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But the fourth film notably does away with the original trilogys brooding aesthetic.
This new Smith certainly plugs the film into a more contemporary template.
Or Harrison Gilbertsons pallid, shy cybernetics visionary Eron Keen inUpgrade, also from 2018.
Wongs bioengineer Dr. Henry Wu inJurassic World.
(To say nothing of all the tech bros on television, fromSilicon ValleytoSuccession.)
(Meanwhile, it perhaps shouldnt surprise us that there really havent been many female tech-bro villains on film.
Women in movies are rarely allowed to have the slack-casual grandiosity of the tech bro.
Well see if that changes after the Theranos pictures come out.
After all, whats scarier?
The rise of the machines, or the rise of the morally ambiguous men who pioneer them.
Movies about the perils of technology are certainly nothing new.
Cinema was making those even before Fritz LangsMetropolisin 1927.
The tech bro on film is an extension and consolidation of older cliches.
(Several Bond films had someone like this.)
Often he wants to be your friend.
His imperiousness hides behind his modest demeanor as expressed through his phony affability or his casual clothing.
So why do movies and shows keep going back to this well?
The tech bro is fair game because everybody despises him.
The olds hate him.
The youngs hate him.
Hes not othered in any way.
If anything, hes uncomfortably familiar.
By contrast, how many people do you know in your life who look and act like Auric Goldfinger?
Once upon a time, people cried cried when Steve Jobsintroduced computers in different colors.
The tech-bro villain gets at a dull, persistent itch in our psyches that we cant scratch away.
Maybe because in so many ways,he is us.
Or, rather, a side of us.
(And if youve somehow avoided all that, then congratulations you never read this article.)
You know what the difference is between you and me?
asks the new Agent Smith inThe Matrix Resurrections.
Anyone could have been you, but Ive always been anyone.
Agent Smith, however, doesnt.
He actually gets to live on in the Matrix, seemingly more powerful than before.
Our movie victories are illusory.
The bad guys won a long time ago.
