Companies seem to run the world these days, and these fictional corporations from great movies reflect the dangerous power of big business.
Fictional worlds, much like our real one, are often run by various companies. These corporations could offer goods and services or invent various products under the guise of easy living. However, sometimes these companies have dark agendas. Overrun by greed or a lust for power, these companies will do whatever it takes to remain on top. Sometimes, they may have sincere intentions but will risk safety over profit. From malicious pharmaceutical companies to totalitarian tech giants, here are some of the most evil fictional companies in movie history.
As the Terminator movie series dragged on, the backstory of the killer machines was revealed. Cyberdyne Systems themselves aren't inherently evil, but what they create is. Cyberdyne was a technology company that looked to create various computers and processors. After a Terminator from the future was destroyed in their factory, they studied the parts and became a weapons manufacturer. They supplied weapons and defense systems to the military, and eventually created Skynet.
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Skynet was an artificial intelligence network that would replace humans in various military positions, such as pilots, and was also responsible for the country's nuclear defense system. Skynet would become self-aware in The Terminator universe, and cause a nuclear war to wipe out most of humanity, later creating Terminators and leading the remaining humans to engage in a war against the machines. Cyberdyne has good intentions, but their need to create more and more weapons (the inherent problem with capitalism) led to humanity's downfall.
InGen was created by John Hammond in the Jurassic Park movies for a simple reason: to clone endangered animals and allow them to once again roam the Earth. Hammond created InGen with nothing but good intentions in mind, wanting to give the creatures a second chance at life. What Hammond was blind to was the fact that these creatures may be extinct for a reason. InGen successfully cloned several species of dinosaurs and placed them in a park for the public to see. Jurassic Park was considered a failure when the dinosaurs escaped and causes fatal carnage. Hammond learned from his mistakes and refused to create another park, instead becoming an environmentalist.
InGen would continue experiments without him, and this is where their evil nature comes from. While Hammond was in it for the science, the company's board was in it for the money. They couldn't care less about the lives of others, they simply wanted the Dinosaurs to bring in a hefty paycheck. Through their recklessness and greed, InGen causes the deaths of countless people, and as of Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom, the Dinosaurs are no longer contained in a park.
Omni Consumer Products, or simply OCP, was a company that valued power overall in the amazing RoboCop movie. The company provided various services and built supposedly nonprofit organizations such as hospitals. OCP looked to turn Detroit, Michigan into Delta City, which would be a metropolis fully run by the company. Citizens of the city would apply for leadership by buying stocks in OCP. OCP also specialized in weapons, creating destructive devices to be sold to the military and, more importantly, the Detroit police department.
OCP funded criminal activity, which forced the police department to request deadly weapons; this is akin to companies creating the problem that only they manufacture the solution for. OCP also funded the creation of RoboCop in an attempt to essentially create a soldier to obey their every evil command. Omni Consumer Products had a stake in practically everything from food to self-defense. It would take their own creation to finally take them down in the Paul Verhoeven movie, and even then they never fully vanished.
The third Halloween movie was a stand-alone movie intended to launch a franchise of anthology films. While this wasn't successful, it did introduce fans to the Silver Shamrock company. Silver Shamrock was a toy company run by Conal Cochran. Cochran earned the nickname of the all-time genius of the practical joke. The toys produced often involved a gag of some sort, such as sticky toilet paper. However, their most famous products were their Halloween masks. Silver shamrock had three types of masks: a jack-o-lantern, a witch, and a skull. With these masks, the sinister nature of Conal Cochran and the Silver Shamrock company became evident.
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Cochran looked to take the Halloween season back to its Celtic roots, and would sacrifice innocent families to do so. Each mask contains a piece of Stonehenge. Through commercials aired by the company on Halloween night, these pieces would activate and kill whoever is wearing the mask. The little town the company calls home is actually controlled by Silver Shamrock. Cochran has eyes and ears everywhere, ensuring nobody can easily stop him. Silver Shamrock is an example of a company that exists purely for sinister reasons. There is no misguided attempt to help others or even a power lust. Silver Shamrock and Conal Cochran are purely and simply evil.
Umbrella Corp is as evil as it gets. Thanks to their lust for power, a worldwide plague spread across the globe, causing the apocalypse in the process. Umbrella created biological weapons for the world's militaries, all part of their plan to create a deadly virus. To cover their tracks, and make more of a profit, Umbrella publicly began working on a vaccine for the virus they had created. As greedy and sinister as they seemed on the surface, their true intentions were where they became genuinely evil.
Umbrella looked to create a race of superhumans powered by the virus; they would be hyper-intelligent and possess superhuman strength. These enhanced beings would advance the human race in a kind of awful eugenics project, and those running Umbrella would be gods to them. Umbrella's evil nature led to the T-Virus spreading, causing the dead to rise and humans to become an endangered species.
"Building better worlds." This is the slogan for the multinational conglomerate Weyland-Yutsni Corporation from the Alien universe. They stick to this slogan very well, just so long as these better worlds allow Weyland-Yutani to become obscenely wealthy. The company, developed throughout the Alien movie franchise (with some help from the Predator films), funds interstellar travel and human colonies throughout the cosmos. They constantly put human life in danger just to make money, so safety is far from their number one priority. The most despicable project they undertake involves the Xenomorph species.
The highly deadly species have been the subjects of Weyland-Yutani's experiments to ensure humans are the dominant species. They will allow anyone to die in order to experiment, and they seem to care less and less each time an attack occurs. They will send groups of people to remote areas where they know Xenomorphs roam, without telling anyone a thing. As long as they remain wealthy, these countless human lives are simply expendable.
While primarily appearing in the film Wall-E, the Buy n Large cooperation is a looming shadow over the entire Pixar movie universe. Most of the time, the Buy n Large logo is simply seen on various items throughout Pixar films. However, in Wall-E, it is shown just what the mega-corporation ends up doing, making these Easter eggs dark pieces of foreshadowing. As with so many other evil corporations, Buy n Large's main goal is wealth and power. They bought up essentially everything and controlled every aspect of life; it's as if Amazon married Walmart and bought out every business in the world.
The company gave every human on Earth the right to spend. This meant that humans could buy anything they wanted. The entire population of Earth went into a state of mass consumerism, and the Earth was eventually covered in trash and became uninhabitable as a result. Buy n Large allowed humans to flee the doomed planet to live on their own interstellar resort (echoed in a disturbing sense by the interplanetary travel of billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos). Other corporations may have caused mass damage and even brought on the apocalypse, but Buy n Large successfully destroyed Earth through greed, and nearly ruined humanity altogether as a result.
Donnie is a freelance entertainment writer with a passion for film. Horror is his specialty, but he loves any genre. In his spare time, he enjoys writing, reading, gaming, and watching movies.