While American films have seen success around the world for decades, there is something about Hollywood that some countries don’t like. To be more specific, there’s something about Hollywood that China doesn’t like. The Chinese Communist Party has a shameful record when it comes to outlawing perfectly innocuous and even extremely charming classics. Just look at the time China banned “Back to the Future” for the strange reason that time travel movies in general “disrespect history.” It took until 2006’s “Casino Royale” for James Bond to be banned in China, which is strange considering the character became famous shortly after 1962’s “Dr. No” became one of cinema’s most enduring franchises. Had achieved pop culture status.
Banning any kind of art is a very difficult thing to do if you ask me, but China is not the only culprit on this front. If you want to talk about treating the masses as if they were merely state property, the CCP is further surpassed in the past only by the “society” overseen by Kim Jong Un in North Korea. The latest incarnation of “Great Leader” Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Un, inherits a state with a long and proud tradition of banning creative products for vague reasons that emerged from these totalitarian regimes – “insulting the national spirit”. sort of thing.
Take Time Seth Rogen almost managed to start a war with North Korea over his 2014 comedy “The Interview.” At that time, per BBCKim and his comrades labeled the film’s release “the most blatant act of terrorism and war” and condemned the “reckless American provocative madness” of enabling a “gangster filmmaker” to apparently incite “hate and anger.” The gust came. Homeland. In that case, you can imagine how a movie poking fun at Kim Jong Un would have got the dictator in a tizzy. But this was not the first time that North Korea had banned a film for hurting the country’s sensibilities. In fact, they completely banned a movie that depicted in detail the destruction of large parts of America, proving that these despots truly have no happiness.
North Korea banned a disaster film that showed the destruction of LA
“2012” was a huge success when it was first released in 2009. $757 million By providing moviegoers with spectacular apocalyptic action. Roland Emmerich’s film finds John Cusack trying to get his family out of collapsing Los Angeles as the world grapples with all kinds of natural disasters as the end times approach. That particular sequence remains one of the most memorable scenes of the film, with the City of Angels falling into the abyss that Cusack and company created. Fly through the carnage in a Cessna.
You might think that a film that depicts the complete destruction of Los Angeles – certainly the perfect symbol of American tyranny – would play well with North Koreans. After all, even those of us who live in L.A. have expected to sink into the ground at least once in our lives after trying to merge from 5 to 134 during rush hour. If you live in a country whose guiding principles are hatred of Western ideals, well, you’d probably jump at the chance to watch L.A. get destroyed in all its cinematic glory.
Unfortunately, the citizens of one of the world’s most repressive countries were robbed of the opportunity to rejoice over the fall of the United States when Kim Jong Un’s predecessor, Kim Jong-il, banned “2012”—which alludes to disaster. was a disaster movie ending. Movies – by country. What troubled the so-called “Dear Leader”? Well, it turns out that 2012 was quite an important year for the North Koreans. Let me explain.
2012 is a sensitive topic for the Kim dynasty
North Korea was what Christopher Hitchens called a “necrocracy”. That is, a country where the head of the state is a dead person. Kim Il Sung remains the country’s leader, although he died in 1994, showing the grip his dangerous dynasty has on the country. So, you can imagine how eager his sons were to celebrate their father’s birth centenary on April 15, 2012. WireKim Jong-il designated 2012 as the year when North Korea would “open the grand door to becoming a rising superpower.”
So, when Hollywood made a movie that saw the entire world destroyed in the same year, Kim Jong-il was not at all happy about it. In fact, he even went as far as banning the film from being released in theatres. As Time According to the report, any North Korean citizen found with an illegal copy of “2012” was reportedly charged with “serious incitement against the development of the state” and could face up to five years in prison.
If it makes North Koreans feel better, “2012” only achieved a 40% rating rotten tomatoesSo Kim Jong-il could at least claim that he did Roland Emmerich a favor by preventing more critics from seeing the film – if his country were allowed a free press.
