The 2009 Sci-Fi Box Office Hit That Was Banned In North Korea

While American movies have seen decades of success worldwide, there is something about Hollywood that certain countries just don't seem to like. To be more specific, there's something about Hollywood that China doesn't like. The Chinese Communist Party has a frankly embarrassing record when it comes to outlawing perfectly innocuous, and even delightfully charming classics. Just look at the time China banned "Back to the Future" for the wild reason that time travel movies in general "disrespect history." It also took until 2006's "Casino Royale" for James Bond to be unbanned in China, which is pretty crazy considering the character had ascended to legendary pop culture status not long after 1962's "Dr. No" kicked off cinema's most enduring franchise.

Banning art of any kind is pretty dodgy business if you ask me, but China isn't the only offender on that front. If you want to talk about treating the populace as if they're mere property of the state, the CCP is outshone in the East only by the "society" overseen by Kim Jong Un in North Korea. The latest incarnation of the "Great Leader" Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Un inherited a state with a long and proud tradition of banning creative products for the kinds of nebulous reasons that emerge from these totalitarian regimes — "Offending the national spirit," that sort of thing.

Take the time Seth Rogen almost managed to start a war with North Korea over his 2014 comedy "The Interview." At the time, per the BBC, Kim and his cohorts dubbed the release of the film, "the most blatant act of terrorism and war" and condemned the "reckless U.S. provocative insanity" of enabling a "gangster filmmaker," evidently prompting a "gust of hatred and rage" in the homeland. In that case, you can conceivably see how a movie that poked fun at Kim Jong Un himself might have got the dictator's knickers in a twist. But it was not the first time North Korea had outlawed a movie for offending the country's sensibilities. In fact, they outright banned a movie that depicted the destruction of large swathes of the US in intimate detail, proving that there really is no pleasing these despot folks.

A big success when it first debuted back in 2009, "2012" made $757 million by supplying moviegoers with spectacular apocalyptic action. Roland Emmerich's film saw the world subjected to every natural disaster imaginable as the end-times arrive and John Cusack tries to get his family out of a crumbling Los Angeles to safety. That particular sequence remains one of the most memorable in the film, with the City of Angels falling into the abyss as Cusack and co. fly through the carnage in a Cessna.

You might think a film that depicts the complete destruction of Los Angeles — surely the perfect symbol of American excess — would play well with the North Koreans. After all, even those of us who live in L.A. have, at least once in our lives, hoped for the ground to cave in after trying to merge from the 5 to the 134 during rush hour. If you happen to live in a country that has hatred of Western ideals baked into its guiding principles, then, you'd presumably jump at the chance to see the decimation of L.A. rendered in all its cinematic glory.

Unfortunately, citizens of one of the most repressive countries in the world were robbed of the opportunity to delight in the fall of the United States when Kim Jong Un's predecessor, Kim Jong-il, banned "2012" — a disaster movie to end all disaster movies — from the country. What upset the so-called "dear leader?" Well, it turns out that 2012 was a pretty important year for the North Koreans. Let me explain.

North Korea is what Christopher Hitchens used to refer to as a "Necrocracy." That is, a country where the head of state is a dead man. Kim Il Sung remains the leader of the nation although he died in 1994, which should go some way to conveying the grip his pernicious dynasty has on the country. As such, you can imagine his sons were eager to celebrate the centenary of their father's birth on April 15, 2012. According to The Telegraph, Kim Jong-il had designated 2012 as the year North Korea would "open the grand gates to becoming a rising superpower."

So, when Hollywood churned out a film that saw the entire world destroyed during that very year, Kim Jong-il wasn't all that happy about it. In fact, he went further than just banning the movie from a theatrical release. As TIME reported, any North Korean citizen found with a bootlegged copy of "2012" was allegedly charged with "a grave provocation against the development of the state" and could be sentenced to up to five years in prison.

If it makes the North Koreans feel any better, "2012" only managed a 40% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so Kim Jong-il could have at least claimed to have done Roland Emmerich a favor by preventing more critics from seeing the movie — that is if his country was allowed an independent press.