{"id":641215,"date":"2026-10-09T12:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T12:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/641215\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T12:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T12:54:09","slug":"the-new-darth-vader-how-tech-execs-became-the-film-villains-of-our-age-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/641215\/","title":{"rendered":"The new Darth Vader: how tech execs became the film villains of our age | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

When The Social Network came out, Mark Zuckerberg organised a staff viewing of a film he described as \u201cfun\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A group corporate outing to the sequel is unlikely.<\/p>\n

The Social Network hardly portrayed the Facebook founder and his company in a hagiographical light (Zuckerberg later described the film as \u201churtful\u201d<\/a>), but there was at least an element of the plucky upstart to the rise of Zuckerberg as he takes Facebook to 500 million users and a valuation of $25bn (ridiculously small numbers now \u2013 Meta has 3.6 billion users and is worth $1.8tn).<\/p>\n

By the end of that film, though, a steely CEO is emerging and his company is on the brink of global hegemony. The Social Reckoning picks up from there, with a clear perspective that both the founder and his company \u2013 as well as the industry they represent \u2013 are corporate villains now.<\/p>\n

This is set to be underlined by the release of the OpenAI<\/a> drama, Artificial, where its CEO, Sam Altman, is reportedly given a deeply unflattering portrayal. Elon Musk completes the villainous trilogy by appearing as himself \u2013 aside from the odd deployment of an AI avatar \u2013 in Alex Gibney\u2019s four-hour documentary, Musk, about the world\u2019s first trillionaire.<\/p>\n

Tech is the obvious thread joining these films, but another is the scathing portrayal of the company leaders in them. Film villains used to be hoodlums, ex-deep state operatives, people with posh British accents. Tech execs are the new Darth Vader.<\/p>\n

Deeply unflattering \u2026 Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman and Yura Borisov as Ilya Sutskever in Artificial. Photograph: Courtesy of Neon<\/p>\n

This is underlined by the casting of Jeremy Strong<\/a>, who looks a touch on the old side to be playing 2019-2021 era Zuckerberg (the Meta CEO was in his mid-30s at the time of the film\u2019s events whereas Strong is 47), but is embedded in our minds as the tortured Roy family scion Kendall in Succession.<\/p>\n

Strong also brings a straitjacketed simmer to the role here, one that breaks slightly at the end as he backtracks on being a \u201cfree speech absolutist\u201d under intolerable pressure. It is the most human Zuckerberg moment in the entire film.<\/p>\n

Peter Bradshaw describes Strong\u2019s performance<\/a> as a \u201cvery interesting Zuckerberg impersonation, standing and sitting like a Thunderbird puppet\u201d. It is much less sympathetic than Jesse Eisenberg\u2019s in The Social Network and is a sort of corporeal representation of Meta as the monolithic, corporate bad guy.<\/p>\n

Elements of the portrayal chime with some former Meta employees, including a whistleblower, Arturo B\u00e9jar, who describes it as \u201caccurate\u201d<\/a>. Another former employee tells the Guardian that Zuckerberg was \u201cunemotional\u201d in meetings (perhaps what you\u2019d expect from a $1.8tn company CEO, admittedly). Well, Strong\u2019s performance certainly is that.<\/p>\n

There had already been a turning point in public perception of Facebook before the Haugen leaks<\/a>, with the Cambridge Analytica<\/a> scandal, which raised questions about the privacy of account holders\u2019 data and how it is used.<\/p>\n

Haugen\u2019s revelations in 2021 compounded this disquiet. By the time of the 2022 inquest for British teenager Molly Russell<\/a>, who took her own life after watching harmful content on Instagram, regulation of social media around the world was inevitable.<\/p>\n

The tone of The Social Reckoning and Strong\u2019s performance reflect this shift. In the UK, screenings of the film are carrying an advert for the online safety charity established by Molly\u2019s family, in which her father says<\/a>: \u201c\u2018Instagram helped kill my daughter\u201d.<\/p>\n

Responding to Russell, Meta<\/a> says it has worked to improve the safety of its platforms.<\/p>\n

The regulatory, legal and political backlash against social media \u2013 as well as the release of The Social Reckoning \u2013 reflects a lack of trust in such statements.<\/p>\n

Strong\u2019s Zuckerberg says in the film that \u201cthe debate is over\u201d. If it is, The Social Reckoning portrays a world where Meta is on the wrong side of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When The Social Network came out, Mark Zuckerberg organised a staff viewing of a film he described as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[146,85,46,397],"class_list":["post-641215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}