As Big Tech Takes Over Hollywood, the Picture Onscreen Gets Darker
“The Social Reckoning” and other movies reflect growing discontent with Silicon Valley founders. But such films may be at the mercy of the companies themselves.
“The Social Reckoning” and other movies reflect growing discontent with Silicon Valley founders. But such films may be at the mercy of the companies themselves.
It’s hard to remember this, but before “The Social Network” came out in 2010, there was plenty of snickering. Would anyone want to watch a movie about a website?
The answer was yes. It was a major success at the box office and won three Oscars, including one for Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay. In the years that followed, it would consistently be ranked among the top films of the decade, landing at No. 10 on The New York Times’s best of the 21st century list.
Something about this movie about a website — and, more important, the psychology of its founder — resonated with pretty much everybody. You might even say it gave us a whole new genre: the tech founder movie.
This fall, that genre graduates into a new phase, one that reflects a mounting suspicion of and anger toward tech founders. In October, Sorkin’s follow-up, “The Social Reckoning,” will open in theaters, the TV show “Cupertino” will premiere on CBS and Luca Guadagnino’s “Artificial” will make its world premiere at the New York Film Festival. All three take a far darker view of Silicon Valley than “The Social Network” and its progeny did, and that’s a telling evolution. Entertainment used to celebrate founders — or at least respect their talent and drive. But now they’re often portrayed with mockery, disgust and even rage.
While they’ve been busy with, as Mark Zuckerberg would put it, moving fast and breaking things, we’ve been getting increasingly upset about the world they’re building. But as tech takes over Hollywood, it’s uncertain — as we’ve learned in the case of “Artificial” — whether that reality will be onscreen in the future.
