This January marks 100 years since Fritz Lang's Metropolis, whose villain Joh Fredersen presided over a brutal world of gleaming robots and disposable humans. Now in actual 2026, three new movies position tech titans as modern equivalents: The Social Reckoning revisits Mark Zuckerberg via Jeremy Strong and Aaron Sorkin; a four-hour documentary examines Elon Musk after director Alex Gibney; and Artificial chronicles Sam Altman's 2023 firing and rehiring at Open AI. Early reactions align with public personas — Musk lashed out on X calling the film a 'hit piece,' Altman stayed silent aside from family praise for Andrew Garfield's portrayal, and Zuckerberg remains publicly quiet.
These films reflect current anxieties about AI's existential risks and tech power, casting leaders as dystopian industrialists. As AI threatens to 'wipe out all humanity,' cinema casts these figures as supervillains representing that danger.
Source: Financial Times Companies · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing