Hollywood’s go-to villain is the tech bro now – think Chris Hemsworth, Edward Norton and more – and Elon Musk isn’t happy
- Edward Norton in Glass Onion, Chris Hemsworth in Spiderhead – the tech bro has become a common antagonist in Hollywood films of late
- Showing tech bosses as ‘evil’ has riled Twitter’s Elon Musk, but to be fair, some films, like Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse, have embraced technology
Great movie villains don’t come along often. Top Gun: Maverick, like its predecessor, was content to battle with a faceless enemy of unspecified nationality. Why antagonise international ticket buyers when Tom Cruise vs Whomever works just fine?
But in recent years, the tech bro has proliferated on movie screens as Hollywood’s go-to bad guy. It’s a rise that has mirrored mounting fears over technology’s expanding reach into our lives and increasing scepticism for the not-always-altruistic motives of the men – and it is mostly men – who control today’s digital empires.
He is an immediately recognisable type we’ve become well acquainted with: a visionary (or so everyone says), a social media narcissist, a self-styled disrupter who talks a lot about “breaking stuff”. But there have been many before him.
