From Musk to Zuckerberg, films spotlight Silicon Valley moguls as power‑hungry disruptors

Hollywood has embraced a new archetype of villain in recent films: the once-admired tech moguls of Silicon Valley. From biotech fraudster Elizabeth Holmes to tech leaders Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman, the spotlight is now on these once-heroic figures who promised innovation. Monica Castillo, a film critic for The A.V.

Club, noted the shift in perception, saying, “They were larger-than-life figures who bootstrapped their way to multibillion dollar companies, and they were kind of seen as heroes who were like changing the world... there’s sort of a level of disillusionment.” The disillusionment stems from tech leaders shifting allegiance to US President Donald Trump's "America First" policies.

Alex Gibney's four-hour documentary on Musk dissects his career, from his beginnings as a tech genius to his alliance with Trump. Aaron Sorkin's sequel to The Social Network, The Social Reckoning, focuses on whistleblower Frances Haugen and her revelations about Facebook's practices, including the amplification of hate speech through its algorithms.

Holmes' story is chronicled in You Can See Everything, a buzzy documentary that follows her fall from grace after her fraud conviction. In fiction, Luca Guadagnino's Artificial stars Andrew Garfield as OpenAI chief Sam Altman, highlighting his work with ChatGPT. Matt Neglia of Next Best Picture calls the film "terrifying" yet "brilliantly written."

Professor J.M. Tyree of Virginia Commonwealth University notes that these films reflect current social anxieties, particularly the concentration of power in the hands of a few at the expense of society. These films attempt to showcase the tech titans, not their products, revealing a departure from past philanthropic behavior of captains of industry.