Everyone loves Abraham Lincoln, consistently ranked as one of the top three presidents of the United States. Steven Spielberg’s meticulous Lincoln (2012), which won Daniel Day-Lewis an Oscar for his uncanny impression of Big Abe, is suitably reverent but also, it has to be said, a bit of a plod. Give me the less plodding Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012), a reconfiguring of the Civil War in which the Secessionists weren’t just slave-owners but, you know, literal vampires. From which we can extrapolate, the dafter the presidential confabulation, the more fun the movie.
Thus, my favourite portrayal of John F Kennedy is not the shrewd statesman de-escalating the Cuban Missile Crisis in Thirteen Days (2000), but Ossie Davis as a geriatric Afro-American JFK (“They dyed me this colour! That’s how clever they are!”) fighting alongside a senescent Elvis Presley (Bruce Campbell) against a soul-sucking Egyptian mummy prowling the corridors of a Texan old folks’ home in Don Coscarelli’s bonkers but oddly touching horror-comedy Bubba Ho-Tep (2002). If only the makers of this year’s Reagan hagiopic had taken their cue from The Werewolf of Washington (1973), I would be right there at my local multiplex, panting for it.
Meanwhile, fictional presidents on film, built from scratch, range from wishful thinking to gleefully sticking it to the hallowed office. Kick-ass action POTUSes include Harrison Ford, tussling with terrorists on board Air Force One (1997), which unsurprisingly became favourite White House viewing. Or how about President Bill Pullman, as in Independence Day (1996), giving a Henry V-adjacent inspirational speech before spearheading a fighter jet attack on the flying saucer? There’s even a rom-com Prez, in which Michael Douglas in The American President (1995) breaks off from snogging Annette Bening to order a bombing raid on Libya. Aaron Sorkin later admitted he wrote the screenplay while high on crack cocaine, to which one can only say, Aaron, you weren’t high enough.
Black presidents were a recurring feature of science fiction cinema long before the election of Barack Obama. Less than a decade after the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling co-wrote The Man (1972), in which James Earl Jones plays a senator who inherits the role when the incumbent is killed in an Einstürzende Altbauten incident in Germany. No question that Jones, with his rich bass-baritone, has the gravitas to make such a promotion believable, even if his subsequent role as the voice of Darth Vader now gives the film an unintended layer.
Afro-American POTUSes are not always depicted so respectfully. Ex-football player Terry Crews plays the transcendentally stupid ex-porn star President Camacho in the futuristic satire Idiocracy (2006), set in the year 2505. Though to be fair, Camacho is no more stupid than everyone else in Mike Judge’s alarmingly prescient dystopia, where everyone’s favourite TV show is Ow! My Balls! For more statesmanlike presidenting we must turn to Morgan Freeman, who, like Jones, is known for his reassuringly authoritative voice. Here he is, presiding over a survival lottery in the disaster movie Deep Impact (1998) and here he is again, post-Obama, as President Trumbull in the lunkhead action pic Angel Has Fallen (2019). Even when Freeman plays villains, which he does occasionally, that voice suckers you into thinking he is a totally trustworthy villain.
Female presidents, on the other hand, have long been regarded as a joke. Betty Boop and Olive Oyl both ran for office, while Kisses For My President (1964), is more interested in the micro-humiliations of the first First Husband (Fred MacMurray) – oh no! his White House quarters are chintzy and feminine! – and ends with POTUS herself getting pregnant and resigning. Women, know your place! Hint: it’s not in the Oval Office. Unless, maybe, you’re a Childless Cat Lady.
Sorkin wrote “The American President” while high on crack cocaine, to which one can only say, Aaron, you weren’t high enough
Then we have she-presidents Joan Rivers in Les Patterson Saves the World (1987) and Loretta Swit in Whoops Apocalypse (1986); the titles say it all. But around the turn of the century, the female POTUS began to embed herself in pop culture via TV shows like 24 or House of Cards. Even in lighter variations like Commander in Chief or Veep, the female presidency is depicted as rational rather than a hilarious aberration, almost as though television has been telling viewers a female president is inevitable.
It’s surprising that fictional male presidents haven’t been portrayed more often as snivelling shits, like Gene Hackman as a sexual predator in Absolute Power (1997). Or lily-livered Donald Pleasence, whose plane goes down in the prison island of Manhattan in Escape From New York (1981). Or, more recently, Nick Offerman as an authoritarian head of state in Civil War (2024), who ends up grovelling beneath an Oval Office desk.
Sexual predator? Lily-livered? Wannabe authoritarian? Triple check! Add convicted felon, proven racist, probable traitor and potential insurrectionist to the mix and we’re still just scratching the surface. Only a few years ago, if you’d invented a presidential candidate who blathered on about sharks, Hannibal Lecter and how much they hated Taylor Swift, film critics would accuse any scenario short of Idiocracy as too preposterous to be plausible. Yet here we are, and this particular movie isn’t much fun at all.
Anne Billson is a film critic, novelist and photographer
