A short sampler of films and TV shows that draw on factories for scenery, setting and inspiration.
It’s no secret: The Alliance for American Manufacturing likes a good manufacturing movie from time to time.
On the blog we’ve reviewed a bunch of them, including Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Jumanji, Top Gun: Maverick, Gung Ho (it stunk), Barbarian, Working Man and, of course, Tommy Boy. We’ve also watched documentaries like American Factory and American Made Movie, and have even been involved in producing others like Relighting the Flame.
But these only scratch the surface of manufacturing-influenced movies and TV shows. Factories are the settings or backdrops for plenty of others.
Here are a few others we’ve been thinking about (and have queued up on our streaming services):
Manufacturing on TV
Roseanne premiered in 1988 and its depiction of a working-class family was well-received by the demographic it sought to depict. Both parents worked, and Roseanne’s character (for a chunk of the show’s early run) worked in a plastics factory. From a 1989 article published in the Baltimore Sun:
Many women see an implicit message of hope in the show. After each episode, Glenda Strickland, a 48-year-old press operator and packer at Tuscarora Plastics, says she comes away believing, “You can make it if you try.” So what if “making it” means living in a cluttered home where the furniture looks more worn than new and where the staircase is littered with toys, pillow and other debris of domestic life.
Laverne & Shirley famously worked as bottle-cappers at a Milwaukee brewery (until they moved to southern California and the show started to jump the shark). Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!
In I Love Lucy, Lucy was a homemaker and Ricky was a band leader, but among this foundational sitcom’s most beloved episodes is the one where Lucy and Ethel take jobs at a candy factory.
More manufacturing movies?
All The Right Moves, starring Tom Cruise and Craig T. Nelson (playing against type as a football coach), relies heavily on its setting in a western Pennsylvania steel town.
Swing Shift stars Goldie Hawn as one of the women who entered American armament factories during World War II. This movie bombed, but the critics liked it!
The Company Men is a movie about a shipbuilding corporation that goes through a consolidation and rounds of layoffs during the Great Recession.
Eminem is very famously from Detroit, and 8 Mile – the semi-autobiographical drama he starred in – reflects that background. His character, an aspiring rapper, makes ends meet working an automobile stamping plant (and battle-raps against Xzibit during a lunch break but there are lots of swear words, so you’ll have to find that on your own):
Flashdance draws on the same inspiration as All the Right Moves – its protagonist is a welder at Pittsburgh steel mill with dreams to leave the factory.
But that’s not all
Manufacturing (and sometimes, just its implications) shows up in the background of plenty of blockbusters and prestige series too.
In The Fellowship of the Ring – the first film in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy – we get an inside glimpse of how evil wizard Saruman builds his secret orc army: by embracing industry! Tolkien had a dim view of industrialization, which is why it’s associated with one of the story’s major villains.
Andor, arguably the most acclaimed of the many Star Wars spinoff series, is a pretty dark commentary on rebellion against an authoritarian state, and there’s a prison story arc in which inmates are used as forced labor. Spoiler alert: They’re helping to build the Death Star.
The Iron Man movies – one of the pillars of the Marvel Cinematic Universe – center on the heroic exploits of fabulously wealthy industrialist Tony Stark, who doesn’t have any mutant powers but an endless supply of capital and the know-how to build an armored and weaponized with which to fight bad guys.
Factories feature in many more films and TV shows beyond these examples, and I know I’m missing a million of them. Which others should we watch? Send suggestions to [email protected].