2025 Films Turn Tech Entrepreneurs into Repeat Screen Villains
In 2025, a recurring cinematic motif has emerged: the jargon-spouting, self-regarding digital visionary as a default antagonist. Across big-budget blockbusters, reboots and satirical features, film-makers have repeatedly cast tech founders and biotech boosters in roles that caricature real-world industry figures and behaviours.
That trend has been visible in a string of recent releases, which variously mock, lampoon and moralise about contemporary tech culture. Prop teams have been tasked with creating fake business magazines and branding to puncture the aura of tech leadership. Critics and audiences have noted a saturation effect, with the risk that different portrayals begin to merge into a single, recognisable archetype.
In Netflix’s alt-history robot fantasia The Electric State, Stanley Tucci plays Ethan Skate, the creator of a “neurocaster” technology. The character is presented as having ended an AI uprising only to turn the wider population into listless virtual-reality dependents. Tucci’s portrayal leaned on a retro Bond-villain visual vocabulary: bald and imperious, delivering sour existential pronouncements that underscore the film’s bleak alternate timeline.
Nicholas Hoult’s turn as Lex Luthor in the new Superman emphasises the archetype of the attention-hungry paradigm-changer. Hoult’s LuthorCorp founder rigs social media by deploying vivisected monkey cyborgs to flood platforms with anti-Superman hashtags and memes, reflecting a plotline in which a tech executive tries to manufacture public opinion. The film itself drew waves of farmed outrage about perceived wokeness, creating a mirror effect between on-screen manipulation and off-screen reaction.
Comedic and action-led films have balanced caricature with humiliation to render tech characters more human. In M3gan 2.0, Jemaine Clement plays Alton Appleton, a high-functioning billionaire promoting a neural implant for mass adoption. The narrative humiliates the character — his signature Altwave technology is hacked, and he is outmaneuvered by the film’s fembot antagonist — producing moments that are both pathetic and, according to some viewers, oddly sympathetic.
Reboots have also leaned into exaggerated tech-bro excess. In The Naked Gun reboot, Danny Huston’s Richard Cane combines the mannerisms of contemporary tech magnates with a fantastical plot device: the Primordial Law of Toughness. The character, described in the film via plot signals as a zillionaire businessman, intends to reset humanity by forcibly reverting the public to a primitive mindset. The role is scripted to showcase obsessions associated with certain strands of tech culture — luxury bunkers, fertility anxieties and maximalist personal branding.
Biotech and health-hype figures have been singled out as well. Kevin Bacon’s Bob Garbinger in The Toxic Avenger reboot is framed as a pale, pampered “healthstyle” guru who markets proprietary bio-boosters in shirtless television adverts. The character reads as a satirical take on immortality-seeking biohackers and the commercialisation of wellness culture.
Even films with roots in genre franchises have adopted the trope. In Tron: Ares, Evan Peters plays Julian Dillinger, a second-generation executive who advances 3D-printed military hardware and digital commandos. The in-story technology spectacularly fails shortly after deployment, a narrative moment that critics have read as an allegory for speculative, resource-intensive projects tied to the AI and hardware investment cycle.
Not all portrayals concentrate villainy in a single figure. Jesse Armstrong’s satire Mountainhead casts multiple characters as embodiments of the “move fast, break stuff” billionaire mindset. The film places four tech and investment archetypes in an isolated luxury setting as global crisis looms. Cory Michael Smith, Steve Carell, Ramy Youssef and Jason Schwartzman play figures who trade boastful repartee and cynical opportunism while the world degrades outside their enclave. The structure of the film is intended to reveal the moral vacuity of a particular elite subculture when left to govern itself.
Observers have noted a broader cultural context for these portrayals. The cinematic wave coincides with public debates over the social influence of startup founders, venture capital priorities and rapid deployment of new technologies, including AI. On screen, those debates are distilled into recognisable character traits: performative confidence, moral complacency and a willingness to subordinate wider social consequences to product rollout.
Critics argue the repeated use of the tech-bro villain risks flattening complex issues into caricature. With so many films drawing on the same tropes, characters can blend into a single “smarmy” figure rather than prompting deeper scrutiny of systemic drivers behind technological change. At the same time, filmmakers appear to find narrative utility in the tempo and tone of startup culture: quick pivots, grandiose language and theatrical self-promotion offer clear material for satire and drama.
As the new cinema year approaches, industry watchers and audiences will be watching how filmmakers evolve the trope. Whether future productions diversify the portrayals or continue to rely on now-familiar archetypes may influence public perceptions of real-world tech leadership and the cultural conversation around innovation and accountability.
Key Topics
Tech-bro Villain Trend, Cinematic Tech-bro Archetype, Digital Visionary Antagonist, Satire Of Startup Culture, Biotech Booster Satire, Ai Uprising Fiction, Prop Design Fake Tech Branding, Media Manipulation Plotlines, Biotech Health-hype Characters, Tech Industry Caricature, Public Perception Of Tech Leadership, Films Satirizing Tech Founders, Startup Jargon In Film