Everyone's a critic, and nowhere is this more evident than in the Amazon reviews section.

Even the most well-respected movies, books, and albums get ripped to shreds by semi-anonymous commenters. It can be truly wonderful to behold.

Earlier this week, my colleague Alex Morrell put together a comprehensive list of the most successful movies of 2015. He ranked them based on global box-office performance, critic reviews, and fan ratings. In short, these are the films that took over the world this year.

But not everyone was a fan of these films. We combed through the one-star reviews of the 13 most successful movies of 2015, and selected the best ones.

These 13 reviews are absurd, hilarious, and often completely valid — sometimes all at once. Find them below, along with a rundown of how the movie actually did with the rest of the world:

SEE ALSO: RANKED: The 50 most successful movies of 2015

No. 13: "Mad Max: Fury Road"

Amazon one-star reviewer says:

I would give it no stars but that's not an option. My girlfriend and I saw this in the theater (both big Mad Max fans) and it was about what we expected it to be--complete garbage. Horribly underdeveloped characters. Virtually no plot. One car crash after another. Completely ridiculous stunts. And worst of all, Max is reduced to nothing more than a supporting character. Tom Hardy has the goods to play a wonderful replacement for Mel Gibson, but it seemed he was dealt a s***** hand in this debacle.

I honestly don't get why everyone thinks this is such a great film and I certainly don't understand why everyone thinks it's better than the original 3 films. But movies these days seem to stick to cater to the masses with insane gore and total mayhem, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I like a little bit of a story to go with it.

All in all, don't waste your time. Maybe if you catch it on a movie channel or the like but I wouldn't even recommend that. Seriously it's that bad. 

How it did:

Global box office sales: $375.8M

Production budget: $150M

Box office profit: $225.8M

Critic rating:89

Fan rating:8.2

No. 12: "Ant-Man"

Amazon one-star reviewer says:

Ant-Man? Really? Marvel Comics is really scrapping the bottom of the barrel. Why not Bug-Man or Man-Man? Caterpillar-Man? Sicada-Man? Empty Toilet-Paper-Roll-Man? ENOUGH is ENOUGH Marvel. Don't even TRY to come up with anymore Superhero franchises because the well has run drier than dry.

How it did:

Global box office sales: $518.6M

Production budget: $130M

Box office profit: $388.6M

Critic rating:64

Fan rating:7.5

No. 11: "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2"

Amazon one-star reviewer says:

It sucks worst ending ever.

How it did:

Global box office sales: $595.5M

Production budget: $160M

Box office profit: $435.5M

Critic rating:65

Fan rating:7.0

The recording industry was the first media business to feel the transition from physical to digital formats in a big way. 

Goldman Sachs went through data from the RIAA, a U.S. music industry group, to chart the rise and fall of various music formats over the last 42 years. (The left axis shows revenue in millions of dollars — so the peak in the the earlly 2000s was around $14 billion a year.)

The industry benefited when people replaced their physical analog recordings (LPs and cassettes) with digital CDs. But the rise of MP3 players and ever-faster internet connections soon made owning CDs obsolete. Piracy took off, and sales of online digital formats — first downloads, now streaming — haven't made up the difference.

Print publications, books, movies, and television all face the same kind of disruption. The outcomes will depend on a lot of factors, including how well they defend their content from piracy, the speed with which they embrace what customers want, and the emergence of a single dominant company in any phase of the transition, as Apple dominated the early days of legal music downloads.

SEE ALSO: Americans are slowly abandoning broadband just like they did with landlines

Join the conversation about this story »

Nearly a year and a half after releasing "Shake It Off" — the first single from her album "1989" — Taylor Swift will drop the video for her new single "Out of the Woods" on New Year's Eve.

An album with this sort of longevity is borderline unprecedented in the current music climate. "1989" spent its first 52 weeks in the Billboard Top 10, joining an elite club of only four other albums that have ever done that.

Since its release in October 2014, five of the album's 13 songs have been put out as singles. Three of those singles hit No. 1, and the two others reached the top 10. If "Out of the Woods" performs as expected, Swift will have made an album where nearly half the songs ended up being hit singles.

Most albums come and go in the span of a few months, but "1989" is still generating hits in its second year of existence.

 Story by Tony Manfred and editing by Kristen Griffin

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SEE ALSO: There's a conspiracy theory that the Miss Universe debacle wasn't really Steve Harvey's fault

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To depict mountain men in the uncharted frontier of the 1800s US for his new movie "The Revenant," director Alejandro González Iñárritu ("Birdman") was obsessed with making every aspect of the film as authentic as possible.

For the actors, that involved going through a one-week mountain-man boot camp. The production hired a man named Clay Landry to head it. Landry works as a historical consultant at the Museum of the Mountain Man in Pinedale, Wyoming.

In late September 2014, Landry worked with the actors on everything from how to shoot a black-powder rifle to how to start a fire with only flint.

"Alejandro told me, 'I want these guys to look like they have been handling these guns all their lives,'" Landry told Business Insider.

To accomplish that, Landry didn't just have Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, and the other cast do target practice all day. He also made them go by foot on trips along the river and hills in Canada where part of the film was shot, and he gave them some history lessons.

"I would do a little bit of a lecture at the start of each day," Landry said. "Because the first thing we realized was most of these actors were from places other than the United States of America, so we had to give them some context of what the whole era was about and why these men were in the mountains."

Landry said that the actors took to the boot camp quickly. They would even compete in tomahawk-throwing contests when they broke for lunch.

But Landry's job wasn't done after the weeklong boot camp. During filming, he was on set answering any questions the cast and crew had. Landry recalls that because it rained often, he had to correctly show how the rifles would be covered in those conditions.

"We went over this in the boot camp, and I was happy to see the actors remembered when shooting, but in rainy conditions back then you always had to cover your rifle, especially the action part of the gun," Landry said. "Because any moisture gets into that black power, it won't ignite. So we had the right stuff there on-screen because a mountain man walking around in a rainstorm without his gun covered would just not happen."

But sadly, you won't see Landry's biggest highlight in "The Revenant." During the Indian attack scene that opens the film, Iñárritu wanted extras who were skinning beaver to talk like they would in the 1800s, though their dialogue and even some of their faces did not make the final cut.

"So I actually sat down with one of the second assistant directors and we wrote a script for the extras so they would be talking about correct stuff of that period while they were shooting," Landry said.

What were the lines they came up with?

"Stuff like 'What do you think the price of beaver in St. Louis is now?' or 'Did you see that girl back in town? She was really something' — that kind of stuff," Landry said with a laugh.

"The Revenant" opens in limited release on Christmas Day and everywhere January 8.

SEE ALSO: Leonardo DiCaprio's new movie is a brilliant, gory revenge tale that could win him his first Oscar

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NOW WATCH: This astronaut spacewalk looks like a scene straight out of the movies

Business Insider's IGNITION 2015 focused on the future of media, and who better to talk about that than the heads of Roku and Hulu. The two sat down with Dave Morgan, the founder and CEO of Simulmedia. This has been edited for length and clarity.  

Dave Morgan: We have Anthony Wood, CEO of Roku. Mike Hopkins, CEO of Hulu. We were just watching some of these slides about TV disrupted, growth of broadband, decline of video. Anthony, what do you think? How do you react to that? What's TV to you?

