Greed Is Good Again? How ‘Air’ and ‘Tetris’ Begin The Return of Anti-‘Parasite’ Capitalist Movies

Air, Ben Affleck’s new bio-drama about the birth of the Air Jordan shoe line, is an underdog story. The genre is a Hollywood classic for a reason. Audiences love to root for the guy who has the least chance of winning, but who somehow, against all odds, pulls off the impossible. And in Air, that underdog is none other than… Nike.

Yes, the same Nike whose brand was, once upon a time, synonymous with sweatshops and child labor. The same Nike that laid off over 700 employees at the height of the pandemic, and just laid off several more employees last month. The same Nike which some estimate is worth over $100 billion. But thanks to Matt Damon’s affable charm and Affleck’s sporting deprecation, the suit-wearing businessmen behind the billion-dollar company have been rebranded as plucky heroes, pursuing the American dream. Air opens with some stock market stats—captions on the screen that tell us, yes, Nike is a mega-corporation, but their share is only at 17 percent! Compared to Adidas and Converse, Nike is practically Rudy! …Right?

Air isn’t the only movie that’s helping Wall Street with a shiny new rebrand. Say goodbye to corporate bad guys, because capitalism is back on top, baby. Or, at least, it is in the eyes of movie executives. Because despite the looming recession, ever-rising costs, and mass layoffs that 2023 has wrought upon the middle class, it’s also a year of distinctly pro-capitalist movies. Tetris, the recent Apple TV+ drama about the ’80s video game, stars Taron Egerton as a wide-eyed entrepreneur, whose virtuous capitalist ideals are challenged by the villainous, communist-run Soviet Russia. And there are more stock-market fanboy movies coming: Blackberry, starring Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton as the founders of the mobile phone company; Flamin’ Hot, the biopic about a Frito Lay custodian who claims he invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos; and Unfrosted: The Pop-Tart Story, Jerry Seinfeld’s comedy based on the invention of Pop-Tarts.

While not a brand-new phenomenon—movies like Moneyball, Steve Jobs, and Joy all worshipped at the altar of capitalism—this latest onslaught of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, business biopics feels particularly aggressive. And after the rise of “eat the rich” movies and shows that followed Parasite‘s Best Picture win, it feels almost personal. Perhaps this is pro-business Hollywood’s answer to movies like The Menu and Triangle of Sadness, where the rich received their twisted comeuppance, and to shows like The Boys and Severance, where corporations are the unequivocal bad guys. In Air, Tetris, and the upcoming corporate biopics, the opposite is true—the audience is rooting for the guys in the suits.”Hey,” these movies seem to say. “It hurts our feelings when you cast us as the bad guys in your revenge fantasies. How about some good press?”

There’s no hint of corporate greed or moral ambiguity from the protagonists in Air and Tetris. The closest Air comes to acknowledging Nike’s infamous sweatshop controversy is a scene where Damon and Jason Bateman’s characters, both Nike executives, mention that Nike shoes are manufactured in Taiwan. But the conversation quickly pivots to Bateman gifting Nike shoes to his young daughter, as a way to connect with her after his divorce. Outsourced child labor can’t be that bad when it’s helping an upstanding American businessman be a good father, right? Tetris, meanwhile, opts to make UK media mogul Robert Maxwell (played by Roger Allam) the cheating, greedy villain. It’s those damn, tea-loving English who are corrupt, while American businessmen are good, just, and play by the rules. (Yes, Egerton’s character in Tetris, Henk Rogers, is Dutch, but the movie clearly codes him as American, with an American accent and pop culture references.)

Both Air and Tetris take place in the ’80s and come with a healthy dose of Reagan-era nostalgia. Through soundtracks stacked with Blondie, Dire Straights, Cyndi Lauper, and Europe, both films prompt audiences to reminisce about a time when capitalism was celebrated, not criticized. Over-sized suits, tinted glasses, and colorful tracksuits make up the costumes, inviting us to long for an era when excess was fun, not tacky. And both offer viewers the American Dream ’80s fantasy of a normal, run-of-the-mill working man whose diligence, perseverance, and willingness to risk it all results in lavish, wealthy success. Wall Street still rules society in 2023, but back then—before the 2008 housing crash, before the Occupy Wall Street movement, before a generation of Americans lost all hope at home ownership—they weren’t the villains. They were inspirations. They were heroes.

There’s no hard evidence that Wall Street is formally bankrolling this influx of pro-business movies, but it’s worth noting that Air is an Amazon movie, and Tetris is an Apple movie—two giant, billion-dollar tech corporations whose primary business is not movie-making. And it’s not a stretch to imagine rich Hollywood executives are friendly with rich corporations. Wall Street has been working hard to rebrand itself following the housing collapse for decades, including the recently controversial push for “E.S.G. (Environmental, social, and governance)” in business. Movies like Parasite achieving widespread, mainstream critical acclaim show that rebrand hasn’t been entirely successful. After all, the anti-rich sentiment of Bong Joon-ho’s Best Picture winner was so popular, that it spawned a new era of class-conscious films. (Not to mention, a new rabble-rousing working class meme.) So what better way for corporations to reach the masses than by offering a crowd-pleasing, star-studded movie that tells their side of the story?

Whether audiences will go along with this rebrand remains to be seen, but Air, at least, was popular among critics (it currently has a 92 percent rating on the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes), and is off to a solid start at the box office (around $20 million domestically, so far). Tetris, an Apple TV+ release, made less of a splash but was liked well enough (82 percent on Rotten Tomatoes). The Blackberry movie is coming to theaters next month, while Flamin’ Hot and Unfrosted are expected later this year. Will these American Dream fantasies provide working Americans—who are currently penny-pinching in order to afford produce—a desired escape? Or will the well of goodwill for capitalist good guys run dry? Either way, it’s perhaps good to not forget the lessons we’ve learned since the 1980s, particularly about who the underdogs really are — and they’re not billion-dollar corporations.