Silicon Valley's horror shows
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Hollywood's hottest villain right now is the tech billionaire.
- Four films hitting theaters this fall put some of Silicon Valley's most powerful and controversial figures in the spotlight: Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman and Elizabeth Holmes.
Why it matters: Hollywood's portrayal of Silicon Valley and its leaders is getting darker as negative headlines about the tech industry seep into pop culture.
- Once portrayed as brilliant but flawed innovators, tech leaders are increasingly being cast as creepy villains whose ambitions may do more harm than good.
Zoom in: This fall's tech billionaire films span genres, from documentaries to thrillers.
- 💻 "The Social Reckoning," Aaron Sorkin's follow-up to his 2010 hit, "The Social Network," opened Friday with Jeremy Strong portraying a more sinister Mark Zuckerberg during the 2021 Facebook whistleblower leak. Sorkin takes some cinematic liberties with chronology and other details.
- 🚀 "Musk," the four-hour documentary (including a 10-minute intermission) about Elon Musk's rise, is playing in select theaters and opens nationwide on Friday. The roller-coaster rollout of the film, directed by Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney, included critical acclaim at the Venice Film Festival and legal threats from Musk's team.
- 🩸 "You Can See Everything," out Friday, is an experimental documentary from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim that follows ex-Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes in the weeks before she went to prison. The studio, A24, says an "intimate portrait of an enigmatic felon becomes a mind-bending three-year journey into the abyss." (More on the film.)
- 🤖 "Artificial," a drama directed by Luca Guadagnino, stars Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman and hits theaters Christmas Day. In the film, "[Garfield] depicts Altman as a manipulative, power-hungry psychopath who lies as easily as he breathes and will use anyone, anytime, anywhere to get what he wants," The Verge reports. The studio, NEON, calls it "the story of OpenAI and a two-decade artificial intelligence arms race. ... As the technology becomes more powerful and more valuable than anyone ever imagined, a battle rages over who should control the tech that could change the fate of humanity."
These projects represent a sharp turn away from some earlier movies and documentaries about Silicon Valley, like "Jobs" and "Something Ventured," which celebrated the ingenuity of founders and venture capitalists.
- "With tech, it was an ardent love affair," says Margaret O'Mara, a University of Washington historian who studies Silicon Valley. "And when you fall out of love, you fall out of love fast."
- "Our popular understanding of Silicon Valley and the products it makes has changed drastically."
Zoom out: Hollywood is reflecting the public's growing disillusionment with the tech industry.
- Polls show Americans of all ages are quickly souring on AI and think it's moving too fast. Two in three Americans say social media has been bad for democracy, per Pew Research Center polling.
- "Popular movies hold up a mirror to current social anxieties," says writer and editor-in-chief of Film Quarterly J.M. Tyree. Right now, "people are thinking about power consolidating in the hands of the few at the expense of the many."
The intrigue: Tech founders are compelling on-screen villains, Tyree says.
- They bring together two archetypes: the ruthless businessman who's corrupted by greed, as seen in movies like "Citizen Kane" and "The Wolf of Wall Street," and the mad scientist who's morally ambiguous and employs science and technology recklessly, like in "Metropolis" or "Frankenstein."
- Plus, their eccentricities make for good entertainment.
The bottom line: O'Mara, the Silicon Valley historian, notes: "One thing I have learned from studying the history of rich people is that extreme wealth makes you weird."