Anthony Wood, Roku: Well I think obviously there's a lot going on. The exciting thing for me is there's more innovation happening in TV now than there ever has before and it's great for customers, it's great for advertisers, it's great for content producers. I think maybe it's a little less great for the incumbent video distribution companies but I think they're going to do okay as well. So you know what's happening of course is that the whole world is switching to streaming. The Internet is coming to TV the same way it came to other industries like books, travel, and music, and causing things to change. We think all TV is going to be streamed. That means that all advertising is going to be streamed. All video content is going to be streamed. So those industries are going to change a lot.

DM: Mike, what’s your perspective? I guess you’re a big supporter of streaming clearly?

Mike Hopkins, Hulu: Little bit. What’s interesting for us is that we’ve seen, I think at some point next year about 70% of streams that happen at Hulu will be on some form of a living room device like Andrew’s Roku, various other connected TVs and those devices. And I think that’s really interesting because I think a lot of people when they think of streaming, they’re thinking mobile, they’re thinking desktop. And what we’re seeing and what I assume our colleagues at Amazon and Netflix are also seeing is there’s a flight back to the living room. And as Anthony said, I think that’s really important for advertising as well because now all of a sudden in a living room we have the ability to target, we have the ability to give people choice, we have the ability to have people select the ads they want to watch, and I think there’s a real transformation in the consumer experience that’s taking place as a result.

AW (Roku): One of the things that I think is exciting is that consumers now have the opportunity to select the platform they want to watch TV on. Traditionally, that’s always come from the cable or satellite operator, but now when there’s services available on the Internet you have platforms like Roku emerging that we’re competing head-to-head with other large companies like Google and Amazon and Apple. And that competition is resulting in a very rapid evolution of the platforms. They’re getting better and better so for customers it’s great. It’s something that, at first, I think CableCARD tried to make happen but never took hold and now that's happening.

DM: So Anthony, can you give us a little bit of a 5-year vision? I mean it seems to me one thing that is inevitable in the future of TV is the TV — the device. There may be questions about how many other boxes. Give a sense of vision and maybe give a sense of Roku’s strategy with the future TV ecosystem.  

AW (Roku): Right. So we believe that all TV is going to be streamed so that means that there’s going to be platforms that emerge on mobile phones and PCs. There’ll be operating systems driving your TV. And that’s our business is being the operating system that drives your TV.

And the way you get that operating system, I think, will probably be three different ways, we believe. One is built into the TV, and we also believe that TVs will continue — although TV viewing is fragmenting and customers and consumers are watching in lots of different locations, the big screen is still where the majority happens and we think will continue to happen.... And also, boxes that you buy at retail, like an Apple TV or a Roku player. And then boxes distributed by your broadband or cable operator or satellite operator. We think that’ll be a big channel as well. So that’s where customers will receive their platform. But there’ll be just a handful of operating systems when we’re all said and done. There’ll be Roku, Android, and Apple is my guess on where we’ll end up.

DM: Okay, so Mike, I guess in some ways you could make a lot of parallels to where you and Hulu are today to where HBO was probably after having been incubated at Cablevision and found the home and the platform at Time Inc. I don’t know if it’s appropriate like part of, media ownership at a lot of independence and obviously was, you know, where’s the next 5 to 10 years? How do you work in this emerging ecosystem and maybe beyond that ecosystem?

MH (Hulu): What we’re really aggressively doing now is investing in content and marketing. Those are our two biggest line items at the moment in terms of growth. We really set out to change the conversation about Hulu with consumers. We hadn’t really done a tremendous amount of marketing before we hired Jenny Wall, who runs marketing for us, last summer. I think over the last year and a half we’ve spent more in marketing than we had in the entirety of Hulu before then.

I think over the last year and a half we’ve spent more in marketing than we had in the entirety of Hulu before then.

And we’re really trying to change the conversation and grow dramatically. We’re going to be integrating into cable and satellite set-top boxes over the next year which will give us another channel for distribution. As Anthony said, there’s those three ways you can get TV on your TV. One of those three ways we’re not with today, and we want to change that.

DM: So what does integrating into a set-top box mean? You know, when I turn on my Time-Warner cable, which actually right now sort of pops up with my Samsung smart TV, what’s on the set-top box, or what’s on that interface?

MH (Hulu): Well, I think they’re all different today clearly. Some set-top boxes are old and they’re not compatible with what we’re trying to do, honestly. If you look at the newer set-top boxes that...are rolling out in there, there are a variety of ways that you can access an over-the-top channel. You can do it through the guide itself. There’s a section where those types of apps are and so we’re working with everybody to figure out what's the optimal place is because I do think it’s multiple places that you need to be on these devices to get access into Hulu. Essentially, we’d be selling an a la carte service through them just as we sell it over the top today.

AW (Roku): I think one of the big things to understand is that because of the level of innovation that’s happening, both in the cable plant shifting to IP [Internet protocol] and then the user devices like Roku and the customer experience is getting so much better, and the price structure. Another thing that people probably don’t realize is a device like a Roku is designed for a very low cost....let's call it $25, whereas a typical cable box is over $100. So all those factors are going to result in the steady decline of the proprietary cable box other than a few companies like Comcast who have the resources to invest in their X1 platform. Beyond that, I think almost all cable and satellite operators over time will get out of the business of making boxes, and they’ll move to a standard IPOS.

DM: I didn’t realize until I did a little research for this, but the annual revenue generated by set-top boxes in the U.S. is about $20 billion a year, which I just found extraordinary. So I don’t know exactly what that represents in the subscriber bill, but that probably pays for the service. Mike, how do you see your differentiation relative to other providers of video entertainment and how you establish it both in having the chance to have a direct brand but also, in some cases, working along with a device company or working along with an existing distributor?

MH (Hulu): Sure, that’s a good question. Historically our differentiator has been we’ve had last night’s TV from Fox, NBC, ABC, and CW. That had been the legacy and the real differentiator between us and the other companies. We’ve increasingly, though, invested in prior seasons....theatrical, and now originals. And so I think over time our differentiation will come in the form of the kinds of shows we make and buy and the kinds of talent we put behind those shows. If you think what really differentiates an FX from an AMC or a Showtime from an HBO, it really boils down to the content choices you make. And so we’ll see over the course of time how those play out for us, but essentially it’ll be the content that we make and the brand feeling we put in as we market and we just rolled out a new brand campaign in the last couple of months and we’re seeing the results of that now.

AW (Roku): One of our goals as we build on our platform is to provide tools for companies like Hulu to really do a much better job of merchandising their content, promoting their content. A better job targeting, putting the right content in front of the right customer, and then ad technology is moving the world of Internet ad tech to the TV.  

DM: Talk a little bit more about that, Anthony. How do you, from a practical standpoint, what do you think you can do? And then, Mike, I’d love for you to follow it since advertising is also part of your business.

AW (Roku): So the way Roku makes money is we license our operating system, we sell our devices, we run a very large ad network actually, and there’s an economic deal to come onto a platform like Roku and if it’s ad-supported channel we get part of that ad inventory just like an MSO does. But also we buy a lot of ad inventory at wholesale rates. We take all the data we have. We have a lot of data about our customers, both because we know what they watch, but also because we have their billing address and we tie that to external data sources and we use that to build targeted ad campaigns like you get on the Internet, with much higher CPMs [ad rates measured in cost-per-thousand views]. So moving the world from, “I’m going to buy a TV show that’s Nielsen rated” to, “I’m going to buy auto intenders that make over $100,000 a year that live in California." It’s going to be a dramatic change the way advertising is delivered.

