Cool Supercut: Movie Presidents from FDR to Obama

Southside with You, the first fictional movie about President Barack Obama, was released recently. This, combined with the insane spectacle that is the 2016 presidential campaign, made me curious about the cinematic history of American presidents (the real ones, that is: sorry Bill Pullman in Independence Day). This video compiles one representative depiction for each US President of the last 70 years (one exception: Gerald Ford, who perhaps wasn’t interesting enough to show up in the movies).

After having watched all these movies about American presidents, I have the impression that most of them focus on how each leader faced major domestic and international conflicts, making history in the process. Strangely, from most of these films, there’s little contextual information about the reasons behind the conflicts or about the deep-seated motivations for why these special individuals decided, at some point in their lives, to take the country’s destiny in their hands. The only exception is “W.” a film that dares to portray the personal and psychological conflicts of one of the most polarizing presidents of recent history.