Spoilers – some spoilers for Glass Onion, also huge spoilers for Watchmen

Charles Foster Kane – Citizen Kane

Orson Welles’ masterpiece Citizen Kane showed us the life of Charles Foster Kane, born into poverty and ending his life with incredible wealth and power. Kane is an interesting example, quite often he is a sympathetic character and charming. Kane’s declaration that he cares nothing for oil wells and steel mills and will focus on his newspaper interests and the determination to turn a failing newspaper into the most respected and successful paper in the country is somewhat admirable. Kane is shown as a passionate and ambitious individual, indeed, despite inheriting a vast fortune he is determined to do more with it. As the film goes on we see more and more of an uglier side to Kane, his political campaign is deeply unsettling and many of his personal relationships fall apart, eventually withdrawing into his pleasure palace.

Billionaire Brand – Jaded lonely billionaire

Bruce Wayne – Batman Films & Tony Stark – Iron Man Films

Two of the biggest superheroes are actually billionaires, and not only that, billionaires who inherited their wealth. The contrast between Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark is dramatic – in Batman Bruce Wayne is a reclusive oddball, but in more recent films often he adopts the guise of a spoilt playboy, whereas Stark in Iron Man is a charismatic frontman of a huge company, prone to outrageous behaviour. Even when Stark has his revelation and vows to change his company and personally get involved in saving the world, the brash exterior remains. Whilst both have inherited their wealth there is the implication that both are extremely intelligent and talented, especially with Stark inventing his superhero suit.

Recent commentary on both of these characters has focussed on that if Wayne and Stark really wanted to help people they wouldn’t squander money on gadgets but use their vast wealth and influence to work against poverty and disease and wouldn’t need to beat anyone up. None of the films has really engaged too much with this, we are meant to see them both as good guys who are congratulated for not ignoring the problems around them.

Billionaire Brand – Tony Stark – Charismatic genius hero

Billionaire Brand – Bruce Wayne – Brooding outsider hero

Adrian Veidt – Watchmen

Supposedly the cleverest man in the world – and the richest in the Watchmen universe – Adrian Veidt started as the superhero Ozymandias and did the typical superhero stuff. But Veidt soon comes to the conclusion that he is very much rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic as nuclear armageddon is looming. To the public, Veidt is working on a project to create limitless free energy which he hopes will calm the Cold War, but secretly is working on a terrible attack on the world that will force the USA and USSR to cooperate. He will kill literally millions to save the world.

Billionaire Brand – Adrian Veidt – Indifferent-To-Money “Bigger Picture” Genius

Logan Roy – Succession & Miles Bron – Glass Onion

Logan Roy and Miles Bron are perhaps the two sides of the powerful billionaire we see portrayed today. Logan Roy is an ageing owner of a vast corporate empire including a huge chunk of media giving him considerable political clout, so much so that Logan regularly demands favours from presidents and/or belittles them. Logan is brutal in business and in his personal life, destroying rival companies, poisoning political discourse in America with his absurd Fox News-like ATN and orchestrating dirty trick campaigns against enemies (at one point another character states he can’t remember whether it is true that someone had syphilis or if they had made up the story). If anything Logan is worse with his family – his children are sometimes useful pawns, sometimes disappointments deserving of his contempt but never family members who he loves and respects. Logan is good at what he does, however, even if what he does is horrible and in the course of the show he has survived a stroke in the first episode, repeated attacks from various close family members, criminal investigations from the government and more.

Miles Bron on the other hand is essentially a lucky, stupid, thief. He has done literally nothing to earn his wealth (and that’s even before you get into the argument of if a person can earn billions) but wants an image of a genius rebel innovator. He half-understands numerous concepts and then talks about them like he is an expert and is convinced that he can succeed on nothing more than his own Miles Bron brand, and that nothing as mundane as legal proceedings or the laws of chemistry and physics can stop him.