Moving the world from, 'I’m going to buy a TV show that’s Nielsen rated' to, 'I’m going to buy auto intenders that make over $100,000 a year that live in California.' It’s going to be a dramatic change the way advertising is delivered.

DM: And in the comparison you were making you started with comparing to a Nielsen rating but you’re ending with a person targeted or an audience-based campaign.

AW (Roku): We just did a deal with Nielsen integrating them into our ad platform, the Roku ad framework, and that’s primarily for our partners. So we have partners like Fox that sell ads that are delivered on unconventional distribution platforms, but they’re also delivered on Roku with their TV-everywhere apps, and they want to be able to get paid for those ads using the same measurement tools they have on their traditional platforms so that’s why we do Nielsen. And there will always be a market for those types of ads. But increasingly there will be...we do interactive ads, our ads are all measured, and they’re all targeted so that they can be a much more ROI-based campaign if that’s what the advertiser wants.

DM: So Mike, how do you see these kinds of capabilities complementing what you do from a practical standpoint?

MH (Hulu): We think it’s great. We mentioned about differentiation a minute ago and I think from a business standpoint, that we have a dual revenue stream is a differentiator and really gives us a lot of economic firepower because we compete in the marketplace. What we’re able to start to do now on those living room devices is exactly what we’ve been able to do online through the PC and increasingly mobile for the last few years, and as I said before, with 70% of our streams happening in the living room next year, we’ve got a little bit of work to do on the measurement side to be able to fully monetize that inventory. But it hasn’t stopped us because we still kind of have the same information. We’ve got credit card information, we’ve got addresses, we’ve got email addresses, we’ve got the viewership patterns that people have, and so we’ve got all of our primary, first-party data that we can mix in with the BlueKai and third-party DMP [data management platform] information and really target that to the living room that nobody else other than us and a couple of other people can do today. What I think the ad markets looking for is third-party verification of that so we too are working with Nielsen and Comscore and them to really try to bring that to the next level.

AW (Roku): But I would say the thing that’s exciting to me about ads as a consumer of television, and I love television is that their ad loads are smaller. They’re more targeted so they’re more relevant, higher CPMs. I mean I think all the ad changes are all good for the consumers and the industry.

DM: So Mike, Hulu has a really interesting provenance and ownership structure. Tell us a little bit about it and tell us where you think that has benefits and challenges as you build your business. 

MH (Hulu): Well, as you may know, we’re owned by Fox, NBC, and ABC equally. Comcast when they purchased NBC lost their say in the business for a period of time until '19, so today I think of this as controlled essentially by Fox and Disney and having those three companies behind us gives us a lot of resources to be able to compete. When you look at the behemoths we compete with everyday, they’re pretty big. And so having their resources, having their smarts and brains behind us as well has been very beneficial.

DM: So Anthony, actually your business has an interesting provenance too. And I don’t know if everybody knows as much. Can you tell us a little about how Roku came to be and its independence and where you see whats a pretty interesting ecosystem of media companies, new streamers, distributors, hardware companies, operating system companies. When you say sort of you, Apple, and Google...they’re pretty big.

AW (Roku): Yeah, they are pretty big. Roku started building streaming players in 2008. We shipped the first Netflix player. The original Roku product was called the Netflix player and all it did was Netflix.

The original Roku product was called the Netflix player and all it did was Netflix.

But the whole goal from the beginning, I really believed that operating systems would emerge and a few platforms would end up dominating. And that was really our mission — to be that next generation operating system for TV. And that’s things like an app platform so you know, we have over 3,000 apps on Roku, ad technology integration. A big amount of our effort these days goes into UI work and evolving UI. I mean if you’re a customer you’ve got 3,000 channels on a Roku player so how do you find content you’re interested in in that environment? Recommendations, search, discovery are all big parts of our platform.

But the competition question, you know, we do sell devices and in retail, we do compete with Google, Amazon, and Apple. You know, according to NPD, we were number one last quarter in retail sales, in dollars, and units. But it’s a super competitive environment. But more important to us than devices is actually TVs. Building into TVs and smart TVs are going through a transformational from sort of homegrown solutions to licensed solutions and that’s a huge effort for us. TCL, which is one of our licensed partners, announced that they’ll sell 1 million Roku TVs this year. 

DM: So I’d like to hit a little more on that and then I’d like to hear your point, Mike, as someone with content through these interfaces. There’s been a lot of fanfare over the last four or five years around efforts by the large television manufacturers to build robust operating systems and their smart TVs and, I think, most people would say it sounds exciting but usage has been pretty underwhelming. Where do you think they’ve missed that you’ve been able to be successful? And then Mike, I’d love for you to jump in and then back and forth here, on what are the things that you think are critical as a content brand in connecting to consumers through interfaces...from Anthony and/or a Samsung, Sony, LG?

AW (Roku): I mean there’s a handful of reasons TV companies are not successful at building their own operating systems. One is scale. If you’re a content company like Hulu, you don’t want to go and do deals with 15 different manufacturers so a million units here, a million units there. You want to do a deal with one company and get every TV. So most TV companies don’t have the scale to do the content deals that they need. They don’t have the expertise to do content deals. They don’t have the expertise for software. Roku at our core is a software company. And they’re not known for doing great user interfaces. And also finally, cost. There’s a few aspects to the software that we have. One is ease of use, which is extremely key, but the other is cost. We put a lot of effort into software that runs on very low cost hardware and that results in a lot of benefits. But one of the big ones is it’s a lot cheaper to build a Roku TV than any other TV. So those are the things we focus on and that’s why we’re winning.

DM: So what does interface mean to Hulu and how do you see what Anthony and Roku do relative to everything from Comcast X1 to the Samsung and LG...?

MH (Hulu): Our whole objective is to get them into our interface, right? So to get somebody to launch our application and start interacting with us. So until you get to that point, it’s really important for us to have great partnerships. We have a great partnership with Roku. We deal with the other guys as well and trying to figure out ways to get our content surfaced through global navigation or global search. We’re really embracing that and trying to make sure we’re working in coordination with them. We spent a lot of time and effort marketing through their channels, trying to make sure if you have a Roku, we want to make sure that you can get Hulu through Roku.

But Anthony touched on this a little bit too, one of the biggest costs that we have to face from a technical and people standpoint is having to rebuild applications all over the place. So if we want to be updating what we do, it’s tough to be able to say, “I want to be able to make this change across the entire network,” and then you’ve got a different app on Roku, and a different app on the Apple TV, and then you’ve got a different app on the Samsung player. You have to employ a lot of people to do that and so these sort of global solutions that Anthony and his team are working on, we find really beneficial because we can hit a button and make a change, as opposed to having to rework everything.

AW (Roku): TV companies also don’t really have the expertise to do software updates. So let’s call it five or six major software updates a year to our entire installed base, plus apps you know, several a day. A TV executive in Asia, hearing that we’re gong to ship a TV and then we’re going to do five software updates a year for the life of that customer, is not something they want to do or can do.

