Mariano Pérez
Contributing Writer
With all of the ticket sales during the holiday season, Christmas has become a popular time to release movies around the country.
In fact, “American Sniper,” “Selma” and “Into the Woods” all came out on Christmas Day, but are still in theaters due to strong sales.
Even though American Sniper and Selma are in the current spotlight for their Oscar nominations, the most controversial of the Christmas Day releases was “The Interview,” a film directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg starring James Franco and Rogen himself.
The film became controversial amidst the hacking of Sony Entertainment, the film’s production company.
The hacking caused many of Sony’s future films, such as “Fury” and “Annie” to be leaked onto the internet. The upcoming James Bond script was also leaked online, including several emails containing private information from Sony employees.
Eventually, the hackers that called themselves “The Guardians of Peace” made threats to any theaters that showed “The Interview.”
This caused a scare among theater chains that then decided to drop the film, causing Sony Entertainment to announce they would delay the release of the film.
This caused backlash from even the White House, when President Barack Obama criticized Sony for not releasing the film.
The film itself (spoiler alert) is about an attempt to assassinate Kim Jong- un, causing the public to believe that the hackers were North Korean.
As a citizen and journalist of the United States of America, freedom of speech means a lot to me. I believe that all citizens of this country should practice this law and should not let any country dictate what this nation does.
There are obvious concerns — no person wants to risk innocent lives over a movie. I do believe Sony would have been under scrutiny if any movie theaters were attacked.
The whole thing is about far more than a movie that only has a 52 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes — it is about preserving what our founding fathers fought for.
It makes the nation look weak if we back down to any sign of threat. The United States fights for freedom all around the world. No hacker should have a say in what we do or don’t do.
Fortunately, no attacks were made. After all, Sony did allow select movie theaters to release the movie and it was also made available online for purchase or rent.
I, however, waited to see the movie on Netflix.
“The Interview” does make fun of a lot of the things that Americans believe about how the North Korean state is being ran.
It is quite obvious how the North Koreans could be angered by the film. After all, what would we think of North Korea if they released a movie about killing our president or attacking the United States — would we take it as a threat?
Without a doubt, I believe that we would, especially coming from North Korea.
Keeping that in mind, even as much as I support freedom of speech, we should not do to others what we would not want done to us. I believe that killing the leader of North Korea at the end of the movie was too much and inappropriate.
I do think, with the threats and leaks of movies and scripts, that Sony Entertainment will be careful and censor what they put out.
After all, they are a business and care about profit, which the hacking impacted. With this in mind, I think other production companies will follow in their footsteps.
