Corporations: The True Evil

Before I get into the bulk of this, let me just say right off the bat this is not going to be some anti-capitalist pro-99% blog entry. I save that for my posts on facebook and Youtube (which I should stop because it only gains me unwanted attention). No, this blog entry is about how in so many movies, films and comic books they end up with the villains being financed by publicly traded companies. You would think more stockholders would care that they’ve invested in companies that are pure evil.

The first example of a truly evil corporation is one that seems to not even be a company, but a private army. That company is the Umbrella Corporation of the Resident Evil franchise. From what I can see from the movies and the games, the Umbrella Corporation is good at making zombies and other such monsters. And that is it. They don’t make zombies as some sort of side product to supplement their income. The Umbrella Corporation made the T-Virus and some how used that to fuel their evil worldwide empire where they make worse and worse versions of the T-Virus. If ever there was a strong argument for the EPA, it is the Umbrella Corporation.

"I swear, this armor is totally a business expense."

But a corporation can only be as good or evil as the people in charge of it. Which is how a company like LexCorp can gain so much power in a free economy and still be the financial and technological backers for so many diabolical schemes. I cannot imagine a yearly stockholders meeting of LexCorp where Lex Luthor gets up and explains how he is using their money to obtain large quantities of Kryptonite. Steve Jobs certainly never created any doomsday weapons during his stewardship of Apple (or maybe he did and that’s what gave him cancer. Possible subject for a future blog entry.)

Avengers' Mansion

To be sure there are good corporations in the fictional world. Wayne Entreprises and Stark Industries both finance super heroes and the endeavors and secret projects of those heroes. Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne have both funneled stock holder money into the financing of The Avengers (Quinjets, Avengers Mansion, Communication ID cards) and The Justice League (Watchtower Satellite and Moonbase, Hall of Justice). But when you think about it, spending money on super heroes is just as bad as spending money on a super-villain plot. The only thing that differentiates them is the outcome of their endeavors. Personally I feel that were I a stockholder of either Wayne Enterprises or Stark Industries (and personally I wish I was), I don’t think I’d have a problem being told that some of my money had been used to fund saving the world.

But while there are good corporate owners like Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne it seems like they are the minority. Just looking at the James Bond franchise it seems like there is a never ending amount of wealthy evil geniuses, many of them who earned their fortunes legitimately before they started their nefarious plots.

They say money is the root of all evil. I don’t believe that to be true, but it certainly seems to be a branch on the evil tree. Money is soaking up sunlight and nutrients for evil but it is not the main root. Good and evil can be seen in rich and poor a like. Money can only facilitate the motives of a person and depending on whether the person is already good or evil will determine the outcome.

(WRITER'S NOTE: Also lets not forget individuals like Thomas Crowne, who abandoned the stewardship of a billion dollar company in pursuit of cheap thrills. How many people ended up losing their jobs because this billionaire got bored?)