3. 2012 Almost Upstaged Kim Il Sung's 100th Birthday
The Interview isn't the first film to be banned thanks to the suppressive communist regime of North Korea. Kim Jong-Il, the previous leader who you might know from his appearance in Team America: World Police, was actually a pretty big film buff, even going so far as to right a book about filmmaking. He also once kidnapped a South Korean director in order to make a Godzilla rip-off about how great he was, but that's besides the point. He's a big fan of movies but North Korea has some of the strictest censorship laws in the world. One film was banned for reasons you might not guess, however. Roland Emmerich's disaster movie 2012 was banned because that was the year of previous leader Kim Il Sung's 100th birthday, and any depiction of that year in a negative light was seen as offensive. Apparently people got arrested for smuggling in pirated copies which, really? 2012? That's the hill you wanna die on?
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
