Banned from Theaters
Today I watched The Interview (2014).
This movie found a way to connect perfectly between The Inferno and the Lord of the Rings movies on this Christmas-time movie-fest. Into The Inferno may have connected with LOTR by giving an up close look at real life Mount Doom, but The Interview connects The Inferno's in depth look at North Korea with a LOTR subplot.
For the whole movie, James Franco's character compares their journey to several different story lines in Lord of the Rings and another side character calls back at him the lines regarding "one ring to rule them all." The James Franco Character really wants to liken himself to Frodo and Seth Rogen's character to Sam, but in the end, it is the Rogan character who loses a finger... several fingers... like Frodo in the process of sacrificing himself for the mission.
It's a very funny movie that was critiqued at the wrong angle in light of the Sony hack, that might have been at the hands of the North Korean government that resulted in it being pulled from theaters supposedly for public safety reasons. I think it was reviewed by people who didn't have a sense of humor who watched it through a geo-political tint and the typical fans of Seth Rogen movies may have neglected it because of that same tint.
It's a funny movie, and it is sneaky in the ways that it gives a realistic inside the Hermit Kingdom of North Korea. One odd parallel with Into The Inferno is where in this movie three small boys play guitars at a proficiency of skilled adults to perform for the visiting journalists and in Into The Inferno a small girl plays the piano with masterful proficiency for the film crew... and Into The Inferno was released almost two years later.
