But the movie’s last scene (spoiler alert!), consciously or not, turns it into something with a darker kind of self-awareness. Franco’s character, celebrity talk show host Dave Skylark, is shown reading the last page of his best-selling book about their madcap assassination adventure in North Korea to a huge and rapt crowd.
He begins as follows: “It was the beginning of a revolution. A revolution Aaron [Rappaport, Skylark’s producer, played by Rogen] and I started.”
They continue by noting that this “revolution” was not one waged with ordinary weapons, but with the power of the media — and with what can only be defined as trollery. “This was a revolution,” he continues, “ignited with nothing more than a camera and some questions. Questions that led a man once revered as a god among mortals to cry and sh*t his pants. The end.”
It’s a concise summary of the new era in which we live, where the ability to manipulate media and technology has increasingly become a critical strategic resource, where combat is conducted not just on battlefields but on servers and screens and social networks, and where it’s increasingly impossible to tell the difference between pranks, crimes and acts of war.
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