DM: Mike, you’re comepting for consumer attention and wallets with really big companies, many of which are also your owners and some of whic are, competitors or cooperators, depending on how you wold look at them. How do you gain competitive advantage when you’re going, “Let’s think about the content side — the content acquisition side.” That’s becoming a highly contested place. We’ve heard companies like Yahoo very directly talk a big game and say you know they want to buy hits cheap like I guess everyone does, without much success.

MH (Hulu): I’ll just take it. I don’t care how much they cost.

DM: How do you see it? I mean you’ve got companies with warchests of they’re spending $3 to 5 billion a year. You know, HBO spends $1 million a year. How do you also think original versus product that’s already been created and made hits and you get extended rights on?

MH (Hulu): Sure, look I think one of the advantages a company like ours has is the data that we have. So we spend an awful lot of time looking at what our customers are using, how they’re interacting with content, what are the shows that we think other people like them may like? So the data does really inform what kinds of shows we go after in the marketplace. Now imagine our competitors are also doing the same thing. I just hope their data is a little different than ours so they’re not going after the same stuff all the time. But oftentimes we’re butting up against a lot of people, and we’re trying to buy an exisitng show or somebody’s in with a great pitch and a great piece of content.

DM: So when you’re thinking about this data. Are you positioning yourselves differently than some of your competition? To the extent that you might see some tiering between where HBO expects to come in or Showtime or where Starz fits in?

MH (Hulu):We do. I think when it’s an acquisition — when it’s a show that’s airing on another network — we’ve taken a very network-friendly approach. We really promote the network that has the primary airing of that show. We promote back to that for the end-season availability. I think the fact that we have advertising for the vast majority of our customers is a friendlier place for the ecosystem at large. I don’t think it’s fantastic for the industry that we train lots and lots customers to watch advertising-free-content, premium ad-free content across a lot of different platforms. I think it’s probably not a healthy place for the overall business. So we’ve launched this new commercial-free plan, but it’s sort of saying to customers, “Look if you want it without ads, you have to pay more,” as opposed to an all you can eat buffet at a lower price. So I think all of those kinds of things position us as a better place, I think, for people to sell content. And the fact that we’re today in the U.S. allows the studios, if they’re licensing it, to then go out and make money in other territories.

AW (Roku): I was just going to say customers don’t want just one app so you know, they typically want Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon so it’s not like it’s a ‘Hulu or Netflix’ type of situation.

DM: So this is an ecosystem that has had a lot of bundling and packaging and may have more, whether the distributors, the content owners.... Certainly most people probably are subscribing to Amazon Prime not necessarily because they want the content and the video but because they want the free shipping and it’s a premium nice add-on. It’s the toaster at the bank account. This is both a threat and an opportunity. Can you tell us a little bit about how you see bundling and packaging or premium strategies for both of your businesses?

AW (Roku): Mike’s the expert on this, but it’s a big change for the customers and the content community obviously. Hulu's a bundle, right? Hulu has multiple networks. It has movies. I mean it has a lot of content in one bundle so customers like bundles, they just, from my point of view, they want more options and smaller bundles.

MH (Hulu): I think that’s right. Or a collection of content, or a big bundle of shows and movies. We now offer Showtime as an add-on so customers can add Showtime to their Hulu subscription. And so we’ll look to do probably more of that over time so we’re not only a bundle when you buy the Hulu product, but you then can add other brands to it as well. That’s how people are traditionally conuming and purchasing content. I think a la carte shows or networks is probably not the optimal way consumers want to acquire content. Certainly once the costs are added up in that environment I think bundling things together gives customers a lot more choice and lower prices.

DM: So non-U.S. strategy, just to jump over there a little bit. How do your businesses operate if they do operate outside of the United States and, you know, where do you think that is going for your businesses?

AW (Roku):Our belief is that TV operating systems is a global business. We start in the U.S. and that’s where we’ve got our dominant position, but we’re rapidly growing internationally. The TV companies that we have deals with, we have deals with five different TV brands at this point and growing. They’re all global companies. They want global solutions. Our licensing business to operators actually is doing a much better outside the U.S. than inside the U.S. So deals with Sky in the UK, Italy, and Germany, and then Telstra in Australia. It’s important that we expand internationally but it’s going to take a few years.

MH (Hulu): Today, we’re just in the U.S. We had a business in Japan that we sold a couple of years ago. We’re going to look. We don’t have anything announced or anything that we’re operationalizing at the moment, but I do think that over time, there’s opportunities there. I think there are a lot of markets that are just in there native stage for subscription-on-demand and we obviously also have a free business so I think we can plan a variety of ways internationally, and we’re just in the early stages of evaluating that.

AW (Roku): One of the advantages that Internet-based service or technology brings is the ability to have global scale and, you know, reap the benefits of that scale. And I think Netflix actually has that advantage that they now have a global business and they can bring that scale to content acquisition.

DM: So the topic is “Disrupting Television”. We saw some lines that go down like this that have to do with revenue and profits, and incremental profits which may be all of the profits. For a lot of big TV companies, obviously these are companies that are partners of yours, so you’re very careful in what you say about them. How can we think about the core companies in TV today — the networks, content producers, and distributors? Let’s assume that no one thinks they’re all going away, but let’s assume that how they operate is probably going to make a big difference to whether they are successful or not. What are the kinds of things you think are going to be essential for the companies in the existing TV ecosystem to be successful in the next five years and after, and what will be the things that will be absolute death knells for them?

MH (Hulu): First of all I think...

AW (Roku): Go with death knells first.

MH (Hulu): Death knells first? Well I think people love TV.

AW (Roku): No one loves TV, right?

MH (Hulu): People are watching a lot more TV today than they ever have. They just may be watching on different platforms and different devices and through different channels. But if you’re looking at TV shows, I mean there’s as many people  watching those shows today as there were five or eight years ago. I don’t think people are watching less television so that’s good news.

AW (Roku): They’re watching better television too.

MH (Hulu): And the quality is there. There’s just so much good going on there. It's the business model that’s the disruptive element here. The companies that are going to succeed are the ones that don’t put their head in the sand and deal with it.

The companies that are going to succeed are the ones that don’t put their head in the sand and deal with it.

Those that just put their head in the sand and are afraid to disrupt themselves or to do things that may be contrary to the current business models, I think those are the ones that you’re going to read about ten years from now that are in trouble. But I do think that it’s a transition. Consumers are transitioning. How do you, as a media company, transition into this new distribution, the new packaging, the new bundling? I don’t have the answer, but I think that those are the kind of questions that you're going to have to answer.

AW (Roku): Things are changing. There’s going to be winners and losers. Obvius winners — Hulu is a winner, Netflix is a winner, Roku is a winner, you know the platform is changing. People moving away from EPGs [electronic program guides, usually provided by TV providers] to platforms like Roku. Consumers are huge winners. They have more choice. There’s still bundles, but they get to be more fine-tuned than the bundles they select. Advertisers are winners. Advertising platforms are going to get better and more effective. But I think there is money leaving the ecosystem; there’s no doubt. I think that’s mostly around distribution. There were a set of companies that really controlled distribution, in the U.S. anyway, that control is lessening. Now they also have huge new broadband businesses and so I don’t know the math. Maybe they’re making more money than they used to be making. I’m not sure.

