Sony Leaks thread

[ChitHappens]

I saw the preview when I went to the movies about a month ago. The Interview looked like garbage. But that is no surprise as James Franco is in it.

[Juliajms]

Good point. Hopefully, those emails will go in the dustbin where they belong.

[Wales2004]

I heard someone suggest that Sony stream the movie online for free.

I still find it ironic that the American subsidiary of a Japanese multinational gets to take the entire heat because Americans have been painted as all kinds of evil.

[alphanguy74]

I just heard that they won't be releasing it online or DVD, either. I think that is a mistake. I think the proper response would have been to pull it from theaters, and release it in other formats.

[Bright Eyes]

They're not releasing it on other formats because of insurance.

[alphanguy74]

Insurance for what?

[AllMyDaysatGH]

Please shed light on your shade, THX!

[Eric83]

LMAO

[Vee]

North Korea can't afford to keep the lights on for 24 hours a day in its capital city. Its people are starving. Their weapons barely work. They cannot afford to go to war with the West nor do they have the resources. What they do have small resources for, possibly with outside help, is this - small-scale corporate terrorism. IMO we would not be risking anything putting the film out, beyond more humiliation and business agita for Sony which is likely the studio's true motive.

If Seth Rogen isn't to someone's taste, I get that - don't go see the movie. I personally loved Neighbors, and I think this looked hilarious. While this film is hardly Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator, sometimes mockery is the only recourse we have against a state we can't touch for fear of destabilizing an entire region. I will be seeing this film the moment it becomes available by any means necessary. I've heard too many stories about places like Camp 14, or survivors like Shin Dong-hyuk or Park Yeon-mi to do otherwise. Comedy is the absolute least we can do.

[marceline]

At least Paramount has enough sense to not let knee-jerk jingoists drag them into Sony's mess.

https://deadline.com/2014/12/paramount-cancel-team-america-1201329597/

I'm kind of loving this. It's a nice object lesson in how corporations think and function. They care only about profit and liability and couldn't care less about all this "Murica !@#$%^&*] yeah!" posturing. Their patriotism stops at their computer servers and balance sheets.

[DRW50]

If this were done as any genuine type of protest, I would agree, but it's mostly just yet more generic frat boy sneering from two dudebros stuck in 1999.

[Vee]

Well, I like a lot of Rogen's movies so I will differ. Plus, they're making fools of themselves, really. Franco can be incredibly obnoxious but he's lampooning himself as well. And I don't think we can sneer at Kim Jong-un enough.

In any event, Sony has apparently responded to another ransom email from these hackers - complimenting them on their wise choice to pull the film - by ceding to a further demand to take down or lock down virtually all promotional material for the film, including trailers. This is obscene.

[DRW50]

But is it lampooning anything people will remember, or will it just be a lot of laughing at easy Asian stereotypes, like the way people responded to Team America?

[Vee]

I haven't seen the movie so I can't say if it's trafficking in Asian stereotypes. But what I think it's laughing at specifically is North Korea, with an absolutely ridiculous premise where two Hollywood idiots are asked to dispatch a maniacal despot. That the real-life maniacal despot happens to be non-white means absolutely nothing to me - we used to do sketch comedy on Idi Amin and he deserved every bit of it, too. You could set that in any part of the world and if it was someone as big and bad as the leader of North Korea I would find it absurd and funny.

Granted I have a high tolerance for absurdist comedy, but I think we should laugh at North Korea every chance we get. It's perhaps all we can do to that government in the face of what it does to its people. And I can guarantee you some of them would probably end up watching bootlegs of the movie on their black market anyway. They have a pretty good pipeline.

[DRW50]

I guess I just wonder if people are really going to be laughing at a dictator or a regime, or having a guffaw about someone they think looks funny or talks funny.

I guess we'll never know.