- Branden Mayer

The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel is the follow up to 2003’s wonderfully depressing documentary that used corporations’ legal personhood as an excuse to diagnose the psychological profile of your average corporate entity. The conclusion of the original film was that if the then contemporary corporation were indeed a person, they would have to be diagnosed as a murderous psychopath - go figure. The sequel has come in the midst of one our lowest points culturally, economically and environmentally to let us know just how much worse the corporate presence has become in our global society. Sounds like a blast, right? Well, it kind of is. 

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The documentary has traded the cold and calculating format of the original for a more agreeable and shiny style of presentation, as it covers an impressively wide scope of information. However, The New Corporation is mostly focused on the advent of the self-aware corporate entity, one which uses socially responsible language to perform a slight-of-hand trick on the masses; telling us they are on our side and hear us with one hand while invading the most fundamental parts of our society and monetizing them with the other. While this situation may sound like a hopeless labyrinth (and it probably is), the film attempts to offer some much needed hope by looking at recent political wins for the working class and the marginalized, as well as the general wising-up that has spread among the populous in the last two decades.

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The New Corporation is a very informative and well-paced documentary that does its best to give you a repugnant dose of reality while insisting that you’ll be better for it if you just keep aware and active. This unfortunately necessary sequel aims to put informed citizens to work, encouraging everyone who watches it to have an active role in the overthrow of a system gone mad. Hopefully it makes a dent, but you can’t help but feel that, like the parent of a naive and fragile child, The New Corporation is leaving out the harsher realities of our situation to spare our feelings and keep us from giving up, in the process falling just short of being scary enough to incite the reaction it seems to want. The original film didn’t have this same attitude, but maybe that’s just a reflection of and reaction to how much worse things have gotten. In any case, kudos must be given to the filmmakers for speaking out against literally the most powerful entities on our planet (for a second time). We strongly recommend you check out this film, which is currently streaming on Crave in Canada, and if you haven’t seen The Corporation (2003) it is available to watch on YouTube and hasn’t lost an ounce of its potency.