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NOW WATCH: The model who quit Instagram says she felt pressure to flaunt her sexuality at age 14

Christmas is already a special time for many Americans, but there's an added bonus to this year's celebration:

For the first time in 38 years, the last full moon of the year will fall on Dec. 25.

The last time this happened was in 1977, and we won't see another celestial event like it until 2034.

So on early Christmas morning, be sure to steal a glance at the sky to catch the rare and beautiful full moon.

The moon will be full at exactly 6:11 a.m. ET, according to NASA— about an hour before sunrise in New York City.

That's when the moon and sun are on exactly opposite sides of Earth. This creates a 180-degree angle so that the entire Earth-facing half of the moon is completely illuminated by sunlight, which is what we see as a full moon.

The reason this is such a rare event dates back to what the Greek astronomer, Meton of Athens, first discovered in the 5th Century BC:

The time it takes the moon to complete 235 revolutions around the Earth amounts to 6,940 days, which is almost exactly how long it takes Earth to complete 19 revolutions around the sun — the two are just a few hours apart.

This means that the moon's phases will recur on the same calendar date every 19 years. The pattern follows what astronomers call the Metonic cycle, after its founder. Here's a 9th-Century manuscript depicting the Metonic cycle:

Because these two cycles are a few hours apart, we just missed a full moon on Christmas day in 1996. Instead it happened on Christmas Eve at 3:30 p.m. ET.

The next full Christmas moon will happen at 3:54 a.m. ET in 2034. Don't want to wait that long? Don't forget to look up this Christmas!

If you're not a morning person or your skies are too cloudy, then you can catch a nearly-full Christmas moon online thanks to online observatory Slooh.

Slooh will use the telescope at its flagship observatory in the Canary Islands to broadcast live feeds of this year's Christmas moon starting at 7 p.m. ET. Check it out on Slooh's website or below:

CHECK OUT: 15 healthy ways to manage stress during especially stressful times

SEE ALSO: Sending humans to Mars could uncover a disturbing truth to one of life's greatest mysteries

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NOW WATCH: Here's where scientists think they'll find alien life first

NBA star Chris Paul and comedian Kevin Hart were shopping partners to 500 kids in the Los Angeles area.

The two stars gave each child a $100 gift card to Target and took them shopping for the holidays. The only requirement Paul requested: "You have to get a gift for somebody else."

The children were from LA's Best, The Brotherhood Crusade, Los Angeles Boys & Girls Club, and Westwood Transitional Village.

Story and editing by Adam Banicki

INSIDER is on Facebook: Follow us here

SEE ALSO: Nobody had a bigger impact on music this year than Kendrick Lamar

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Comedian Stephen Colbert might be adjusting his view on Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump's chances of success.

He told CBS' "Face the Nation" in an interview airing this Sunday that he "may be wrong" about Trump's candidacy not being viable.

Colbert also named the one thing that he finds "appealing" about Trump's run for the Republican presidential nomination, saying it might be the "saving grace" of his campaign.

"There's a populism to Trump that I find very appealing," Colbert said. "And it's only this, is that the party elders would like him to go away. But the people have decided that he's not going to."

He continued: "I may disagree with anything that he's saying and think that his proposals are a little, well, more than a little shocking. But there is something really hopeful about the fact that, well, 36% of the likely voters want him, so the people in the machine don't get to say otherwise. That's the one saving grace, I think, of his candidacy."

Colbert also acknowledged that he has a certain respect for how in tune Trump is with what voters want.

"What I do respect is that he knows that it is an emotional appeal. And it might be emotional appeals that I can't respect, but he knows that you have to appeal to the voter. And that's why I may be wrong. I made a big deal about, 'There's no way he's going to win,'" Colbert said.

"Again, I don't know anything about politics," he added.

Colbert has previously said that he didn't think Trump had a real shot at the presidency.

In an October segment, Colbert addressed a photo of Trump, saying: "You're not going to be president. All right? It's been fun. It's been great. I love you. But come on, come on, buddy. ... There is zero chance we'll be seeing you being sworn in on the Capitol steps with your hand on a giant golden Bible."

Trump is now at the top of the polls among Republicans who are seeking their party's nomination, garnering 39% of the GOP vote in a CNN survey out Wednesday.

Watch the 'Face the Nation' teaser below:

SEE ALSO: Donald Trump is blowing away the rest of the GOP field

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NOW WATCH: Jeb Bush is psyched for the new ‘Star Wars’ — but isn’t a fan of the prequels

With a combined net worth of nearly $1 billion from albums, movies, fashion, record studios, and other business endeavors, Beyoncé and Jay Z are the most powerful couple in entertainment, and together they ranked 50th on Business Insider's recent list of the 50 most powerful people in the world.

Between performances that rake in millions of dollars each to political connections and special foreign travel privileges, read on to see how Mr. and Mrs. Carter became one of the most powerful couples in the world.

SEE ALSO: The 50 most powerful people in the world

Beyoncé Knowles was born in 1981 to Mathew, a successful Xerox salesman, and Tina, a hair stylist. She grew up in a comfortable four-bedroom house in Houston, Texas, which she calls "my foundation."

Source: The Independent, Business Insider

Jay Z grew up quite differently. Born Shawn Carter in 1969, he was raised by a single mother in the projects of Brooklyn. His mother Gloria told CBS she never suspected he would be a superstar.

Source: CBS News

Beyoncé started singing and performing at a young age. When she was seven, she won a talent competition by performing John Lennon's "Imagine."

Source: The Independent, Business Insider

Phil Tippett has had a rich and varied career in Hollywood.

He started in stop-motion animation with the original 1977 "Star Wars," creating the masks of the Cantina aliens. That started a relationship with George Lucas that then branched out into work in visual effects on "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," "RoboCop," and more recently the "Twilight" films.

But in a new video interview with Vice profiling his work, Tippett admits he was under the influence for at least one of the "Star Wars" movies.

"I took LSD when I was working on 'Return of the Jedi,'" he says in the opening of the video. "And it's fine. It was, like, very calming."

To anyone who grew up with the nightmarish sight of Jabba the Hutt and his palace, in retrospect, this may not seem like a huge surprise. But Tippett said it did end up hindering his work.

"And so I decided to go back to work. When I walked into the blue-screen stage, it was like, 'Ahhh.' I took way too much," he continued.

It certainly didn't stop him, though. The bearded Tippett, based in Berkeley, California, is one of the most admired visual effects supervisors in the business.

Watch the Vice profile of "Star Wars" animator Phil Tippett below:

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NOW WATCH: 2 Millennials watched the original ‘Star Wars’ for the first time

On December 16th, CCTV cameras at the Las Vegas restaurant Frijoles and Frescas captured footage of two men stealing from the taco joint. They used a rock to break the restaurant's window, then rummaged through the storage room before stealing the cash register.

The owners of the restaurant decided to use the footage to make a comical promotional video highlighting how irresistible their tacos are.

In an email, restaurant manager Greg Carlson told INSIDER that the main intention of the video is to help catch the thieves, but that they also hope viewers will come to the restaurant.

Story and editing by Andrew Fowler

INSIDER is on Facebook: Follow us here

SEE ALSO: A 27-year-old left her desk job to sell cookie dough that's safe to eat raw

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We're finally getting some real footage of "Deadpool," and it's as exciting as we'd hoped.

