An inescapable aspect of The Apprentice is how it plays like an origin story for a villain like a cash-grab Disney prequel. Except this time the antagonist is not animated, the story is not fiction and the threat is very much real.
This article will contain light spoilers for The Apprentice.
For those unfamiliar, The Apprentice, directed by Ali Abbasi, is a biopic that recounts the early life and rise to power of Donald Trump, someone I assume is familiar to everyone. For myself and other younger audience members, the film covers a less familiar period of Trump’s life which light is rarely shone upon. Despite leaving the cinema having learnt a lot about this person, I couldn’t stop thinking about what the film chose to omit due to its conclusion in the mid-eighties. I felt like I had watched an iconic antagonist assemble all the parts of his character only for his evil plans to be enacted in a sequel down the line. This train of thought persisted until I came across one of Trump’s many tirades against Kamala Harris on X (formerly Twitter). From then I couldn’t help but wonder, are we living in the sequel?
Recognition is needed foremost for the film’s technical aspects. Many elements of the film, such as the cinematography and mise-en-scène, are heavily inspired by Succession and other such business dramas but are apt in setting each scene. However, the frantic editing pace stands about these aspects, allowing the two-hour runtime to fly by with a stylish rendition of the ‘70s to ‘80s timeframe. A final praise must be credited to the glue of The Apprentice – the performances. Oscar-worthy acts were expected and achieved by Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong, but what surprised me most was an underutilised Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump. Baklova added spades of depth and personality to someone who, to many people, including myself, didn’t know much about and only saw as Trump’s reluctant ‘trophy wife’.
Stan’s performance was beyond a doubt the key selling point in creating the likeliness between The Apprentice and a Trump origin story. The actor’s depiction of a young, timid, and insecure Trump is almost unrecognisable and entirely juxtaposes the President-elect’s modern counterpart. But whether it’s the pouting of the lips or hand gestures, as the film progresses we watch the protagonist gain Trump’s more recognisable mannerisms. When considering the defining aspects of Trump’s present character, one scene struck me more than others. As the film closes, Trump reads Ronald Reagan’s campaign slogan “Let’s Make America Great Again”. Akin to Cruella acclaiming her infamous fur jacket or the Joker donning his colourful suit, the scene primarily serves as dramatic irony to the audience, who now more or less associate the slogan exclusively with Trump’s own presidential campaign.
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With The Apprentice rooted in presenting Trump’s rise to power, what might it include in the sequel? The magnitude of events covered may result in the film jumping the shark and coming off as unrealistic. Scandals comparable to the “Grab Them” tape may have been central plot points of a sequel, but now seem small fry compared to the numerous crimes Donald Trump has been convicted of since. This leaves us as the younger audience in awe; we know these events aren’t unrealistic as we have lived amid them ourselves.
As I conclude this article, the recent result of the United States election cannot be ignored. Announced in the middle of my writing of this article, the result made the answer to my original question even more obvious. Are we living in the sequel? No. We already experienced it. And now, the third instalment has begun.