Once upon a time, after the robber barons and before the collapse of Enron, corporate executives were exalted as wise champions of capitalism, men (always men) who married their passion for their profession/product with a can-do attitude that everyday people should emulate. They wrote bestsellers, hit the lecture circuit, and hastened the nation’s economic decline. People were shocked, but filmmakers have always seen through the façade. The pursuit of power and wealth is ignoble; the keeping of it requires great gobs of corruption, if not worse. How much worse? Here’s a list of the most vicious and venal corporate heads in the history of film, many of whom aren’t that far off from being Bond villains.