In a world of overly serious superhero blockbusters, the upcoming Ryan Reynolds movie featuring the Marvel comic-book mercenary looks like a relief. It's funny and smart, but also looks like it's packing brutal action.

The movie just released a preview for a new trailer that will be out Christmas Day, but here's a 51-second preview of it. We'll post the full trailer when it's up.

We see Deadpool facing down tough guys on the highway, and how he got that way, all with a heavy dose of Reynolds' wisecracks.

"Deadpool" is out February 12, 2016.

Watch the Christmas-themed trailer preview here:

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NOW WATCH: Jennifer Lawrence does something other actors won't, and it's why she keeps improving

Your 20s are a time for figuring out who you are and what you want from life.

While the only way to learn is to survive the inevitable cycle of successes and failures, it is always useful to have some guidance along the way.

To help you out, we've selected some of our favorite books that likely never made your high-school or college reading lists.

It's an eclectic selection that focuses on topics like understanding your identity, shaping your worldview, and laying the foundation for a fulfilling career.

Here's what we think you should read before you turn 30.

SEE ALSO: 30 business books every professional should read before turning 30

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'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius

As you become an adult, you realize that there will never be a time in your life where everything is just as you hoped it would be.

"Meditations" is a collection of personal writings on maintaining mental toughness from the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who ruled from 161 to 180 and became remembered as one of the great "philosopher kings."

As Gregory Hays notes in the introduction to his translation, Aurelius wrote his musings on resilience and leadership in a "dark and stressful period" in the last decade of his life.

The emperor's version of Stoic philosophy has remained relevant for 1,800 years because it offers timeless advice for gaining control of one's emotions and progressing past all obstacles in one's path.

Find it here >>

'The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays' by Albert Camus

We all have a reason to get out of bed in the morning, and we start to question that reason after entering the real world.

As "The Stranger" author Albert Camus sees it, all people find themselves in an irrational world struggling to find meaning for their lives where there is none.

His main message, however, is that just as the legend of Sisyphus tells of a god who was eternally punished by having to push a rock up a hill, only to have it fall down each time he reached the peak, we should embrace the drive for meaning and lead happy, fulfilling lives with a clear-eyed view of the world.

Find it here >>

'Crime and Punishment' by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Regardless of your personal philosophy, there will be times when the world pushes against you and you wonder why it's worth trying to better yourself and help others.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel is not only a gripping story, but it's an argument against the nihilism that was popular among Russian intellectual circles in his time.

"Crime and Punishment" is the tale of a 23-year-old man named Raskolnikov who, acting on a nagging urge, murders two old women and then struggles with processing the act.

Dostoyevsky argues that rationalism taken to its extreme ignores the powerful bonds that connect humanity and give us responsibility over each other.

Find it here >>

As winter arrives, it's time to find new midseason addictions and wait for favorites to return to TV.

Networks have started releasing their winter schedules, which include new series such as HBO's "Vinyl," The CW's "DC's Legends of Tomorrow" and Fox's "X-Files" reboot. 

The new year also brings the return of midseason shows like ABC's "Agent Carter" and the new season premieres of AMC's "Better Call Saul" and Comedy Central's "Broad City," among others. It also marks ABC Family's relaunch as Freeform.  

Other shows like PBS' "Downton Abbey" and Fox's "American Idol" are taking a lap with their final seasons.

And don't worry, some fall favorites like Fox's "Empire," ABC's "How to Get Away With Murder" and CBS' "Criminal Minds" already have their winter/spring return dates set for next year. 

Here are all of the premiere and return dates you want to know so far (we'll update as more come in), and note, all times are Eastern: 

SEE ALSO: The best shows to binge-watch over the holidays

Friday, January 1
9:00 p.m. PBS "Sherlock: The Abominable Bride" (4th season special) 

Sunday, January 3
8:00 p.m. ABC "Galavant" (2nd season premiere)
8:00 p.m. Fox "The Simpsons" (winter return)
8:30 p.m. Fox "Cooper Barrett's Guide to Surviving Life" (series premiere)
9:00 p.m. Fox "Family Guy" (winter return)
9:00 p.m. PBS "Downton Abbey" (6th season premiere) 
9:30 p.m. Fox "Bordertown" (series premiere) 

Monday, January 4
8:00 p.m. NBC "Superstore" (series premiere) 
8:00 p.m. ABC "The Bachelor" (20th season premiere) 
8:00 p.m. Fox "Superhuman" (series premiere)
8:30 p.m. NBC "Telenovela" (series premiere) 
9:00 p.m. NBC "The Biggest Loser" (17th season premiere)

Tuesday, January 5
8:00 p.m. Fox "New Girl" (5th season premiere) 
8:00 p.m. PBS "Finding Your Roots" (3rd season premiere) 
8:30 p.m. Fox "Grandfathered" (winter return)
9:00 p.m. Fox "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" (winter return)
9:00 p.m. ABC "Marvel's Agent Carter" (2nd season premiere) 
9:00 p.m. MTV "Teen Wolf" (winter return) 
9:30 p.m. Fox "The Grinder" (winter return)
10:00 p.m. MTV "The Shannara Chronicles" (series premiere)

Wednesday, January 6
8:00 p.m. Fox "American Idol" (15th season premiere, part 1) 
8:00 p.m. CBS "2 Broke Girls" (new time)
8:30 p.m. CBS "Mike & Molly" (6th season premiere)
10:00 p.m. ABC "American Crime" (2nd season premiere) 
10:00 p.m. FXX "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" (11th season premiere)
10:30 p.m. FXX "Man Seeking Woman" (2nd season premiere) 

Thursday, January 7
8:00 p.m. Fox "American Idol" (15th season premiere, part 2) 
8:00 p.m. ABC "My Diet is Better Than Yours" (series premiere)
8:00 p.m. CBS "The Big Bang Theory" (winter return) 
8:30 p.m. CBS "Life in Pieces" (winter return) 
9:00 p.m. CBS "Mom" (winter return)
9:30 p.m. CBS "Angel From Hell" (series premiere)
10:00 p.m. ABC "Beyond the Tank" (season premiere) 
10:00 p.m. NBC "Shades of Blue" (series premiere)  
10:00 p.m. CBS "Elementary" (winter return) 

Friday, January 8
8:00 p.m. Fox "Masterchef Junior" (5th season premiere) 
9:00 p.m. CBS "Hawaii 5-0" (winter return) 
10:00 p.m. CBS "Blue Bloods" (winter return)

Sunday, January 10
7:30 p.m. Fox "Bob's Burgers" (winter return)
9:00 p.m. Showtime "Shameless" (6th season premiere) 

Tuesday, January 12
8:00 p.m. Freeform "Pretty Little Liars" (winter return) 
9:00 p.m. Freeform "Shadowhunters" (series premiere) 

Wednesday, January 13
9:00 p.m. Fox "Second Chance" (series premiere) 
9:00 p.m. CBS "Criminal Minds" (winter return) 
10:00 p.m. CBS "Code Black" (winter return)
10:00 p.m. TV Land "Younger" (2nd season premiere) 
11:00 p.m. TV Land "Teachers" (series premiere) 

Thursday, January 14
10:00 p.m. Comedy Central "Workaholics" (6th season premiere)
10:00 p.m. USA "Colony" (series premiere) 
10:30 p.m. Comedy Central "Idiotsitter" (series premiere)

Friday, January 15
9:00 p.m. Fox "Hell's Kitchen" (15th season premiere)  

Anyone capable of croaking out a note these days now puts out Christmas records. We are oversaturated with them, and they come and go with barely a whimper.

