Big tech giants appear as new ‘villain’ characters in Hollywood movies

(San Francisco = Yonhap News) Correspondent Kwon Young-jeon = Tycoons of the Silicon Valley technology industry and artificial intelligence (AI) billionaires are emerging as new villains in the Hollywood film industry and becoming targets of popular culture.

According to the U.S. technology and film industry on the 11th (local time), documentaries and movies featuring SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are being released one after another or are about to be released.

In addition, a movie about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, who is serving a prison sentence in 2022 for investor fraud, is also scheduled to be released.

'Social Reckoning', which was released on the 9th, is a sequel film about CEO Zuckerberg, produced 16 years after director David Fincher's 2010 film 'The Social Network'.

Famous screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the screenplays for both films, said in a recent media interview that he wanted to entrust 'Social Reckoning' to director Fincher, but he took charge of it himself to ensure that it could be released before the midterm elections.

'Social Reckoning' highlighted the whistleblowing incident in which Facebook's senior product manager, Francis Haugen, exposed the risks of Facebook's algorithm in 2021.

At the time, Haugan claimed that even though Facebook was aware of the harm it had on children's mental health, it concealed or neglected it for profit.

The general assessment is that CEO Zuckerberg was portrayed more like a villain than in his previous work, ‘The Social Network.’

Director Alex Gibney's documentary 'Musk', which was invited to the Venice Film Festival and released on the same day, contains all of CEO Musk's private life, allegations of manipulation of the X (formerly Twitter) algorithm, activities in the Donald Trump administration, and controversial remarks.

Director Gibney described CEO Musk as "an extremely dangerous person" and introduced his film as "starting as a very dark comedy and ending as a horror movie."

CEO Altman appears as a villain in director Luca Guadagnino's film 'Artificial', which was recently released at the New York Film Festival and is scheduled to be released in the North American market during the Christmas season in December this year.

The movie deals with the 2023 ouster of CEO Altman, called 'The Blip' within Open AI.

The Verge, a media outlet specializing in information technology (IT), evaluated that in this film, CEO Altman is portrayed as "a cunning, power-hungry psychopath who lies as naturally as breathing and uses anyone, anytime, anywhere to get what he wants."

On the 16th, the movie 'You Can See Everything', which focuses on Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, a company that rose to prominence by claiming that 250 tests could be performed with just a few drops of blood collected from a fingertip, but was eventually found to be a fraud, is scheduled to be released.

Some movies became controversial when major technology companies refused to run trailer advertisements or gave up distribution.

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The film industry believes that Amazon made this decision because it invested $50 billion in Open AI and took into account the close relationship between CEO Altman and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

In the end, the copyright to ‘Artificial’ was purchased by Neon, an independent company that distributed the movie ‘Parasite’ in North America.

The negative portrayal of the heads of large technology companies in major Hollywood movies is interpreted as a result of a dramatic change in public perception of the technology industry as concerns about AI technology deepen.

This is evaluated as being in contrast to the movie 'Jobs' and the documentary 'Something Ventured', which shed light on the originality of Silicon Valley, the home of innovation in the past.

Margaret O'Mara, a professor at the University of Washington who studies the history of Silicon Valley, told the American online media Axios, "(People's) relationship with technology was like a passionate love, but that love cools down quickly," adding, "The public's perception of Silicon Valley and the products made there has changed dramatically."

J. M. Tyree, editor-in-chief of 'Film Quarterly', analyzed that the heads of such large technology companies are characters who combine two typical movie villains: the greedy businessman seen in the movie 'Citizen Kane' and the mad scientist seen in 'Frankenstein'.

Editor-in-Chief Tyree said, "Popular movies mirror the current social unrest," and added, "People are concerned about the concentration of power in the hands of a few at the expense of the majority."

Meanwhile, the US movie data site The Numbers announced that Social Reckoning ranked 5th, earning $5.5 million (approximately 7.4 billion won) from 2,606 theaters in North America during its first weekend of release, from the 9th to the 11th.

This is in contrast to the previous film 'The Social Network', which earned $22 million in its first weekend of release.

The documentary ‘Musk’ recorded ticket sales of $68,900 (approximately 90 million won) at 4 theaters.

The No. 1 movie at the weekend box office in North America was director Rob Savage's horror film 'Other Mommy' ($27.5 million).