Billionaire Brand – Logan Roy – Ruthless Tyrant Businessman

Billionaire Brand – Miles Bron – Imposter Poseur “Genius”

Also Read: Why Watchmen Is One Of The Best TV Shows In Recent Times

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Side By Side

Citizen Kane is the story of Charles Foster Kane, a poor child adopted into a rich but loveless family, he achieves great wealth and becomes a titan of the age before inevitably falling into unhappiness – his huge wealth, priceless treasures and pleasure palace providing no contentment. The film is directed by, written by and stars Orson Wells, 25 years old at the time, which I add just to make everyone older than 25 who hasn’t made arguably the greatest film in existence feel sad.

Paddington 2 is the sequel to Paddington, Paddington being a bear from Peru who is adopted by the Brown family. Paddington is the ursine embodiment of kindness, decency and friendship and while occasionally getting into scrapes is a wonderful addition to the Brown family. In Paddington 2 the bear is wrongly imprisoned for stealing a book, the real culprit being a devious actor played by Hugh Grant (I personally think Grant should have played himself instead of the wonderfully named Phoenix Buchanan). Paddington is played by Ben Whishaw and directed by Paul King, previously best known for having directed The Mighty Boosh.

To compare these films seems a somewhat ridiculous task but Citizen Kane is considered an incredibly original and inventive film and is perhaps now the default depiction of the idea that “money doesn’t bring you happiness”. Paddington 2 is a family film that is very funny and very sweet and both Paddington films have been praised for their ideas of acceptance, the importance of family and friendship and doing the right thing.

What The Critics Said

Looking at the reviews collected from Rotten Tomatoes on each of these films and quite frankly some of these reviews are masterpieces in their own right –

Paddington 2 :

“The thing about the Paddington movies is that they are perfect” – Karen Han, Polygon

“Everything that a kids’ movie should be: sweet and adorable and kind, and adults can enjoy it too” – Alonso Duralde, What The Flick

“‘Paddington 2′ is ‘The Godfather Part II’ of Peruvian bear movies, a sequel that surpasses the superb original“. Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal (presumably after writing this Morgenstern walked off into the sunset knowing he would never write anything better).

Citizen Kane (all of these are of the time of the original release):

“It is daring, different, thrilling and revolutionary, a power play of startling brilliance” – Harold V Cohen, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Welles is the most exciting thing that’s happened since sound” – Josephine O’Neill, Daily Telegraph (Australia), we would have to assume O’Neill is referring to the still relatively recent addition of sound of movies, rather than the auditory phenomenon that has existed for billions of years.

“Welles has shown Hollywood how to make movies” – Gilbert Seldes, Esquire Magazine

Of the now infamous of Mae Tinee – “You’ve heard a lot about this picture and I see from the ads that some experts think it “the greatest movie ever made”. I don’t” – Mae Tinee, Chicago Tribune.

Rotten Tomatoes has recently gone through a process of adding old reviews for classic and historic films and Citizen Kane is not the only film to have its rating adjusted in this process.

The Greatest Film Ever Made

As pointless an exercise in trying to work out what is the greatest film ever made the idea of combining critic reviews is as good a method as any but many an eyebrow was raised at the suggestion Paddington 2 was the superior film. Part of this is because Paddington 2 is a film about a talking bear, it’s a family film, or as some would see it, it’s for children. To make a film that would genuinely entertain a whole family is no easy feat and Paddington 2 shouldn’t be looked down upon in that that is its goal.

Brett Goldstein’s brilliant podcast Films To Be Buried With poses a question – what is objectively the greatest film ever made, not your favourite, the greatest. Early on in the podcast, a good explanation was given to perhaps what this meant: if aliens came to Earth with no knowledge of cinema, what film would you show them to exemplify cinema? Citizen Kane could well be the film that would be chosen for such a prestigious task but that does not mean it is the most entertaining, the most moving, the funniest or most exciting. I will perhaps give the final word to Bob Fredericks of the Miami Herald who reviewed Citizen Kane at the time of its release, “I would say it is a great picture but… It is one of those things, like the Pyramids, which are impressive and definitely interesting to have seen, but one can have more fun than looking at the Pyramids.“

Also Read: 30 Years On: The Godfather (Part 3)

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