You can think of some the reasons why — banalization, cannibalization — but it may simply be because every year for the past 19 years, a juggernaut has blown them all away: “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” by Mariah Carey.

This year is no exception — the song is again No. 1 on Billboard’s Christmas charts, and is the only other song besides ones sung by Michael Bublé to make Spotify’s top Christmas list.

We wanted to learn more about what went into creating something so utterly dominant, so we called up Walter Afanasieff, who co-wrote the song.

Carey is obviously the star of “Want,” but Afanasieff composed all the music. By the time the song came around, Afanasieff had already been Carey’s main songwriting partner for five years. He was also a driving force behind the two hit singles immediately preceding “Want”: “Hero” and “Without You.”

Recording a Christmas album was basically unheard of in 1994, Afanasieff says, and a bit of a risk. Back then, top 40 Christmas songs in the U.S. had practically died out, having been deemed too sleepy for Gen-Xers.

But Carey had entered the height of her powers, and things were going so well that they figured they could get away with it. Plus, Afanasieff says, Carey just loves Christmas, both for its festive and religious trappings.

So in June 1994,they started writing songs for a Christmas album. Carey had Christmas lights and decorations strung up to set the mood. There would be three singles, and thanks to some nudging from Tommy Mottola, Carey’s Bronx-born husband and impresario at that time, one of them was going to be a more upbeat, propulsive number in the mode of Phil Spector’s ’60s Brill Building pop sound. Indeed, the song in many ways resembles the Spector/Darlene Love hit “Baby Please Come Home.”

With that directive in mind, Afanasieff says he’d come up with a basic chord structure when he and Carey sat down at a piano to write the tune at the house she was renting with Mottola in the Hamptons.

Initially, Afanasieff admits, he blanched at where Carey took the vocal melody.

“My first reaction was, ‘That sounds like someone doing voice scales … Are you sure that’s what you want?’”

But Carey was adamant, and after a few hours, they had the main elements of the song.

“She would sing a melody and I would do a chord change … it was almost like a game of ping-pong, back and forth, until we had it.”

He flew back to California to have the song recorded by a live band in a studio, but he said they failed to capture its essence, so he ended up using his first, personal arrangement. With the exception of the background vocals, everything you hear on “Want,” — the piano, the effects, the drums, the triangle — were played or programmed by Afanasieff.

Five months later, the song was out. Afanasieff claims he had no clue he’d come up with a smash, and that he’s not even sure if he recalls the day it was released. “My reaction was ‘Oh cool, I got another song on the radio.’”

But the track soon became ubiquitous as Christmas 1994 approached.

The next year, it did so again. And again and again. It’s since sold at least 14 million copies, and this year will again sell one million copies in the U.K. alone.

It’s gotten to the point, Afanasieff says, where he has an informal competition every year with Jem Finer, the Pogues member who co-wrote their Christmas smash “Fairytale of New York,” to see which song does better over the holidays.

So why does he think the song has become so huge?

“It’s not about the song structure, it’s not about the production, it’s not about the rhythm … there’s no secret formula,” he says, although he says having Mariah Carey’s voice helped.

But, he says, it contains several novel elements that have sustained its success. There are almost no other uptempo songs in the American Christmas canon, he notes, let alone ones packed with something approaching Carey’s vocal fireworks. It also helped that, although it was a Christmas song, it didn’t focus on any of the typical, children-oriented Christmastime iconography like Santa or Rudolph. “It’s more adult,” he said. More than anything, according to what people tell him, it’s really a song about love and romance that also happens to be about Christmas .

Combine those elements, and you get a monster hit.

But while the entertainment industry will notoriously throw money to clone any successful product, Afanasieff says they’re barking up the wrong tree with Christmas.

“The last thing I would tell a record company is to make another ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You.’”

“Want” is definitively the most successful song he’s ever been involved with — though he also produced “My Heart Will Go On,” whose sales come close. He gets hundreds of requests to license the track for covers or other material. But while he’s enjoyed the financial rewards from the song, he gets uncomfortable when people call the song a cash cow.

“I hate that,” he says. “The commercial part was not the point in any way.”

The reward, he says, is humble appreciation that he gets to be associated with a song the rest of the world has added to the Christmas canon.

And here’s the video:

SEE ALSO: Michael Bublé's Dominance Of Spotify Right Now Is Terrifying

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50 Cent is going after Rick Ross.

He has filed a lawsuit seeking $2 million against the fellow rapper, according to Billboard, accusing him of rapping over 50's hit song "In Da Club" on a mixtape.

Rick Ross put out a remix of the 50 Cent song with his own lyrics over the beat on the mixtape "#RenzelRemixes," released in November, which was meant to promote his recent "Black Market" album, according to the lawsuit.

50 Cent's publicist sent a statement to Billboard saying it was a matter of protecting the artist's reputation.

"Our complaint alleges that Rick Ross has taken [50 Cent's name and reputation] without permission to advertise his own album, and violated 50 Cent's rights in the process, and we believe he should be held liable," the statement said.

50 Cent and Rick Ross have feuded before, with 50 Cent paying $7 million for leaking a sex tape said to feature the mother of Rick Ross' child.

Amid all the litigation, 50 Cent filed for bankruptcy.

SEE ALSO: 50 Cent covered his body in $100 bills to prove he's not broke

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NOW WATCH: The only person who kept their composure after the Miss Universe disaster was Miss Colombia

Oliver Giddings is a five-year-old British boy who dreams of one day becoming an astronaut.

And he certainly has the first step down: a curiosity for space.

This year, Giddings wrote to the Royal Mail asking how much it would cost to send a Christmas card to Mars.

Right now there's no one to send a Christmas card to on Mars right now — except the robotic rovers exploring the surface, like NASA's Curiosity rover shown right. However, humankind might one day colonize the red planet, and then Christmas cards might not sound so bizarre.

Instead of ignoring Giddings inquiry, the postal service employees contacted one of the few agencies in the world who know exactly how expensive it is to land payloads on Mars: NASA.

Scientists at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida estimated that sending a card that weights 100 grams (0.22 pounds) to Mars would cost Giddings about £11,600 (British pounds), or $17,253, the Daily Mirror reported.

This amount includes the cost of the rocket fuel necessary to get the card on course to Mars as well as the weight of the card, since payload weight is one of the cost drivers of rocket launches.

While $17,000 is nothing compared to NASA's multi-billion dollar Mars rover missions, it's still an obscene amount of money for a card.

When the Royal Mail sent NASA's response to Giddings, he said, "Wow! That's a lot of money. It's very expensive to send a letter to Mars. You would need so many stamps!"

If we do send humans to live on Mars in the future, digital Christmas cards will be faster and cheaper. That said, NASA gave Giddings something invaluable this year: the gift of knowledge.

