If you think your boss is giving you a hard time, take comfort from these escapist movies, where tyrannical bosses get their due reward
Wherever you work, no matter how good your working relationship is with your boss or your colleagues, you’ll know that the different relationships between people in an office or another working environment can play a crucial role in the happiness of the team.
The relationships between managers and employees who work for them often provides great subject matter for the movies – usually for comedies or films with an element of comedy in them. It’s because we’ve all had an experience of a difficult working relationship at some point in our lives that movies like these really seem to strike a chord with anyone who watches them.
Online gaming site bgo recently put together its top five film character heroes who faced down their bosses and came out victorious. What’s the connection to bgo? Well, their brand ambassador is the Boss, aka Verne Troyer, the actor who played roles such as Mini-Me in the Austin Powers’ movies and Griphook the Goblin in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. As the Boss at bgo, Verne’s face appears on the website, challenging players to ‘beat the boss’ at a range of different casino games. If you beat the challenges he sets, you end up with bonus prizes and cash. He doesn’t look like he’d take too kindly to being beaten though…
So, which movie characters made it to the top-five list? Darth Vader is perhaps a surprising inclusion, as most of us wouldn’t really think of Darth Vader as having a boss. In fact, for the majority of the Star Wars movies he was the baddie, but then he did redeem himself in the end. As second in command to the Galactic Empire’s evil ruler, Emperor Palpatine, Darth did some pretty vicious things. He even cut off Luke’s right hand. However, when Luke was almost killed by the Emperor, Darth did the right thing and killed the Emperor in order to save his own son.
Most movies about bad bosses are in a more normal work setting. For instance, there’s the 1988 film Working Girl, where plucky secretarial temp Tess (Melanie Griffiths) decides to pretend to be her boss (laid up after a skiing accident) in order to get her first move up the career ladder. Her motivation is spurred on by the fact that her boss, Katherine (Sigourney Weaver), has proven to be dishonest by taking Tess’ work idea and claiming it as her own. Tess convinces people she’s a high-flying executive and puts together an important deal. But it all looks like it’ll go pear-shaped when her boss arrives back in town and exposes her. Of course, it wouldn’t be Hollywood if the underdog didn’t triumph in the end.
If you feel like your daily nine to five is a drudge because you have a tyrannical boss, take comfort from these escapist movies, where unreasonable bosses get their comeuppance. It may not be the case in reality, but we can hold onto the fantasy!
