Posted by denised in 
A couple of years ago Spike TV posted their Top 10 worst movie bosses of all time. The list included many of the movie bosses we’d expect, including The Devil Wears Prada’s Amanda Priestly, Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko and of course The Godfather’s Michael Corleone. One big surprise, The Dark Knight’s Bruce Wayne. I’m not sure I’d classify Bruce Wayne as a bad boss, but let’s just say if he had been my really bad boss, Really Bad Boss the blog would be a very different kind of site.
The whole bad boss movie list got me wondering why we love really bad movie bosses so much. I think we can narrow it down to about three reasons:
- In the movies, really bad bosses are fascinating, edgy, sexy and really cool, adjectives rarely, if ever, used to describe our real life really bad bosses. Case in point Batman, The Dark Knight’s Bruce Wayne. We’re not sure we completely agree with Spike TV’s assessment of Bruce Wayne as a bad boss, but they did remind us that Alfred and Lucius (Michael Cane and Morgan Freeman) are always on call, never get vacation and frequently have to retrieve their boss from seedy neighborhoods in the middle of the night. Bad boss or not, that sounds a lot more exciting than pushing your drunken boss off your lap at the office party. Add to that, the fact that my boss looks more like a bat, than Christian Bale as Batman, and I’ll take looking for Christian Bale…I mean Bruce Wayne… in the slums of Gotham City any day.
- In the movies, bad bosses are really evil and really smart. Think Gordon Gekko, Wall Street and Miranda Priestly, The Devil Wears Prada. We might not like their methods and we definitely don’t like them, but behind all the dislike is a certain degree of respect. They know what they’re doing and they’re really good at it. In real life, most really bad bosses have the evil part down pat. The smart part…not so much. Real life bosses forge ahead, logic be damned, making it up as they go along. We never respect them for that.
- Finally, the movies remind us that even though our really bad bosses act like the embodiment of evil, things could be worse. They could actually be the devil. Think John Milton (Al Pacino) in the The Devil’s Advocate. The movies remind us that our bosses, despite their best attempts to convince us otherwise, are only human – barely human – but human nonetheless. Just think, no matter how evil our bosses are, if a rocket scientist like Keanu Reeves can defeat the devil himself, we can certainly make it through another day with our own, barely human, very mortal, real life, really bad boss.
Got your own reasons for loving your favorite really bad movie boss? Share them in the comment section. For the full list of Spike TV bad movie bosses click here.