DON'T MISS: There's a rare celestial event on Christmas that we won't see for another 19 years

LEARN MORE: 9 ways Elon Musk has already upended the spaceflight industry

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NOW WATCH: Here's why Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars

Americans have decided on one of the country's most heated cinematic debates: "Die Hard" is not a Christmas movie.

That's the opinion of 62% of Americans who responded to a new Christmas-themed national poll of voters from Public Policy Polling. Only 13% of respondents believed Bruce Willis' pivotal 1988 action movie can be considered a Christmas movie.

"Americans have spoken and have an emphatic message: Die Hard is not a Christmas movie," PPP director Tom Jensen wrote.

Why this is even a debate: "Die Hard" is a popular, if slightly unconventional, pick around this time of year for Christmas-related viewing. It's recommended over and over again alongside more obvious picks like "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Home Alone." Business Insider even put "Die Hard" on our list of the 12 best holiday movies ever.

The primary reason for this is that "Die Hard" takes place over Christmas. New York Police Department officer John McClane (Willis) tries to save his wife and others who are taken hostage by German terrorists during a Christmas office party.

Even though he admits the plotline doesn't have that much more to do with the holiday, MovieFone writer Drew Taylor argued in his article, "Why 'Die Hard' Is the Greatest Christmas Movie Ever Made," that the film expresses certain notable Christmas motifs:

During the course of the movie, McClane is transformed. When he emerges, bloodied and burnt, at the end of the movie, his wife can barely recognize him. And how does she address him? "Jesus Christ," the kid whose birth we're ostensibly celebrating on Christmas Day. But his transformation is also spiritual. At the end of the movie, you get the sense that he's recommitted to being a fully present parent (and there is some evidence to suggest that he followed through, at least in the second movie).

Maybe, as time passes, more people will come to see Taylor's point and "Die Hard" will become widely accepted in the US as a Christmas classic like "A Christmas Carol" and "Miracle on 34th St."

But for now, Americans are pretty clearly against categorizing "Die Hard" as a Christmas movie.

SEE ALSO: RANKED: The 10 best movies of 2015

MORE: RANKED: The 10 best TV shows of 2015

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NOW WATCH: The most popular Christmas traditions have nothing to do with Jesus

The biggest sci-fi hit of 2015 all began with Andy Weir and his best-selling book "The Martian," which is a thrilling survival story based on the planet Mars.

Weir is a software engineer by profession and American novelist by hobby. So, he's got a mind for science.

But he's also a wise-creaking jokester, just like his novel's hero, Mark Watney.

In celebration of the film's release to Digital HD and 3D Blu-ray on Dec. 22, Weir recently spoke with Business Insider, and we couldn't help but appeal to his comedic side.

So, we asked him to tell us a couple of his favorite science jokes, and he didn't disappoint!

While Weir could have a crowd of mathematicians and physicists chuckling with his collection of ready-upon-request jokes, the rest of us might need a quick science refresher to appreciate the punch lines.

Here are two of Weir's favorite science jokes with a brief science refresher:

Andy Weir Joke #1

The joke starts out:

"An ion walks into a bar and says 'I think I left an electron here last night.' And the bartender say 'Are you sure?'"

What does the ion say?

Here's a basic review of atoms and ions. See if you can guess what the ion says as you refresh your brain with some chemistry.

At a basic level, atoms are made of electrons that orbit around a nucleus. But sometimes atoms gain or lose electrons.

When that happens, we call that atom an ion. When an ion gains an electron it is negatively charged and when it loses an electron, it's positively charged.

Here's the full joke:

"An ion walks into a bar and says 'I think I left an electron here last night.' And the bartender says 'Are you sure?' And the ion says 'I'm positive.'"

Andy Weir Joke #2

The joke begins like this:

"What do you get when you cross a mountain climber with a mosquito?"

See if you can guess after this brief review of mathematics.

This joke involves what mathematicians call scalars and vectors.

Basically, scalars and vectors are quantities that mathematicians and physicists use to express the world around us.

What you need to know is that you can multiply vectors together using a "cross product", but vectors can't be combined with scalars in this way. It's just a mathematical no no.

Here's the full joke:

"What do you get when you cross a mountain climber with a mosquito? Nothing! You can't cross a scalar with a vector."

We know that Weir's science jokes are a bit on the nerdy side, but that's why we enjoy them!

We wouldn't expect anything less from a guy who wrote the book that spawned one of the most scientifically accurate sci-fi films of all time.

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Many movies set in the 1800s frontier have boasted authenticity. Wrangling in experts to make sure the audience is thrust into a less-civilized time, the movies in this subgenre get increasingly bleak and real.

It has gotten to a point where it's hard for any new movie in that setting to deliver anything that surprises the audience.

But then Alejandro González Iñárritu went and made "The Revenant," which proves there's still new ground to cover in the frontier movie, and that he's one of the best directors working today.

On the heels of winning the best director Oscar at this year's Academy Awards for "Birdman" (which also won best picture), Iñárritu could certainly pull off back-to-back wins in both categories this year.

"The Revenant" is a masterwork of filmmaking that is as cringeworthy violent as it is beautifully lush to look at.

In the film, Leonard DiCaprio plays a Wyoming scout named Hugh Glass who has been hired, along with his son, to lead a group of fur trappers on their expedition. Domhnall Gleeson plays the captain of the expedition, Andrew Henry, while Tom Hardy is John Fitzgerald, a money-hungry fur trader who contradicts everything Glass and Henry do.

Without giving too much away: Glass is mauled by a bear, left for dead, and is determined to find Fitzgerald and the others who left him behind.

The story is a simple revenge tale, but trust me: There's a lot to it.

Iñárritu, who adapted the story from part of a Michael Punke novel of the same name, was determined to make the film as true to life as possible. That meant little to no computer graphics and shooting the movie in natural light. Filmed mostly in remote locations in Canada and Argentina, the film contains scenes that appear as if Glass is the first person to ever set foot there.

The photography, by Emmanuel Lubezki (he won Oscars the last two years for "Gravity" and "Birdman," respectively), is breathtaking. On one hand, it captures the frantic pace of an attack by Native Americans against the fur trappers or of Glass fighting a bear. The latter sequence is horrific (though perhaps not as horrific as a rumored bear rape scene), with the camera so close to the action that the snorting by the bear makes the camera lens foggy. Between those moments of brutality, there are gorgeous wide shots that show off the natural wonder of the frontier.

But the heart of the movie is DiCaprio. Always known to go all in with his roles, he goes beyond that playing Glass, who is based on a real person who traveled cross-country after being injured by a bear. Along with sustaining the mauling, which is likely a mix of real bear and CGI, though Iñárritu won't go into detail yet about how it was pulled off, DiCaprio eats real bison liver and in one scene guts a horse and goes inside it for warmth during a heavy snowstorm.

Though Glass doesn't say much in the movie, it's DiCaprio's eyes and grunts that say more than words can. Most of the movie he does this growl as he breathes. Almost like, dare I say, a bear.

In a year with an unpredictable awards season and few sure things, it will be interesting to see what kind of upset wins take place. But it's hard to deny the performance DiCaprio gives in this film when it comes to thinking of the best actor category.

Awards aside, "The Revenant" is a tour de force that rarely comes around anymore in the comic-book-obsessed film world we live in. So go experience it.

"The Revenant" opens in limited release on Christmas Day and everywhere January 8.

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