt to barricade his exit. Kim arrives in a helicopter shooting at the tank and manages to graze Aaron. Dave fires away a bullet out of the tank and it directly hits Kim's helicopter, incinerating Kim and his pilot to death causing the helicopter to crash. Without Kim to initiate the final missile, the nukes are cancelled.

Dave and Aaron run back to the Los Angeles through a secret tunnel where SEAL agents pick them up, but Sook remains behind to take over Kim's throne and becomes the new president of North Korea, denuclearizing and democratizing it

## Controversy

In real life, North Korea has threatened to attack the United States and kill many Americans on U.S. soil through military action should the film be released. Threats from North Korea arose as early as when the film's first trailers came out, since the trailers have explained the movie is going to be about Seth Rogen and James Franco's characters working to assassinate Kim Jong-un. Several movie theater chains such as AMC, Cineplex, Cinemark, Regal and Carmike outright refused to show the movie.

On December 2014, Sony Pictures Entertainment was hacked and their files were stolen by a hacker group that calls themselves "Guardians of Peace", and the FBI confirmed that the hackers were affiliated with North Korea. Sony decided to cancel the major theatrical release of the film, leading to widespread protests all across the United States. The majority of Americans disapproved and express outrage over the film release's cancellation.

Then U.S. President Barack Obama defended the film and expressed that it is unfair for a reckless dictator to control which movies may not be screened in America. Sony decided to make the movie digitally released on YouTube Movies at $14.99 or rent for only $5.99 at the same time they restored the theatrical release to limited theaters and arthouses.

## Critical Response

The film received mixed to positive reviews from critics.

* Rotten Tomatoes: 51% - Based on 138 reviews, 71 critics were positive, 67 were mixed or negative
* Metacritic: 52% - Based on 33 reviews, 11 were positive, 18 were mixed, 4 were negative
* Google users: 91%

## Similarities to Sausage Party

* Both films' scripts and characters were created by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.
* Seth Rogen and James Franco are part of the cast.
* Seth Rogen plays Aaron Rappoport, who much like Frank is the protagonist who is portrayed as the only sane man in a world gone upside down where everyone worships an evil god.
* Both films make fun of the obesity epidemic in the United States.
* They both are satires of the idea of deities. *The Interview* criticizes how Kim Jong-un presents himself to his people as being a caring god when really he's a maniacal man-child dictator who bullies other countries using nuclear weapons and uses propaganda to brainwash them. *Sausage Party* does nearly the same with Christianity in general, claiming that churches brainwash people into believing that there is a Supreme Being and an Afterlife. *Sausage Party* also satirizes Christianity for helping divide people more often than help unite them.
	+ As a result, Sausage Party earned similar backlash from Christian audiences in the United States just as The Interview did from North Korea.

## Trivia

* The film did poorly at the box office and was one of the worst performing major studio films of 2014.
* The movie's plot is identical to the real life controversy North Korea created in response to the film. The climactic fight involved Seth Rogen's character physically battling North Korean men from cutting the titular interview between Skylark and Kim off the air.
* Ironically in spite of North Korea condemning *The Interview* as a blatant act of war due to glorifying the death of Kim Jong-un and his soldiers, Kim Jong-un has always been making propaganda movies that glorify him waging war upon and destroying the United States and South Korea.
* To this day, Sony Pictures is still the target of criticism from moviegoers upset over the cancellation of the film's major theatrical release, and this incident has become a topic of Internet memes. One popular meme states that Kim Jong-un is the new chairman of Sony Pictures.