THE movie “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit,” which opens in theaters this weekend, revolves around an American C.I.A. analyst first introduced in Tom Clancy’s 1984 novel “The Hunt for Red October.” The source material isn’t the only thing that’s a little creaky. Ryan’s destination is Moscow, his target a Russian businessman plotting to crash the American economy through a terrorist attack. In portraying the diabolical oligarch Viktor Cherevin, Kenneth Branagh delivers his lines in the thick, menacingly slow accent that defines Eastern European baddies on screen: “You think this is game, Jack?”

Nearly 25 years after the Berlin Wall fell and marked the end of the Cold War, Hollywood’s go-to villains remain Russians. The last few years alone have seen a sadistic ex-K.G.B. agent (“The Avengers”), crooked Russian officials (“A Good Day to Die Hard”), Russian hit men (“The Tourist”), a Russian spy (“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”), a Russian-American loan shark (“Limitless”) and so many Russian gangsters they have displaced Italians as film’s favored thugs (“Jack Reacher,” “Safe,” “A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas,” among others).

Image Lotte Lenya as Rosa Klebb and Robert Shaw as Red Grant from the 1963 James Bond film “From Russia With Love.” Credit... United Artists, via Photofest

Screenwriters even managed to vilify Russia in “Gravity,” a movie that features only three on-screen actors and takes place almost entirely in orbit. The space debris that imperils the American astronauts was caused by a Russian missile.